Bobby Mackey's Music World

Bobby Mackey's Music World is a nightclub and honky tonk that is currently owned by country singer Bobby Mackey and located on 44 Licking Pike in Wilder, Kentucky. Situated about 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Cincinnati, Ohio near the Licking River, the building is self-proclaimed as "the most haunted nightclub in the USA."

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[edit] Folklore
According to urban legends and modern folklore, the location allegedly houses a "gateway to hell" and is haunted by spirits including Pearl Bryan, whose corpse was found in a field several miles from the site in Fort Thomas, Kentucky.[1] [2] [3] Unsubstantiated stories include Bryan's murderers being Satanists who, according to fanciful tales, cursed the location and vowed to haunt everyone involved in prosecuting the case.[4] Also according to urban legend, sometime in the 1930s a pregnant dancer named "Johanna" committed suicide by hanging in a dressing room at the Latin Quarter club, which then operated inside the building currently housing Bobby Mackey's. Rumor has it that this deed was carried out after her father murdered her lover, a singer at the club, though investigations have failed to find police reports of this event ever having taken place. Furthermore, scholarly research into property records, newspapers, and court files has failed to substantiate most of the fanciful claims made regarding the sanguine history of the location, and no connection between the site of Bobby Mackey's and the Pearl Bryan murder has ever been established. Most who have studied the Bryan slaying have concluded any claims to either Bryan's death or dismemberment at the Wilder, Kentucky structure are unsupported by a foundation of hard fact, and place these popular accounts into the realm of the tall tale.

According to Bobby Mackey, 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.

[edit] On television
The nightclub has been featured on the following paranormal television programs:
 * On December 13, 1991 Jerry Springer interviewed Bobby Mackey, his wife Janet, his employee and the building's caretaker Carl Lawson, and Reverend Glenn Cole about their experiences.[5] Lawson and Cole claim that Lawson had been possessed and later exorcized by Cole for six hours on the site which took place on August 8, 1991. Lawson's videotaped exorcism performed by Cole was aired on the talk show.[5]
 * On October 30, 1992, on his show, Geraldo Rivera interviewed Mackey, his wife, Lawson, and Cole, along with Hell's Gate author Douglas Hensley and others.[6]
 * A 1995 UPN special, Real Ghosts aka Haunted Lives: True Ghost Stories, features recreations of the paranormal activity and interviews with the Mackeys and others who have reported paranormal phenomena.
 * A 2006 episode of the National Geographic Channel's documentary series Is It Real? features the reportedly haunted location.[7]
 * The 2006 episode "Gateway to Hell" of the Discovery Channel's docudrama series A Haunting features interviews with and re-enactments of the reported experiences of Bobby and Janet Mackey and Carl Lawson.[8] [9]
 * In 2008 there was a two part live interactive broadcast on livescifi.tv which claimed to show EVP and malevolent spirit activity.
 * The 2008 premiere episode of the Travel Channel's ghost-hunting series Ghost Adventures features interviews with the owner himself, Carl Lawson, author Douglas Hensley, and some customers and staff of the club, as well as a paranormal investigation at the location, during which, Zak Bagans says he experienced three scratch marks on his back as well as capturing a shadow of a man wearing a cowboy hat.[10] Later, the program also conducted a 3-night investigation with enthusiasts in a 3-part web series called Return to Bobby Mackey's.[11] [12] The Ghost Adventures Crew returned once more in late 2010.
 * On November 16, 2011, the SyFy program Ghost Hunters broadcast footage of an investigation conducted by TAPS at Bobby Mackey's. Early on in the segment, on-air comments were made by a senior researcher that people have "gotten many things wrong" in their accounts of the history of the site. The implication seemed to be that over the years, as media attention has returned again and again to the nightclub, the tales regarding Bobby Mackey's have grown increasingly lurid as they've moved farther from established facts. The 2011 TAPS investigation failed to prove the presence of the preternatural at the nightclub.

[edit] See also

 * Murder of Pearl Bryan

[edit] Further reading

 * Hensley, Douglas (2005). Hell's Gate: Terror at Bobby Mackey's Music World. Outskirts Press. ISBN 1-59800-011-X.