█ █ █ █ Hey, everybody, and welcome to a spooktacular edition of Kentucky Life.

I'm your host, Chip Polston.

Now we're continuing our celebration of state parks here at the Whittleton Campground at Natural Bridge State Resort Park, next to a calm evening fire, the moon has just come out, and it's just beginning to feel like fall.

So what better time than now to share some of our state's spookier stories.

Let's get right into it.

Somerset, Kentucky, is a normal town like any other, but there are some who believe that stranger things are afoot in this quaint Pulaski County city.

Just nearby in what some call the Pennyroyal area are some famous extraterrestrial stories, from the Hopkinsville Goblins to the Stanford UFO abductions.

In Somerset itself, there are tales of large black cats, sasquatches, and other haunts that surround and fill the area.

So why do all these legends and folk stories center on this one small town?

For our first story, we'll explore some of the folklore of Somerset and learn more about what some might call a paranormal hotspot.

█ █ █ █ A question I've often been asked is, "Why Somerset?

Why put a paranormal museum here?"

And really, the first answer is this is where I live.

This is where all of my experience in the paranormal got its start.

And this is, you know, my home.

That's really only a surface answer.

Underneath that, Pulaski County is a hotbed of weird activity.

There's several legends of UFO sightings here, paranormal ghost encounters.

There have been bigfoot sightings in three parts of the county.

Actually in our museum, we have some bigfoot footprints found under Fishing Creek Bridge a few years ago.

Kentucky really has a strange history and Somerset seems to be the epicenter of a lot of it.

There are multiple haunted hotspots around the Somerset There are multiple haunted hotspots around the Somerset area.

Namely, Soule's Chapel is a historic hotspot for ghostly activity.

And that goes back for decades, for generations, really.

On top of that, of course, the Mill Springs Battlefield.

I have seen some things that I can't explain.

I've heard some things that I can't explain.

Over the years in the Somerset area, specifically at Soule's Chapel on the outskirts of Somerset, I have recorded electronic voice phenomenon myself.

I have recorded what I believe to be voices from beyond the grave.

The Pennyroyal Plateau, it stretches all the way west to about Hopkinsville and then basically to the end of the state, east.

And we have a lot of weird paranormal activity on the Pennyroyal Plateau.

When you look at the Pennyroyal Plateau, Western Kentucky, you've got Mammoth Cave, which is the largest cave system in the United States, but also the largest cave system in the world, stretches all the way east underneath most of Kentucky and then the huge cave system here in Pulaski County.

That's also where, in that area, Hopkinsville is, the name Little Green Men started, because of the Hopkinsville Goblin case, I think it was back in like 1954.

And again, that's where the phrase Little Green Men was coined.

And there are just tons of really strange stories of things that have happened, huge historically weird stories on the Pennyroyal Plateau.

The most fascinating thing to me about the Somerset area is just the wealth, the genuine wealth of unusual stories that come out of this area, specifically in regard to the UFO phenomenon.

When we were going to move from Lexington to Somerset, one of the first things I did was look up the strange stuff that's, you know, basically connected to Somerset.

One of the first things that I found was referenced to a place called Alien Grave Mountain.

And there's a guy here in Burnside, that's just south of Somerset, he alleges that in 1963, there was a UFO crash here in Pulaski County.

Sometime in the earlier 1900s, there was a giant meteorite that was seen for hundreds of miles streaking across the sky.

Parts of this meteorite have been found, but the main chunk of the body is still missing.

They estimate that it's over 50 pounds and it's just somewhere deep in a holler here in Pulaski County.

There have been some of the most famous UFO extraterrestrial sightings in the history of ufology.

In the 1970s, in the Stanford, Kentucky area, not too far north of here, three ladies were on their way back from a birthday party, this was in 1976, late at night, they were on their way from Lancaster, Kentucky, back to Liberty, where they lived.

And when they arrived in Stanford, they hung a ride on the Highway 78.

And almost immediately, these three ladies claimed that they started seeing lights in the sky.

These lights just sort of beamed down on their car.

Well, like most other people in the 1970s or today, for that matter, they were pretty taken aback, pretty frightened by this incident.

And they stepped on it.

But no matter how fast they went, those lights kept up with them.

Eventually, the ladies claimed that they lost consciousness.

When they woke up, an hour had passed.

They were eight miles down the road in the ditch.

And at first, they didn't remember what happened, but then it started coming back to them.

One of the ladies claimed that she remembered being abducted by these aliens.

The story, it was a harrowing tale, as you can probably imagine.

In really engaging with folklore and what folklore was, and what stories are, and how stories shape who we are, but also how those stories are tied to the very place that we are.

And the very place that those stories emerge, you know, that's important in terms of who you are, and who a community is, and the sense of community, and finding those stories, and seeing how those stories connect to you and how those stories connect you to the other people that live there.

