7. Bob Mackey’s music world, (Wilder, KY). At Bob Mackeys Music world, this haunted honky-tonk is a real scream but not just because of the rollicking music and mechanical bull. Even the loudest line dancing can’t scare away the ghosts prowling around the basement. Pearl Bryan was just 22 years old when she was killed during a botched amateur abortion in 1896. Then in the 1950s, a love story turned sour when another young pregnant woman killed herself and her unborn child after her father had the child’s father killed. With tales of lost love, satanic rituals, botched abortions and suicide, an eerie vibe remains underground in this ghastly hot spot. Known to house an urban legend “gateway to hell”, this honky tonk owned by country singer Bobby Mackey has had murders, like that of Pearl Bryan, and devil worshippers who supposedly cursed the place. It is considered the most haunted nightclub in the United States.
Promoted in popular culture as “the most haunted night club in America”, Mackey claims the site was originally used as a slaughterhouse in the early 19th century and later torn down for construction of a roadhouse that took on various names, such as The Brisbane, until he purchased it in 1978. Pearl Bryan, whose corpse was found in a field 2.5 miles from the site in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. Other legends claim Bryan’s murderers were Satanists who cursed the location and vowed to haunt everyone involved in prosecuting the case. Legends that claims a pregnant dancer named “Johanna” committed suicide with poison in the 1950s after her father murdered her lover Robert Randall, a singer at the club, by hanging him in the dressing room.
Investigations have failed to find public records of any such events, and research into property records, newspapers, and court files has failed to substantiate claims made regarding the history of the location. No connection between Bobby Mackey’s and the Pearl Bryan murder has ever been established. According to science writer Sharon A. Hill, the nightclub is often publicized with tales of murders, curses, and hauntings, however “the current circulated legend has obviously enhanced and accrued additional details in the retelling over some 30+ years”. Hill states that claims of supernatural activity and a “portal to hell” are completely unsubstantiated.
