I know I have been absent for a few weeks. I’m sorry. Things have been chaotic in our house. I have been working a ton between the two jobs. Add into that, Jeremy is out of town this week. He is down in Georgia this week for training. He will be back this weekend, thank goodness. Until then, I am running the household and trying to not let the animals take over.
With how busy I have been lately, I have made a decision to bring on some help. I have hired a wonderful woman by the name of Kristine to help me with my research. She has been absolutely amazing. With her doing a majority of the research, I get to focus on the parts of blogging and podcasting I enjoy the most- writing and recording. Speaking of the podcast, I hope you got a chance to check out the last episode that came out. It was our season one finale and was about the Congress Hotel in Chicago, Illinois. Since that was our season finale, that means the podcast is on break until August 3rd. With Kristine’s help, season two of Paranormal Housewife Podcast will be even better than season one was!
With all that being said, let’s dive into today’s topic. This week are checking out a couple of interesting locations in Kentucky! Kentucky is a great state but I have only driven through it. I have never visited there unfortunately. Today’s post is about a military camp that use to operate in Louisville, Kentucky. That camp was called Camp Zachary Taylor.
Camp Zachary Taylor was named for the twelfth President of the United States, General Zachary Taylor. General Taylor was a Louisville native. The camp was established on July 18, 1917 with the main purpose being to be a training camp for soldiers fighting in World War I. The camp was only opened for three years before closing. During that time, the camp trained over 150,000 soldiers from Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois to fight in the war. Over 2000 buildings were located within the camp.
The summer of 1918 would prove to be a very deadly summer. But not because of the war. Instead it was the Spanish Influenza that attacked the camp. It spread rapidly through the camp. More than 10,000 soldiers would end up with the disease. This would ended overwhelming the hospital. To help lessen the burden on the hospital, the camp converted fifteen of the camp’s barracks into hospital wards to treat the sick soldiers but even with that, the death toll would quickly climb. Over 1,000 people would end up dying in the camp due to the disease. The morgue was very quickly overwhelmed and had to resort to stacking the bodies and coffins up outside in the heat until they could be dealt with.
The camp would eventually be officially closed in June, 1920. A year later, the government would auction off more than 2500 acres, buildings and equipment. The land that was sold was turned into a working class neighborhood. The neighborhood would also be known as Camp Taylor. Some of the homes were built with wood salvaged from when the barracks were torn down. Even with the neighborhood being built, it seems as though some soldiers still remain.
There has been a few reports of paranormal activity happening in the neighborhood and in the former camp as well. People have reported seeing troops walking in formation. They have also heard a bugle playing Reveille at 6am or hearing a cannon firing. Some folks even report seeing a woman who appears to be blonde and dressed in a blue Victorian style dress walking along the streets but no one knows who she use to be or why she is walking the streets.
With all the deaths that happened in the camp due to illness and the stress of preparing to fight in a major war, it’s not surprising to hear about spirits reliving their lives at Camp Zachary Taylor. Although most of the camp is now torn down, it is still possible to visit the neighborhood that was built near it and possibly see the spirits march by. One reader who reached out to suggest this location as a topic said that it use to annoy him to hear the bugle playing most mornings when he went to visit his grandparents. He said that it was loud enough to wake him up in the early morning. This reader also said that it wouldn’t be uncommon to hear men talking and laughing late at night while he played flash light tag with other neighborhood kids. They could never find where the voices came from and would often end up chasing the sound of the voices instead of chasing each other. Thank you, Michael H., for this topic suggestion!
If you have a topic you would like to suggest, please let me know. Also if you have an experience you would like to share or have a question about the paranormal, I want to hear it. You can send me a message here, email me at kelly@paranormalhousewife.com, or send me a message on social media. Come back Thursday for another creepy location that has been requested quite often and has been mentioned previously in another post.
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