Halloween Hauntings Part 6: The Happy Hollow Horror


The Happy Hollow Horror

For this Halloween tale, neighboring Kentucky gets the nod. It involves an incident that happened many years back, during the 1930’s to be exact, yet it remains a much talked about and bizarre mystery to this day. 

It happened in the Pennyrile district of Kentucky, where many strange things have been known to happen.

To this day the Ragland house is believed to be haunted.
To this day the Ragland house is believed to be haunted.

Happy Hollow lies just outside of Greensburg, Kentucky and from the name of the small rural community, one might easily imagine it was a place where nothing ever, ever went awry, and where the folk were all amiable and content with their lot in life. One would be wrong

One bright sunny morning, the Raglands were sitting down to breakfast in their farmhouse, and looking forward to their morning repast.  Led by the patriarch of the family, they had said the blessing over the food and were just about to dig in, when suddenly they heard a commotion at the front of the house.

With nary a warning the front door flew open, startling one and all.

For a second he was too startled to move, but before the father could rise from his chair to go see who it may be who had barged into their home, he heard heavy footsteps moving in measured cadence down the long hallway from the front door.

Soon there came into view a ghastly  procession came marching down the long hallway towards the kitchen in the rear of the house.

As it came close, the Raglands could see what looked like a group of pallbearers all dressed in black and upon their shoulders they bore a small coffin. But the men bearing the black box were unfamiliar to their eyes, in a community where everyone knew everyone. Moreover,  no one had died in the family, nor knew they of any neighbor’s death. But that was not the oddest thing about this weird intrusion into their home.

Atop the coffin lay a lamb, the symbol of a slaughtered innocent.

Atop the coffin lay a lamb.  The lamb was white as snow, but smeared with blood, for it was headless and blood was streaming from the ghastly wound.

All the time as they marched toward the family, the apparitions in black said nary a word.  Without turning their pallid faces to look at the Raglands, or say a word of explanation, they marched past the family and out the back door.

Like dreamers suddenly awakened, the Raglands jumped up from the kitchen table to see where the pallbearers had gone.  Nothing was visible in the back yard. The ghastly ghostly pallbearers had vanished.

In due course, the local constabulary were called and they canvassed the house and  grounds for clues to who the strangers may have been. Neither the sheriff nor his deputies could find any trace of footprints front or back.

Apparitions or ghosts don’t always take human form.  There are accounts of black dogs—hounds from hell they call them—that appear out of nothing to bedevil folks.

The raven, a carrion beast, is universally thought a harbinger of death; for not only does it feast on the flesh of the dead, it has even been known to appear before they die—as if it had foreknowledge of their death.

There are also rare accounts of apparitions appearing as a lamb, generally white.  It is thought the white lamb symbolizes the soul of an innocent—a young child—who has died prematurely or violently.  That this lamb’s head was missing was even more curious—and most sinister.  Was this apparition trying to send a message from the grave?

In Happy Hollow and surrounding communities they still talk of that day long ago as if it were last week.  Moreover, the house where it happened has not been occupied for many years and in the area it has a reputation for being haunted.

It is a reputation not totally unjustified.

If you like this and other such strangeness, then you will find a fuller account in Strange Tales of the Dark and Bloody Ground.


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