Cinematic Haunts: Bobby Mackey’s Music World
The Gateway To Hell
~Bobby Mackey’s Music World, Kentucky~
by Annie Riordan
I hate Country music.
And before I get a shitload of hate mail from the diehard line-dancing crowd, allow me to state that I actually hate neo-Country Pop music. i.e. I do NOT think your “tractor’s sexy,” I refuse to “Shine On,” I don’t believe that putting a “boot up your ass” is indeed the American Way, and any moron who goes around “dropping the ring in her spaghetti plate” better hope to hell that the dumb bitch doesn’t choke on it.
Now, ask me how I feel about Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and The Carter Family. I admit that I exist day to day on an auditory diet made up mainly of Lush, The Legendary Pink Dots, and Porcupine Tree, but I also feel a weird sort of pride when I tell people that my great grandfather was a Bible thumpin’ backwoods preacher straight outta the Ozarks in Arkansas. I also have a spine-melting weakness for Charlie Daniels’ style fiddle music and the rawboned twang of a Bluegrass gee-tar. Classic Country/Bluegrass music is the proverbial shiz-nite.
Fortunately, good ol’ fashioned classic Country music has found a permanent home at 44 Licking Pike, Wilder, Kentucky, a short 8 mile drive from Cincinatti, Ohio. Opened in 1978, Bobby Mackey’s Music World is a gen-yoo-wine honky tonk roadhouse featuring a fully stocked bar, live country music performances, a pool table, karaoke and a mechanical bull which, installed in 1979, was only the third mechanical bull ever made.
Oh, and it also has a rich history of murder, Satanism, and a disused well on the property which is said to be the Gateway to Hell itself. But let’s back up a bit, shall we? Actually, let’s back up almost 200 years.
In the 1850s, the site where Bobby Mackey’s Music World now stands was home to a slaughterhouse. As far as I have been able to discover, said slaughterhouse was not staffed by members of the Sawyer family and did not produce any leatherfaced, chainsaw-toting serial killers. It was just a typical slaughterhouse, no more gruesome or foreboding than any other. The well on the property was used for the disposal of blood and guts, which were then washed out into the nearby Licking River. There was no EPA back then, and the word “vegan” was still 100 years or so away from being coined.
By the late 1890’s, the slaughterhouse had shut down, but it may not have been as abandoned as it should have been. Local legend has it that the site quickly became a meeting place for occultists who found the blood well an ideal dumping spot for the carcasses of small animals sacrificed during Satanic ceremonies. Whether or not such a cult ever truly existed cannot be proved, but the old slaughterhouse did draw at least two bona fide Satanists to its gore-stained sewers.
In 1896, the headless body of a young woman was discovered in a field just outside of Wilder, Kentucky. An autopsy concluded that the woman had cocaine in her system, had been decapitated whilst still alive, and was five months pregnant. She turned out to be Pearl Bryan, a farmer’s daughter from nearby Greencastle, Indiana. It didn’t take long to find her killers, either. 21 year old Alonzo Walling and 28 year old Scott Jackson were soon arrested and charged with the heinous crime. Jackson was, apparently, the father of Pearl’s child and had lured the girl to Kentucky with promises of marriage and legitimacy. Instead, the two men kidnapped Bryan, sedated her with cocaine slipped into her sarsaparilla, and attempted a crude abortion with dental tools. When that didn’t work, they killed the girl. Pearl’s head was never found, and the men wouldn’t reveal the precise location of its disposal for fear that a displeased Satan would spend eternity shoving the sharp, fiery tines of his pitchfork up their rectums, but it was widely believed that the decapitated noggin had been tossed into the depths of the slaughterhouse’s disused “blood well.” On the gallows, Alonzo Walling stated that he would return after death and haunt the land forevermore. Both Walling and Jackson were hung simultaneously on March 21st, 1897.
Following the double execution, the slaughterhouse remained abandoned until it was finally torn down in the 1920s and the first of many roadhouses was constructed on the spot. During Prohibition, it was one of many illegal speakeasy’s where alcohol was sold, gambling was allowed, and murders were not reported so as not to draw attention to the alcohol and gambling. After Prohibition, the speakeasy became a legal tavern called The Primrose, which buckled beneath the weight of Syndicate pressure. After escalating threats turned into several more murders, the Primrose’s owner sold the club to the mob and committed suicide some time later. The Primrose became The Latin Quarter, a mob-run casino, bar, and dance hall.
The Latin Quarter’s new owner had a beautiful daughter named Johanna, who worked at the club as a dancer. Johanna made the tragic mistake of falling in love with singer Robert Randall, a young man of whom her father did not approve. When Johanna ignored her father’s demands to stop seeing Randall, daddy used 
his mob ties to have the young man unceremoniously whacked. However, it turns out that Johanna was every bit as ruthless as her father, if not more so. Upon learning what her father had done, Johanna fed the bastard a whopping dose of arsenic. Retreating to a secret room above the stage, Johanna scribbled a sad little love poem on the wall and proceeded to poison herself as well. Unfortunately, her father survived the murder attempt. Johanna did not. She, like Pearl Bryan, had been five months pregnant at the time of her death.
