Bobby Mackey’s is known as one of the most dangerous nightclubs in America due to its demonic history. It is believed that Carl Lawson while working as a caretaker at Bobby Mackey’s was attacked by multiple demons and was eventually possessed by the devil while working as a caretaker there.
Haunted History of Bobby Mackey’s
Bobby Mackey’s is located Wilder KY, and it’s haunted origins start off as a slaughterhouse which was once used as a ritual site of occultists. The ritual site was exposed in 1896 during a murder trial in Newport Kentucky, were Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling were found guilty of killing Pearl Bryant. It is believed that the two men were satanists who sacrificed Pearl Bryant to the devil in ritual at the Slaughterhouse and threw her head down the well which empties out into the Licking River. Her body was found about two hundred feet off the Alexandria Turnpike and less than two miles from the abandoned slaughterhouse. According to reports, Jackson and Walling were both offered life sentences instead of execution if they would reveal the location of Pearl’s head. Both men refused. They went to the gallows behind the courthouse in Newport on March 21, 1897. It was the last public hanging in Campbell County.
One reporter commented later that Walling, as the noose was being slipped over his head, threatened to come back and haunt the area after his death. The writer also stated a few days later, in an article in the Kentucky Post newspaper that an “evil eye” had fallen on many of the people connected to the Pearl Bryan case. Legend has it that many of the police officials and attorneys involved in the case later met with bad luck and tragic ends.
After the trial ended, the slaughterhouse fell silent and remained empty for many years. It was eventually torn down and a roadhouse was constructed on the site. During the 1920’s, the place became known as a speakeasy and as a popular gambling joint. Local lore has it that during this period, a number of murders took place in the building. None of them were ever solved because the bodies were normally dumped elsewhere to keep attention away from the illegal gambling and liquor operation.
After the trial ended, the slaughterhouse fell silent and remained empty for many years. It was eventually torn down and a roadhouse was constructed on the site. During the 1920’s, the place became known as a speakeasy and as a popular gambling joint. Local lore has it that during this period, a number of murders took place in the building. None of them were ever solved because the bodies were normally dumped elsewhere to keep attention away from the illegal gambling and liquor operation.
Bobby and Janet Mackey purchased the building in the spring of 1978 with the intention of turning it into a country bar. Mackey was a well-known as a singer in northern Kentucky and had recorded several albums. He actually scrapped his plans to record in Nashville in order to renovate the old tavern. Once the bar was opened up, it immediately began to attract a crowd.
Despite a number of years success with the place though, the good times have never been able to erase the “taint” caused by the history of murder and death. The hauntings at Bobby Mackey�s Music World remain stained with blood.
Carl Lawson was the first employee hired by Bobby Mackey. He was a loner who worked as a caretaker and handyman at the tavern. He lived alone in an apartment in the upstairs of the building and spent a lot of time in the sprawling building after hours. When he began reporting that he was seeing and hearing bizarre things in the club, people around town first assumed that he was simply crazy. Later on though, when others started to see and hear the same things, Lawson didn’t seem so strange after all.
“I’d double check at the end of the night and make sure that everything was turned off. Then I’d come back down hours later and the bar lights would be on. The front doors would be unlocked, when I knew that I’d locked them. The jukebox would be playing the ‘Anniversary Waltz’ even though I’d unplugged it and the power was turned off,” Lawson told author Doug Hensley, who has written extensively about the haunted tavern.
Bobby Mackey, Possession and Exorcism Tapes
Viewer discussion is advised, watch at your own risk
Part I
Part II
Part III