HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
+ 1 further entry on record
The surviving remnant of Richmond, Indiana's Starr Piano factory and the birthplace of Gennett Records, the jazz-era studio that recorded Louis Armstrong and Hoagy Carmichael, long rumored to be haunted by a phantom truck and night-shift apparition.
101 S. 1st Street (Starr-Gennett / Whitewater Gorge), Richmond, IN 47374
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The Gennett Records Walk of Fame and Whitewater Gorge area are publicly accessible; surviving Starr Piano structures are not open for interior exploration.
Access
Accessibility not stated
Gorge-side industrial site with the Gennett Walk of Fame walkway
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1872 · Major Midwestern piano and phonograph manufacturing complex (Starr Valley) · Birthplace of Gennett Records, a foundational early-jazz recording label · Site of historic recordings by Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and Hoagy Carmichael · Commemorated by the Gennett Records Walk of Fame
The Starr Piano Company began operations on a site in the Whitewater River gorge in Richmond, Indiana, in the 1870s, eventually growing into a large multi-building campus, known as Starr Valley, that manufactured pianos and, later, phonographs and records. The company's warehouse dates to 1872 and its administration building to about 1900.
In 1917 Starr Piano founded Gennett Records, which became one of the most historically important recording operations of the early jazz era. In its modest studio beside the factory, Gennett captured landmark early sides by Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, and many blues and country artists, making Richmond an unlikely cradle of recorded American music.
The Starr Piano Company Warehouse and Administration Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, though it was later removed from the register in 1995. Most of the sprawling Starr Valley complex was demolished in the 1970s, leaving surviving structures and remnants in the gorge.
Today the legacy is commemorated by the Gennett Records Walk of Fame, which begins near the surviving building and follows 1st Street, and by the work of the Starr-Gennett Foundation. The site is a destination for music and industrial-history visitors in Richmond's Whitewater Gorge.
Sources
Richmond ghost lore, gathered by regional haunted-places sites, attaches several recurring phenomena to the surviving Starr Piano site. Visitors and former workers report the sound of a large truck in the basement loading area where none is present, along with footsteps, voices, and cold spots through the structure.
An older strand of the tradition describes a figure that workers on the night shift would see between roughly 6 and 8 p.m., often glimpsed in the better-lit parts of the factory before retreating into darker areas, and at times said to shift from floor to floor of the multi-story building. Reported experiences range from chills and a felt 'presence' to more dramatic encounters.
The anonymous Shadowlands seed for this site also claimed that voices belong to people 'buried under the building' from a former cemetery on the spot; no historical record of any cemetery at the Starr Valley works was found, and that specific claim is treated here as unsupported and is not part of the documented tradition. The phantom-truck and night-shift apparition lore, by contrast, recurs across multiple regional retellings.
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