THE WORLD'S MOST HAUNTED PLACES

BOBBY MACKEY'S MUSIC WORLD, WILDER, KENTUCKY, USA

Wilder, Kentucky is a small town that is located just south of Cincinnati, Ohio. For many years the town has been subject to visits from curio seekers, tourists, paranormal investigators and media journalists. They come here in search of a place called Bobby Mackey's Music World, a night club and pub that may be one of America's most haunted, and most ominous, locations! 

HISTORY: 

The building where the nightclub is now situated has a lengthy and gory history in the area, from its beginning as a slaughterhouse to its corporeal connection to one of the greatest ghost stories of southern Indiana. It was constructed back in the 1850's and was one of the largest packing houses in the region for many years. Only a well that was dug in the basement, where blood and refuse from the animals was drained, remains from the original building. The slaughterhouse closed down in the early 1890's, but legend has it that the building was far from deserted.  

According to the lore, the basement of the packing house became a sacrament site for occultists. The well was used to conceal the remains of small animals that were slaughtered during their ceremonies. Apparently a small satanic group made up of local residents gathered at the empty building to secretly practice their rituals. However, they were exposed in 1896 during one of the most extravagant murder trials ever held in northeast Kentucky. It was so large that tickets were sold to the hearing and more than 5,000 people stood outside the Newport, Kentucky courthouse for information about what was taking place inside. The trial, and the murder that spawned it, has become an integral part of Bobby Mackey's haunted history. 

 Pearl Bryan, the daughter of a prosperous farmer, was an attractive young woman who lived in Greencastle, Indiana in 1896. She was the youngest of 12 children from a well-known family and by the age of 22, was one of the most admired girls in the area. She had graduated from Greencastle High School in 1892 and had more than her share of suitors. Unknown to her friends and the polite members of Greencastle society, Pearl was with child. Her cousin and close friend, William Wood, had recently introduced her to Scott Jackson, who was then attending the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati. He and Wood, who was then attending medical school at De Pauw University, became close friends but unbeknownst to Wood, Jackson was an alleged affiliate of the occult group that met at the former slaughterhouse in Wilder. 

  Jackson's family was as wealthy as the Bryan's and so he was immediately acknowledged as a suitor for Pearl. He soon seduced her however and she became pregnant. Pearl turned to Wood, who in turn informed Jackson of the problem. He made provision to remedy the solution with an abortion in Cincinnati.Pearl left her parent's home on 1 February 1896 and told them that she was going to Indianapolis. Instead, she made plans to meet with Jackson and his roommate, Alonzo Walling, in Cincinnati. It would be the last time that her parents would ever see her alive. She was at that time five months pregnant. Jackson's medical skills were apparently much more incompetent than he had led his friend William Wood to believe. He first tried to induce an abortion using chemicals, apparently cocaine. The substance was later discovered in Pearl's system during an autopsy. After that, he tried to use dental tools, but that botched as well. After an hour or so, Jackson and Walling has a frightened, injured and bleeding young woman on their hands and that's when the story takes an ever darker turn. The three of them left Cincinnati and traveled across the Ohio River and into Kentucky. Jackson took them to a secluded spot near Fort Thomas and here, he and Walling murdered Pearl Bryan. 

 Using dental instruments, they severed her head from her body. It was a "clean cut", according to the testimony of the doctor who later examined the body. He also determined that Pearl had been alive at the time because of the presence of blood on the underside of some leaves at the murder scene. Pearls' body was found about two hundred feet off the Alexandria Turnpike and less than two miles from the abandoned slaughterhouse. As her head was nowhere to be found, Pearl was identified by her shoes. They bore the imprint of Louis and Hays, a Greencastle shoe company that was able to confirm that they had been sold to Pearl Bryan. During the trial that followed, Walling testified that it had been Jackson's idea to cut Pearl up and distribute her body in the Cincinnati sewers. Only the head was taken, for which Jackson apparently had other uses. Pearl's luxurious blonde hair was later found in a valise in Jackson's room. Pearl's head was never found and legend has it that it was used during a satanic ritual at the slaughterhouse. It was then dumped into the well of blood and was lost.