And I think that's the most important thing for anybody that's looking at the folklore, of the place that they live.

You know, every place is strange.

I think this place is stranger than most, but every place is strange.

Every place has a bit of magic.

█ █ █ █ [crickets chirping] Octavia Hatcher died in 1891, and yet her name is still known by many in the town of Pikeville, where a statue made in her likeness stands watch in a graveyard overlooking the town.

The story of Octavia's tragic death being buried alive has been a popular urban legend in Pikeville for decades.

But how much of this story is fact and how much is fiction?

We asked a series of local historians and researchers to weigh in.

█ █ █ █ There have been a lot of stories about Octavia in the cemetery.

There have been people who have said they've heard cries, a woman crying.

There are a lot of people still today who won't go to the cemetery, especially at night.

█ █ █ █ Octavia Hatcher passed away in 1891.

And Pikeville was a very, very small town in 1891.

It was 1889 when the school first came in.

And at that time, Pikeville was very big in timber.

Coal wasn't even really a consideration at the time, so very small, very rural, kind of the perfect setting for this type of ghost story.

So this is the legend of what happened to Octavia Hatcher.

Octavia was born to Jacob Smith, who was one of the early founders of Pikeville.

So he was a prominent businessman in town.

So they came from a very wealthy background.

Octavia was born outside of Pikeville, probably came here for education, as most of the people of the means would have done at that time.

She was a very beautiful striking figure, from a wealthy family.

So I'm sure she was very popular.

Her dad was a merchant.

And as common, you run in the same circle.

And she met and she married James Hatcher.

James was a business partner of Jacob Smith.

He worked pretty closely with her father.

And then, he branched off into different industries.

He was a wild type of guy.

He would do just about anything.

Whatever idea struck him, he was going to do it.

But a lot of the big things that happened with him, a lot of the expansive story that comes around him happened after Octavia passed away.

So at the point that we're with Octavia, he's just beginning.

They got married when Octavia was 18 years old and he was 30.

That was in 1889, not unheard of for that time.

And I think James was deeply in love with her.

Shortly afterwards, she gets pregnant.

Everybody's excited.

Especially Octavia, she was probably the most excited.

However, when it came the day to deliver the baby, the baby died.

He was born.

He was only alive for a few hours.

The little baby son passed away.

Octavia didn't take it well.

She took to the bed.

She was lethargic.

She was devastated.

A lot of people say she fell into a depression, which is very likely.

She also became ill. She would get sick with fevers.

She would sometimes have hallucinations.

This went on from January to May.

So she suffered after the death of her child for several months.

And then, at the end of April, fell comatose.

And on May 2nd, she was declared dead.

May in 1891 was particularly hot season.

Especially at that time, there was no embalming.

That's not the season to mess around with a burial.

So they buried her.

It was shortly thereafter, though, that they started noticing that there were other people in the community that were slipping into comas and everybody was going down.

The difference, sort of, is that they were coming back out.

That led to James Hatcher getting very, very worried because while there had been extenuating circumstances, Octavia had done the exact same thing.

Immediately, he rushes.

He gets a crew.

They dig up the grave.

They open it up, and they do find Octavia passed away.

She was dead.

Unfortunately, she had not been when she was buried.

The story is that the coffin could not have been airtight.

So she would have had just enough oxygen to be able to wake.

When they opened the coffin, the lid of the coffin is scratched.

The lining scratched off of it.

Her fingernails were all broken and bloody.

And she's got a contorted look of horror on her face.

It was devastating to the community.

It was devastating to everyone.

And it was something that Hatcher would have to live with for the rest of his life.

But they reburied her and didn't speak about it for a very long time.

█ █ █ █ James Hatcher was a very eccentric man.

And again, he was a very prominent leader in the community.

He was very wealthy, but he never got over Octavia.

She's buried just above the town, looking down where he builds a hotel.

He builds his room as a hotel, looking up at her grave and has a statue made of her.

So anytime he wants to look up there, he can see her.

Kind of, I guess, the guilt overwhelming him has caused him to do all this.

Except Octavia didn't take kindly to that, right, why would you?

Everybody else gets to live and she does not.

So periodically you can hear crying and you can hear weeping from a lady who has seen devastating loss and also lost her own life in a horrific fashion.

And once a year on her death, the statue turns its back on the community that did not save her.

So that's the legend of Octavia Hatcher.

I think the best stories come from a kernel of truth.

That being said, there's enough sadness in the reality of the story [laughs] to not add a little bit more.

We've never been able to find a contemporary newspaper story about her death and supposedly being buried twice.

I would think at that point in time, the way journalism was, that would have been a big story, not only locally, but regionally, maybe even statewide or national.

I think that the story stems from James Hatcher himself.

Like I said, he was a wild kind of guy.

