Est. 1799 · Cassius M. Clay Home · Antislavery Movement · Italianate Architecture · Kentucky State Historic Site
White Hall stands on a ridge above Madison County's bluegrass farmland, anchored by the original Federal-style brick house Green Clay built between 1798 and 1799 and named Clermont. Green Clay was among the wealthiest landowners in early Kentucky, and his son, Cassius Marcellus Clay, inherited both the house and a place in nineteenth-century American politics that few of his peers approached.
Cassius Clay published the antislavery newspaper The True American out of Lexington, fought a duel against an opponent of emancipation, served as a brigadier general during the Mexican-American War, and acted as Abraham Lincoln's minister to Russia during the negotiations that led to the United States purchase of Alaska. Around the home's reconstruction in the 1860s, Clay engaged the Cincinnati architect Major Thomas Lewinski and builder John McMurtry to wrap the original Federal core in an Italianate envelope. The expanded structure has 44 rooms, central heating uncommon for its date, indoor plumbing, and a third-floor servants' hall.
Clay's marriage to Mary Jane Warfield ended in divorce in 1878, an unusual outcome in nineteenth-century Kentucky. He continued in residence at White Hall, increasingly eccentric in his later years, and died there in 1903. The home passed through descendants and periods of abandonment before the Commonwealth of Kentucky acquired it in 1968. After extensive restoration the site opened to the public, and it operates today as White Hall State Historic Site in cooperation with Eastern Kentucky University, which is located nearby.
The site offers daytime tours Wednesday through Sunday and hosts an annual seasonal program called Haunted Halloween at the Hall. The mansion sits at 500 White Hall Shrine Road, Richmond, Kentucky.
Sources
- https://www.eku.edu/whitehall/
- https://visitrichmondky.com/listing/white-hall-state-historic-house/
- https://www.battlefields.org/visit/heritage-sites/white-hall-state-historic-house
- https://www.richmondregister.com/news/local_news/exploring-the-ghosts-in-cassius-clay-s-home/article_7c9b51ec-5742-5da6-9559-a8f1d2918b13.html
ApparitionsPhantom soundsPhantom smellsDisembodied laughterPhantom footstepsDoors opening/closingObject movement
White Hall has accumulated one of the more carefully attributed bodies of paranormal reports among Kentucky historic sites, in part because the site's curators and tour guides have documented their own accounts rather than relying on outside investigators.
The figure most often described is referred to by staff as the lady in black, although her wardrobe varies. According to a curator's published account, the curator's husband once observed her dressed in blue. Witnesses describe her as stylish, suggesting a woman of means rather than a servant.
A small child also figures in staff reports. Tour guides have, on two occasions in different seasons, heard a baby laughing in the house. A child on one tour reportedly remarked to a guide about seeing babies in the home, unprompted.
Doors and shutters open and close on their own, according to staff accounts. Furniture has been observed to move without obvious cause. Music has been heard from the parlor piano, an instrument no longer in working order. Footsteps in empty rooms recur in tour-guide accounts.
Among the more specific sensory reports are scents identified by staff: candles, perfume, apple pie, bourbon, and bacon. The Shadowlands index attached an additional story of Cassius Clay himself pacing in front of a top-floor window awaiting his estranged wife's return. The site's curator has dismissed that particular detail, noting both that the window in question is a third-floor hallway rather than a nursery and that the historical Clay was more likely to have been the absent figure than the waiting one.
The site participates in the Kentucky After Dark tourism program and runs Haunted Halloween at the Hall as a seasonal event each October.
Notable Entities
The Lady in BlackCassius M. Clay
