Conrad-Caldwell House

Three named ghosts plus anonymous widows in a Louisville limestone mansion. Theophile Conrad died on the staircase in 1905 and still wags.

Theophile Conrad died of a heart attack on the main staircase of his own mansion in 1905, and according to the staff he's still the one running the place.

Conrad's Castle, as locals call the Conrad-Caldwell House, sits at 1402 St. James Court in Old Louisville, a neighborhood author David Domine has called the most haunted in America. Domine has documented roughly 100 alleged hauntings in a few square blocks of Victorian mansions, and this one is probably his best-sourced case. The house itself was built in 1893 for Conrad, a German immigrant who got rich in the tanning business, and the limestone and seven-hardwood interior made it the showpiece of the neighborhood.

The wag-the-finger ghost is the one everyone brings up first. "He sort of appears as a misty apparition and it takes the shape of a man with a goatee and a bowler hat," Domine says in the KET documentary on the house. "He never says anything to anyone. He just shows up and sternly looks at them and does this, as if to say, you shouldn't be doing this, and then he disappears." Staff and visitors describe the feeling that goes with it as parental rather than threatening. Like getting caught by someone's dad.

The Caldwells bought the house after Conrad died. Elaine Caldwell died here in 1925, and William remarried and died in 1938, and both of them stayed. Elaine shows up as the smell of flowers moving from room to room with no vase nearby. William shows up in the library, visible as a man-shaped image, usually accompanied by cigar smoke.

The Presbyterian Church bought the property in 1948 and turned it into the Rose Anna Hughes Home for Widows. Three of those widows apparently liked it enough to stay. They gather on the second floor in what used to be their sitting room and they get cranky about the furniture. Move something and doors start opening and closing. Move it again and small objects start turning up in different rooms. The staff learned to say good morning to them on the way in.

Beth Caldwell, a great-granddaughter of the family, was on a tour when a ball of light flew past her. A second one followed a beat later. She watched them both go.

A housekeeper working alone one afternoon heard a voice telling her to hurry upstairs and close the window before the rain got in. She went up and found the window open and the rain already on the sill. There was nobody else in the house.

"All of us have gotten into the habit of saying hello when we come in the morning," says museum executive director Allison Wroblewski, "because we know we're not alone." Her standing line about the ghosts: "Anything that is here, it's all wonderful, happy spirits that have wonderful memories that have just come back to the house because they enjoyed their time here."

Most haunted houses in the directory business have one ghost and ten vague reports. This one has three named ghosts plus a trio of widows on the second floor, a published author documenting them, a documentary, and a museum director who's made peace with the arrangement. The wagging finger, the smell of flowers, the cigar smoke in the library. A house where the dead have opinions about the furniture.