this house is the DuPont mansion it was built around 1882 by the Delaware du Pont’s it is one of Louisville’s grand mansions we have had guests who have felt presents they have smelled cigar smoke that will come late at night in their room and no one smoking or a non-smoking facility the story goes that it is indeed mr. du Pont on the third floor of the du Pont mansion there was the ballroom there are three guest rooms on the third floor now and from time to time they hear falling music and I think that it’s just another dimension that there there are custom to being in these places it was their home and they want to see what’s going on First Church of Christ scientists which is a beautiful neoclassical structure and this is where we have the lady of the stairs she’s always in a flowing white gown has jet-black hair done up in a Gibson girl kind of hairdo and they always just see her pacing back and forth across the huge set of steps at the front of the structure they say you can hear her sobs in the wee hours of the night it was a young woman they called Miss G the G stood for Gathright prominent local family from Bardstown story is that her family they ranged a lucrative marriage when they presented this man miss G said no thank you because she was in love with someone already she had met a destiny on soldier he fell in love with Miss G and he courted her and he promised that he would return and they would be married when the parents found out they sent her to Louisville to live with an aunt and uncle on Third Street back then the steps of the church were kind of rendezvous spot for young couples so Miss G would sneak out at night meet her boyfriend and after several weeks of sneaking around they just decided they’d rather run away and get married when it came time to meet the young man never made it he was one of several hundred soldiers who was struck with the flu at Camp Zachary Taylor 1918-1919 that’s when we have the Spanish flu outbreak in this country she waited on the stairs she finally did give up thinking that she had been jilted not knowing that her boyfriend was you know on his deathbed she went home and contracted the flu as well and they never found out what happened to each other was in two days they were both dead and buried they say miss G’s ghost haunts these stairs waiting for the young man the end of the park was built about 1887 by Russell Houston the tradition at the time was president of the Louisville Nashville the lnn railroad the first thing you notice when you come through the beautiful front doors is a large sweeping staircase from the second floor all the way down to the first floor that staircase spatially takes up essentially a full room another example of how the architects and the owners often sacrificed functionality for features and looks the important thing to them in building that staircase was not efficiency to get up and down stairs it was to create a spectacle as you entered the building another interesting thing about this building is the woodwork in the various rooms and each of those rooms are paneled or trimmed with a different luxurious would supposedly back in the 1890s not too long after the place was built anni Whipple was hired as a tutor for the children of the family supposedly one of the children was deathly ill so she was trying to contact the spirit of this doctor she was conducting a kind seance a doctor who she thought would be able to cure this child had just died the day before so she sort of reached out tried to contact him on the other side she went over to the corner of Park and 6th Street just over one block from where she’s been living and they met she met an old witch at this tree known as the witch’s treatment the rogue spirit intercepted the messages and ended up killing Annie Whipple as a way of sort of teaching her a lesson for dabbling in the black arts the guests that have stayed here have reported a number of different events and one of the guests that I had amongst this business group began explaining a certain thing that he saw on the second floor he described it as a transparent woman the other gentleman at the breakfast table his eyes widened like saucers and he said that’s what I saw guests have heard noises the most often repeated noise is the whirlpool tub in the master suite has been turned on in the middle of the night with no water running no people in there a woman has been seen coming down the sweeping stairway dressed in what appeared to be Victorian garb the 1880s and 90s era the woman disappeared as she neared the bottom of the stairs the story of the ice boy is one of the more tragic ones in Old Louisville the ice boy hunts a building known as the st. James flats people feared that an apartment building would bring down the value of housing in the area and the residents of st. James Court actually took the owner to court he won the case on the argument that the housing was needed in Old Louisville and so he proceeded to build the st. James Court flats they existed in harmony with the rest of the neighborhood until the night of February 6 1912 that night the building bursts into flames and the top 3 stories were completely consumed because it was so cold that night where the firemen had tried to put out the flames the water from their hoses had frozen on the house and so they were greeted by its as just ruin of ice and foot it was just rising up like a stalagmite they were just glad that nobody had perished in the fire but that is when story started to surface about this little boy that could be seen in front of the house or in the fountain at st. James Court and it turns out that this little boy was the resident of the cabbage patch neighborhood just a block west he was a grocery delivery boy just trying to make some extra money for his family that night it was just so cold before he went out on another delivery he just wanted to warm up for one minute on the 5th floor of the house and that’s when the fire broke out he was trapped up there and they found his little body huddled in a corner people thought because he wasn’t from a wealthy family that they could just bury the story but nobody would really know the difference and so that’s when these rumors started to surface about this little ice boy haunting Saint Jane court people say that maybe he just does it because he wants us to know that he’s here the ice boy tends to appear in December January and February nights when there’s ice and snow on the ground that’s how he got his name even though I can’t physically see another dimension or ghost that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that it happens if there were ghosts they would certainly be in a neighborhood that’s a hundred and thirty years old and has a lot of stories to be told
