Though Bobby Mackey still denies that there is ghostly activity within the bar, he refuses to set foot in the building alone. His wife Janet, after having several frightening experiences including being physically thrown by an unknown force in the basement, refuses ever to enter the bar again. During said encounter she was grabbed by the waist and thrown across the room, whilst voices screamed at her to "Get out!" At the time, Janet was five months pregnant, just like Johanna, and just like Pearl.
As the stories of the events inside the bar spread, writer Doug Hensley decided to investigate and write about the bar, its history, and its ghosts. His book, Hell’s Gate: Terror at Bobby Mackey's Music World details the information he gained from employees, patrons and locals, as well as his own experiences in the bar.
An exorcism in 1994 failed and the activity continues to this day. Peter D. Moscow, Ph.D., the president of the US Psychotronic Association states, "In twenty years of psychic investigations into ghosts, haunting, poltergeists and demonic like possessions, I have never encountered a more malevolent or destructive case than that which I experienced at Bobby Mackey’s Music World in Wilder, Kentucky." Psychic and author Echo Bodine recalls that in her visit to the bar, she saw a ghost named Pearl grabbing her head and crying, while two men named Scott and Alonzo screamed at her that she was the cause for their death. She claims that there were ghosts in the bathroom, in the caretaker’s flat, on the stage, in the main bar, and near the "famous" bucking bronco ride. Dennis William Hauck, also an author, says "This case is proving to be one of the most fascinating and best documented in the literature. It has all the elements of a genuine haunting, and I have a feeling that things aren’t over yet!"
The shows Sightings, Encounters, Real Ghosts, and Sally Jessie Raphael have all launched investigations at the bar, and all have concluded that the place is haunted. The stories and first-hand accounts certainly all seem to point irrefutably to the paranormal as the cause for the century-and-a-half old history of inexplicable phenomena, at the site of the old slaughterhouse.
Works Cited:
http://www.prairieghosts.com/bobby.html
http://members.aol.com/bjfitzcomp/
http://halrappaport.tripod.com/article2.html
(Originally published at Bumps in the Night.)
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