The roadhouse continued on as such, reopening in the 1970s as the Hard Rock Cafe (no relation to the chain of the same name), and was quickly shut down in 1978 after a series of shootings in and around the joint resulted in numerous homicides.
That same year, Country music singer Bobby Mackey happened upon the place and eagerly bought it with dreams of turning it into a successful honky tonk. Along with his wife Janet, Mackey immediately began renovations. Janet Mackey was five months pregnant with their first child at the time. Anyone else seeing a pattern here?
From the start, Janet was uncomfortable in the club. She did not – at the time – believe in ghosts, but began hearing voices and experiencing strange phenomena all the same. Her husband, also a staunch skeptic, dismissed her accounts of spooky happenings, but Mackey’s handyman Carl Lawson did not. Lawson had been witness to the tavern’s violent past and had taken a room on the upper floors. Left alone in the building overnight, Lawson would witness lights turning on and off, objects moving, an army of footsteps echoing through the main floor, and an unplugged jukebox which insisted upon playing “The Anniversary Waltz” even though the song was not included on the juke’s playlist. Lawson also claimed to have encountered the spirit of Johanna, with whom he could freely converse. A loner by reputation, Lawson was assumed to be going crazy by the local population. Mackey himself was not pleased with Lawson’s habit of spreading ghost stories and pretty much told him to shut up and stop scaring the customers away.
But Carl found an unlikely – and unwitting – ally in Janet Mackey, who corroborated his tales. Claiming to have been physically attacked several times by unseen presences within the club, Janet was finally rushed to the hospital after stating that a ghostly man in vintage clothing had violently thrown her down the stairs. A visibly bruised and shaken Janet was delivered of a premature baby girl shortly afterwards. The baby survived the ordeal, but weighed only 1 pound at birth. Janet soon stopped going to the club altogether and refused to set foot in the place for the better part of three decades until her death in 2009. Carl Lawson soldiered on, sleeping with a shotgun and sprinkling holy water around the disused well, which he made the mistake of prying open late one night. Unfortunately, the activity only increased and became more violent, forcing Carl – who had supposedly been possessed by the malevolent spirits of both Walling and Jackson – to undergo an extensive, but reportedly successful, exorcism in 1991.
In the meantime, Bobby Mackey’s Music World became an instant success despite the ghostly rumors, and Mackey himself finally decided that it would be much more beneficial to embrace the paranormal than keep it under wraps. Hourly ghost tours are available, T-shirts bearing the logo “I partied with the ghosts at Bobby Mackey’s” sell for $20 a pop and an inspired Bobby eventually penned a ballad entitled “Johanna” which details the short life and violent death of the girl who chose to remain earthbound for all eternity, waiting for her murdered lover to return to her. Some say he has, in the form of an unbelieving Bobby Mackey who, as a child, had been christened Robert Randall Mackey. But reincarnation seems unlikely as Bobby was born in 1948, some years before Johanna’s lover was murdered. Still, it’s a hell of a coincidence, no pun intended.
Bobby Mackey’s Music World is still going strong and the interest it evokes in the field of paranormal research has only increased in recent years. In 2006, the series “A Haunting” profiled the place on their episode entitled “Gateway To Hell”, in which Bobby and Janet both appeared (the latter in silhouette), and a young Carl Lawson was portrayed in the reenactments by the incredibly sexy, pouty-lipped Beau Peregino, an actor who needs more movie roles right now, preferably shirtless. The popular ghost hunting show “Ghost Adventures” also filmed an episode at Mackey’s, during which time several eerie EVP’s were captured, a ghostly figure is seen walking around the basement, and show host Zak Bagans received several nasty scratches down the length of his back. It is worth noting that, when Bagans pulls up his shirt to reveal said scratches, his ass is clearly visible. It’s a nice ass, just sayin’.
Paranormal investigator Doug Hensley penned a book about the happenings at Mackey’s entitled “Hell’s Gate” which is readily available for purchase online both at amazon.com and Bobby Mackey’s official website. Apparently, a movie by the same name is currently in production as well, though I can find no information about its progress and/or release date, which had originally been planned for the summer of 2009. Anyone? Any news? I can haz screener, perhaps?
Go for the music, go for the ghosts, and go on a Friday night when admission is free up until 10pm! Don’t forget to bring a Lincoln Head penny for Pearl and, if you smell roses, it’s probably just Johanna wandering about and leaving the scent of her favorite perfume in her wake. But take some advice along with you: don’t venture into the basement alone, don’t antagonize the spirits, don’t go too close to the blood well..and don’t ride the mechanical bull if you’ve had too much to drink. Wilder, Kentucky has seen enough in the way of horror, thank you.