And the thing that he was most known for around here was the Hatcher Hotel.

He had a small museum of curios and curiosities in there.

And he also wrote on the walls.

That's odd enough.

But the oddest thing was in his curios and curiosities; he was known to keep his own casket.

And in that coffin, he had a latch that could only be opened from the inside.

So when he died and they locked him from the outside, he would have a way in case he woke up to get out of that.

There doesn't seem to be any reference to Octavia Hatcher until the story of his casket starts coming out.

It's almost like there's a connection between the casket and the idea of why does this man feel the need to have a casket to get out of.

So there's no concrete proof that she was buried alive, but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that says that she wasn't.

That's the interesting thing about a story.

The story becomes more important than the people involved in the story.

And her truly sad story, coupled with her very eccentric widow, has made for a story that has held the test of time.

█ █ █ █ Octagon Hall in Franklin was once a historic home built before the Civil War.

During the Civil War, the house was used as a base and medical station for both Union and Confederate soldiers.

Medicine, at the time, wasn't as advanced as what we're used to today.

So procedures that took place in the home were described as horrendous and excruciating.

Perhaps this is one of the many reasons why the location is now deemed one of the most haunted places in the South.

Let's take a look at the history of this old home and learn more about its ghostly legacy.

█ █ █ █ Octagon Hall is a historic location that is located north of Franklin, Kentucky, that had background on the Civil War.

Plus, it is one of the most unusual houses because it is a complete eight-sided building built in 1847.

It's one of three remaining in the country.

Octagon Hall is regarded as one of the most haunted places in the South.

During my time as a paranormal investigator, I've been to hundreds of locations, witnessed hundreds of different things.

In Octagon Hall, there's a reason it keeps me coming back.

Not only is it the proximity to where I live, but the fact that I can come in here day in and day out and have a different experience that I've never had before.

It's mind-blowing to me and it's honestly addicting to come back to.

It's my personal belief that in the paranormal field, 80% of all paranormal claims can be disproven.

And when I talk to a different skeptic, I tell them, "Just hear me out.

Come with me one time.

We will work through this together and try and find a natural explanation of what's happening."

And when we're not able to, that's when we're left with more questions than answers, potentially paranormal.

Octagon Hall currently right now sits at 300 acres.

It is on ancient land.

It goes back to Paleo-Indians.

There are mounds around in the area.

Plus, we have a ton of tragedy here.

[eerie music playing] So the hall was - the building process started in 1847.

Andrew Jackson Caldwell and his first wife, Lizzie, were the first people to live here with their three children.

Unfortunately, Lizzie died at 30 years old, typhoid fever.

Not long after her, their 18-month-old son, AJ, died.

He fell down the stairs and broke his neck.

Then, Mary Elizabeth, their middle child, she died, and she was burned in the winter kitchen.

And Fanny, which was their oldest child, and she lived a very long life and she never left Franklin.

Andrew gets remarried in 1855 to Harriet Morton Caldwell from Russellville.

Andrew and her are here for 11 years.

Only together, the 11 years, because Andrew dies right after the war in 1866.

Andrew Jackson Caldwell had a nephew that was in the Kentucky Knights and he was a captain at the time.

His name was John William Caldwell.

He is basically involved with this movement of this gigantic movement of troops to Tennessee.

And he knows of the house.

So when they get here, it's an obvious place for him.

So his nephew brings over 9,000 Confederate soldiers to this house on February 13th, 1862.

Two days after they left, the Union Army comes to this house.

You can't hide where 9,000 men were just at.

And this house is also, as they're looking at the house, it is very strategic to them because you can see in every direction.

From the entrance hall, and its 45 foot tall.

They come and take the house.

They find the Confederate soldiers here and they dispatched all of them.

So now we have not only graves on the property, but we also have a mass grave on the property.

It leaves Andrew very upset about what's going on.

And now, he becomes a super sympathizer of the south.

Andrew lets it be known that this is now a safe house for Confederate soldiers.

Lots of lives were lost here, but there was a lot of joy.

Many children were born here.

There were 11 children, in all.

In those 11 years, only seven survived to adulthood.

Harriet lived here for a long time.

You know, she spent more time in this house than anyone.

She left in 1918 when she sold the house.

We want to preserve this beautiful place for generations to come.

We want it to be a living museum where kids can come learn, paranormal investigators, history enthusiasts, because that's what this is.

This is history.

And it was a vital part of Franklin.

[bell chiming] Visitors to Louisville's Belvedere will be greeted by riverfront sites, city landscapes, and statues of figures like General George Rogers Clark.

But Clark isn't the only statue to call the Belvedere home.

There used to be another statue of a little boy playing a flute on the Belvedere back in the 1970s.

He was referred to as Pan after the Greek mythological figure.

