High on a Franklin County hill overlooking the Kentucky River sits Buffalo Trace Distillery, a mecca of bourbon that has been in operation since the late 19th century. Iconic figures in the industry, like Col. E.H. Taylor and Albert Blanton, have put out some of the finest bourbon in Kentucky from barrels held in its rack houses. But not all of the spirits at Buffalo Trace are intoxicating; some just might be supernatural.
Over the years, there have been many accounts of ghostly run-ins throughout the property. On most weekends, in addition to the traditional distillery tour, Buffalo Trace offers a guided ghost tour that visits some of the most “active places” on the site. “There’s so much history here,” tour guide Will Prible said. “Not just that, but there’s so many layers of history.”
Prible met with me to walk the grounds and recount stories about ghostly encounters on the property—some personal, some secondhand. “I’m not a skeptic,” he said. “I like to get spooked. Not that I invite it—doing Ouija boards and stuff like that. I don’t need to bring that on. But I do enjoy a good ghost story now and then.”
The most famous story focuses on Warehouse C, a building constructed in 1885. Sometime in the early 20th century, the foreman was taking a nap inside the warehouse while his men worked outside. He drifted off with his hat pulled down over his eyes. Suddenly, he awoke from a dead sleep to the sound of someone whispering, “Get your men out of the way.”
He jumped with a start, removed his hat, and looked around. No one was there. He put his hat back on and returned to his afternoon nap. Again, from a dead sleep, he heard: “Get your men out of there, now!”
With that, the foreman jumped up, stopped everything and got his men away from the building. A few minutes later, nearly all the brick on the side of the building where the men had been working fell off the structure and landed at the spot where they had been. Several people would have died that afternoon if the foreman hadn’t heeded a supernatural warning.
On my visit to the distillery, Prible took me to the second floor of Warehouse C and showed me a haunting line in the masonry between the original bricks and those that replaced the ones that fell. It’s unclear exactly who the ghostly warning came from, but many suspect Col. Taylor, a man who was obsessed not only with a quality product, but also with the care and well-being of his staff.
This story is indicative of most of the ghostly encounters that have occurred at Buffalo Trace. They tend to be nonthreatening, gentle, innocuous and sometimes playful. Words like “creepy” or “eerie” might come to mind, but no one has ever claimed to have felt anxious or even afraid after one of the supernatural experiences.
The more playful run-ins come from the ghost of a little girl. “That one bothers me the most,” Prible said. “I have a thing about kids and ghosts. That’s when I wet my pants.”
When the second floor of the visitors center was being renovated, a group of painters came in to work after hours to avoid being in the way of visitors. As the crew went up the back staircase and turned the corner, they saw a little girl standing in the corner wearing period dress. All five of the painters admit to having seen her standing there. After a few minutes in which the workers watched in quiet awe, she simply disappeared.
Prible had an encounter in that very same room. He was setting up for a wedding one afternoon. When he arrived, he saw that the lights were on in the second-floor room, where the event was to take place. “The lights in that room aren’t kept on a switch but on motion sensors,” he said. “The lights go on and off depending on if anyone is in that particular area of the room. I just figured someone was already there to help.”
As he approached the building, he found all the doors were locked, so he began to knock. No one answered. Finally, he found a guard who opened the building and let him in.
“As soon as I got in, I could hear someone walking around upstairs,” Prible recalled. “As I went upstairs, I called, ‘Hello?’ ” No answer. And when he got upstairs, the lights were out.
A little spooked, Prible started doing what he could until his crew arrived for the rest of the preparations, starting at one of the bars. He then heard someone at the bar on the other side of the wall shuffling around, as if setting up that bar. He peeked around the corner. Nothing. And then, suddenly, at the bar from where he had just been, he heard the same noises. So he peeked back over there. Nothing. It seemed like a kid playing a game with him. This back-and-forth happened a few more times before something eerie caught his attention.
“I noticed that every time I walked to a different part of the room, as I followed the sounds, I was the one triggering the lights,” he said. “So whatever was creating the noise was doing it in the dark and not triggering the motion sensor at all. That’s when I was like: ‘nope.’ ”
Considering the playful nature of the experience, I suggested it might be the same little girl the painters saw. “Maybe,” Prible said, “maybe, but I don’t want to think about that.”
A second little girl has been photographed on the property near a good climbing tree behind the Blanton Mansion. The little girls are somewhat of a mystery to the staff of Buffalo Trace. No one has yet been able to make a connection between either girl and the property. The closest they’ve come to an answer is that two little girls once lived across the street from the distillery. One girl drowned in a well, and the other died of a fever.
Prible had another ghostly encounter while giving a tour of Warehouse D. Warehouse D was built in 1907 and still houses more than 20,000 barrels of bourbon. Around 2 p.m. on a Saturday, he brought the group in and gathered at a first-floor intersection where two aisles meet. He was about to speak, when he looked down one aisle and saw a man standing at the other end looking intently at one of the barrels. “How did someone with the tour get that far away without me noticing?” was the first thought that came to Prible’s mind.
“He wasn’t glowing or ethereal, like you imagine ghosts. He was standing there just as you and I are, wearing khaki pants and a shirt, almost as if it were a uniform or something,” Prible said. He asked the man to rejoin the group, but the man didn’t respond. Prible asked again, and again received no indication that the man had even heard him. Just then, the man stepped forward, walked right into the barrels, and disappeared.
A woman standing beside Prible asked who the man was. Prible’s response was somewhat appropriate: “You saw that, too? I’m not crazy!”
He then walked down and looked between all the ricks to see where the man could have gone. But there was no room for a grown man to fit between them; he had simply vanished. “It was spookier when I got down there, because I figured I would find someone who got away from the group or someone that works here, who just didn’t hear me,” Prible said. “I got down there, and no one was there. The hair on my arms immediately stood up.”
As he returned to the group, he explained what had happened and allowed them each to walk down to see for themselves. Upon checking out the spot where the man had disappeared, they all agreed that no one was there.
These are only a few of the stories that echo throughout the buildings of Buffalo Trace Distillery. People may read stories like these and debate their validity, writing them off to natural causes or, at worst, claiming folks make up these tales. But in the end, belief in ghosts is just that: a belief.
There’s something reassuring that in a place like Buffalo Trace, the epicenter of the industry at the very heart of the Bluegrass, the ghosts who wander there are as good natured as the spirits that surround them.
A Spectral Experience?
Learn more about Buffalo Trace’s ghost sightings on the distillery’s Ghost Tour, offered Thursday-Sunday. This tour is limited to 30 people and fills quickly, so book well in advance. For more information, visit buffalotracedistillery.com or call 1-800-654-8471. Special thanks to tour guide Will Prible for providing his haunting insights.