Things that go bump in the night – Olive Hill, KY’s noisy historical ghost

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Please welcome guest author Jeremy D. Wells. Wells was raised in the Appalachian foothills of eastern Kentucky where the trees, streams, fields, hollows and people influenced every fibre of his being. He’s worked for various small newspapers across southern and central Ohio, and is currently the editor of the Carter County Times in Olive Hill, KY.

---

The word poltergeist comes from the German language and means, literally, noisy ghost. It’s an apt term for the phenomenon. Whereas traditional ghosts might move silently along the ramparts of a castle or down the hallway of an old home, where they can be seen reliving certain moments of their lives with little noise or other interaction with their environment, poltergeists let the inhabitants know when they are there.

Not only are poltergeists noisy, causing crashes and bangs and moving items about, they’re more likely to be heard and experienced than seen. In fact, some paranormal researchers don’t consider poltergeist activity to be hauntings at all, at least not in the traditional sense of being the spirit of a deceased entity.

Instead they class poltergeist activity as a form of psychokinesis, or the moving of objects without physically touching them. When famed psychic Uri Geller claimed to be bending spoons with nothing more than the power of his mind, this was an example of psychokinesis. 

What happens in poltergeist cases, however, is believed by some to be a form of spontaneous psychokinesis. Whereas Geller claims that he focused on and intended to bend spoons with his mind, in poltergeist cases those psychokinetic actions happen without the individual responsible knowing how, or even that, they are doing so.

In most poltergeist cases the activity occurs in homes with children, especially adolescent children on the cusp of or just entering puberty. Some researchers believe that what happens with children in these cases is that the emotional energy of this tumultuous time in a child’s life manifests as the haunting activity of a poltergeist.

Others disagree, blaming the activity on malevolent spirits that are out to cause harm by breaking, moving or hiding household items and even acting out physically, by pinching or biting the inhabitants of the home. One characteristic of poltergeist activity that is consistent across cases is the observation that, instead of being focused on a location, like traditional hauntings, the activity is focused on a family or individual.

Because of this, moving out of a home doesn’t always stop the activity. Instead it will follow families when they move, continuing to put stress on the individuals and their relationships. 

This was the case with the Callihan poltergeist that troubled a family in the Olive Hill area during the late 1960s. 

The Callihan poltergeist was non-traditional in that it focused on an elderly couple, John and Ora Callihan. The couple had their first experience on November 15, 1968, when glass began to break in picture frames around their home on Henderson Branch, KY. One of the first items to break, according to Ora, was a picture of Jesus. 

“Then things began to break all at once,” explained Ora, as quoted in Carter County: A Pictorial History. “I didn’t know what to do. I got up and went in the bathroom and a bottle of bath oil flew against the wall and cracked like a shotgun.

“Later in the day I started my washer and it boomed inside just like a shotgun. I knew all the granite would be broken off inside, but when I opened the lid, there wasn’t any damage. I know that’s unreasonable. I’m ashamed to tell about this because people who hear me think it’s a lie. People who come here and see the damage don’t think we’re lying.” 

The Callihans didn’t stay in the home much longer once the experiences began. They moved from Henderson Branch to Zimmerman Hill, hoping to escape the unnerving activity. But on December 7, with a house full of witnesses, the trouble returned.

In addition to John and Ora, their son, Archie, grandson, Roger, and family friends Odie Crank, Phyllis Crank and ‘Poss’ Burton were in the home that evening. All of them were witness to small objects flying through the air, tables overturning and large, heavy chests tipping on edge. 

Odie Crank, who witnessed a set of plastic cups fly from a cabinet, told researchers, “When we put them on the table, they just flew up in the air again.” 

Odie was also hit by flying tupperware, John suffered a knot on the head after being struck by a flying bowl, and Roger caught a chest that almost fell on him before it could knock him to the floor. 

The activity eventually captured the attention of Durham, North Carolina based researcher John Stump, who came to study the phenomenon along with colleague William Roll.

Stump documented 90 previous events, and recorded 50 more the weekend he spent with the Callihan family, several of which he himself witnessed. After analyzing the phenomenon, they focused their study on Roger, believing the grandson to be the center of the activity the Callihans were experiencing. Roger corroborated their theory by correctly predicting the movement of objects, including a 60 pound table that Roll witnessed flipping over after Roger told him it would. 

Roger’s parents were members of the Jehovah’s Witness church, and they began to blame the activity on a demon that had attached itself to their son. Under stress from the ongoing activity, they asked the researchers to leave and denied requests to continue research in Durham.

After the researchers left the parents had the church attempt an exorcism to rid Roger of the demonic influence, even going so far as to burn the boy’s clothing, but it did nothing to stop the activity. The family eventually left the Olive Hill area for Ohio, where the activity subsided. 

While the activity was scientifically documented by Stump and Roll, with Roll writing that at the time, it was the only case on record where parapsychologists were able to witness the movement of several objects in the early stages, that didn’t save the Callihans from experiencing public doubt and ridicule related to their experiences.

While there were other reports in town from other individuals of strange phenomenon on Henderson Branch, including uncorroborated accounts of similar destruction 50 years prior and accounts of folks raising “knocking spirits,” the public reaction to the Callihans’ claims may have been more painful to the family than the fear and destruction itself. Despite all this, however, Roll listed it as one of six cases he considered authentic when he wrote about it in his 1972 book, The Poltergeist.   

More articles involving poltergeists:

The Wizzard Clip –part 1 of 3(Opens in a new browser tab)

The Moon Ghost(Opens in a new browser tab)