After mysteriously disappearing in the heat of the night, it was recast, only to go missing yet again.

In total, the statue was cast four times that we know of.

One now resides at the Sayre School in Lexington and another at Kennedy Court Park in Louisville.

But what about the other two?

Let's explore the disappearance of the Belvedere's Pan Statue and its strange journey back to the limelight.

█ █ █ █ So Pan was a satyr god of Arcadia, which is in the southern portion of Greece.

He was the god of the wilderness, rustic music and also instilling panic into others.

So Pan was half man, half goat, with the lower portion being goat legs with hooves.

He's often portrayed as having horns and the ears of a goat as well.

It's a really sort of fabled story with lots of time, you know, interceding gaps in history.

In 2018, Louisville Public Media had a show called Curious Louisville.

And there was a woman named Donna Fennell who wrote into Curious Louisville in 2018 and said that she used to work downtown, and she used to eat lunch on the Belvedere every day and had developed this really wonderful sort of relationship with the Pan statue.

She used to eat lunch right next to it.

And one day, she came back downtown after having left, no longer working in the area, and just noticed that it was missing.

It wasn't there anymore and had written into Curious Louisville to ask whatever happened to it.

At that time, nobody had the answer.

And then, in late-2023, I was contacted by an LPM reporter saying that somebody had reached out to them thinking that they may have something that belongs to the city.

So the Pan story, I would say, came to me.

We got a call in October from David Greer, who said, "I think I have a statue that you're looking for."

And he was talking about a statue of Pan.

He's like really whimsical.

Sometimes he's depicted with horns and goat legs.

But in this depiction of him, he's kind of like a little impish boy playing the flute.

But David called LPM in October saying, "I think I have this statue that you're looking for."

I've seen the statue and I really don't know why this boy playing the flute is associated with Pan.

The statue doesn't show any of the physical features of Pan, doesn't have any goat like features.

And even the pipe itself that the boy is playing is different than the reed pipe that Pan played.

However, it's fun.

Kind of like Pan entertaining the nymphs with his pipe where people - where the nymphs would sing and dance.

Maybe the people of Louisville kind of want that entertainment, as well.

We want to go on a journey.

We want to be fascinated.

Charlotte Price made the Pan statue in 1972.

It's made out of clay initially.

And it was for the Younger Woman's Club of Louisville.

And they purchased it from her and then had it gifted it to the Waterfront Commission, where it was eventually placed on the Belvedere based off of that gift.

That was acquired in 1973 and installed early-1974.

In late-1974, mid-1974, the statue was stolen pretty much immediately after it was installed.

And then, the Riverfront Commission filed an insurance claim to replace the statue.

And Charlotte either had a second casting already on hand or made another casting as a replacement for the initial one.

The statue stayed on the Belvedere from either late-1974, early-1975 until the late-'90s, when there were construction and renovation projects scheduled for the Belvedere.

So the statue was removed and city records say that it was either lost or stolen from storage, and it, you know, was never found, sort of a mystery.

And then, in the early-2000s, the Mayor's Committee on Public Art, which was a mayoral appointed sort of advisory committee of citizens, decided that they wanted to start fundraising to replace the statue yet again.

So they worked with Charlotte and the Bright Foundry that had done the original casting to have a pan-pour party and they cast a few additional copies at that time.

And the third replacement statue that was acquired by the city was resided into a park over in Crescent Hill called Kennedy Court Park, which is where it sits today.

Pan was the god of rustic music.

And the people of Arcadia were mountain people.

They were people who lived in the wilderness.

So they were isolated from other cultural centers like Athens and Sparta.

So they kind of built their own isolated community.

And I can see that with the people of Appalachia, also, being kind of culturally isolated from the larger cities and developing their own regional culture with arts and music, just like Pan would have done in Arcadia.

It's important to preserve public art because public art provides an opportunity for the most accessible, you know, type of interaction one may have with an artwork.

It's there all the time.

It's there permanently, unless it gets stolen.

You can go visit it at any time of day.

You can visit it repeatedly.

You can develop, you know, those sorts of everyday relationships with an artwork, the way that Donna Fennell did when she ate lunch with Pan.

And it really starts to represent a community's sense of identity and, you know, a real sort of unique characteristic and sense of place.

█ █ █ █ Well, that wraps it up for a spooky edition of Kentucky Life.

We hope you've enjoyed your time by the campfire with us.

I know all of us on the team have really been excited to bring you this episode.

And we hope we didn't scare you too badly.

Now if you've enjoyed our show, be sure to like the Kentucky Life Facebook page or subscribe to the KET YouTube channel for more of what we call Kentucky Life Extras, where you'll have access to lots of other great videos.

Until next time, I'll leave you with this moment.

I'm Chip Polston, cherishing this Kentucky Life and this marshmallow.

Mm.