HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
Covington mansion where documented seances and a child's ghost have persisted for over a century
620 Greenup Street, Covington, KY 41011
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Class fees vary; building access during events typically low cost or free
Access
Limited Access
Historic multi-story mansion with stairs; limited accessibility
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1880 · Endowed by Margaretta Baker-Hunt for art, religion, and psychic research · Continuous operation as community cultural center for over a century · Representative of Covington's Victorian residential heritage
The mansions at 620 Greenup Street became the Baker-Hunt Foundation through the bequest of Margaretta Baker-Hunt, who lost several family members in relatively short succession and channeled her grief into an educational endowment. The foundation's founding charter, reflecting the spiritualist interests common among educated Americans of her era, explicitly included psychic research alongside art and religious instruction.
The buildings themselves date to the latter half of the 19th century and retain much of their original interior character, including the main staircase that features prominently in paranormal accounts. The foundation has operated continuously since its founding, offering art classes and community programming to Covington residents for over a century.
Covington experienced significant growth during the 19th and early 20th centuries as a manufacturing and commercial center across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. The Greenup Street neighborhood contains several architecturally significant homes from this period, and the Baker-Hunt mansions are among the better-preserved examples of the area's late-Victorian residential stock.
Sources
The most-reported phenomenon at Baker-Hunt is specific and consistent across multiple accounts: a child-sized apparition, or at minimum the autonomous movement of a ball down the main staircase, witnessed by visitors and documented by local journalists covering the building's Halloween-season ghost tours since at least 2017.
The lore draws additional credibility from the building's own founding documents. Margaretta Baker-Hunt's endowment explicitly funded psychic research, meaning the mansion was the site of organized seances and paranormal inquiry for decades as a matter of institutional policy — not rumor. Tour operators cite this unusual institutional history as distinguishing Baker-Hunt from properties where paranormal claims rest solely on oral tradition.
Guides on Covington's haunted history circuit consistently include Baker-Hunt as a key stop, describing the child ghost as a 'permanent presence' rather than an occasional visitor. The identity of the child has not been documented; accounts do not connect the apparition to a specific death on the property.
Notable Entities
The Baker-Hunt Foundation operates art and cultural programming in the historic mansions, including classes in art and music. Visitors can explore the public spaces of the 19th-century buildings, which Margaretta Baker-Hunt endowed in perpetuity following personal family tragedy.
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