The Bishop House, a Hotbed of Paranormal Activity.
A house of Grace, abandoned to a house of drugs, including murders, torture and more.
Back in the early years of 2000 I was asked to come and investigate an apartment building in Lexington, Kentucky for spirit activity. I was contacted by the owner, Stuart, who was concerned about what was going on with his tenets in his apartment building. Before agreeing to do the ghost investigation, I set up an appointment with Stuart so he would explain to me in detail what type of paranormal activity was happening. During this time, he also told me about the disturbing history of this building.
Stuart told me there were numerous accounts of his tenets calling him to complain about the weird things happening in the apartments. The first two levels of the building housed his tenets and he lived upstairs in the attic area. The activity seemed to be in all levels of the building including the basement.
One tenet said that when she was at home, she liked to burn the scented candles. She would light the candles in every room and during her meditations. She knew that when she left for work, she would have to make sure all the candles were out so not to cause a fire. Sometimes when she would come home some of the candles would be lit. This became a common thing and she worried that someone must be entering her apartment while she was at work. She contacted Stuart with her accounts and wanted to know if he was entering her apartment. He told her he would never enter her apartment without her permission let alone light her candles. To satisfy her concern he changed the lock on the door just in case someone else had a key. This made the tenet happy and for a while no problem until it started happening again. At this point she began to suspect paranormal activity. She was so upset about these candles being lit that she told Stuart she may have to move out.
Another tenet came to Stuart and told him that he had been wakened many nights to the sound of his bathroom faucet running water. He would get up to turn off the water and check out his apartment to see what might be causing the water to turn on. Then in a couple of nights later the faucet would turn on again. Stuart checked the faucet to make sure it was working properly, and he found it to be ok.
Then another tenet complained about someone running up and down the stairs. He could also hear them walking around in the foyer as well. His apartment was the closest to this location. He said that he would hear a little girl laughing and playing in the foyer. He would get up out of bed and open his entry door to see if he could see who was making this noise. He would walk down the way and look at the foyer and it was clear. No one there.
As the complaints continued to come in Stuart started getting these weird phone calls. He would answer his landline phone and hear some heavy static. He would say hello several times but never heard anyone on the other end. Then, on the day that I was scheduled to come to do the ghost investigation he got another one of these static phone calls. He started out by saying his hello and just as he was about to hang up the phone a little girl’s voice came through. She said, “Can Chloe come out and play?” Stuart was thrown back at this request. He asked, “Who is this?” and the phone line went dead.
He explained to me that the reason this upset him was because he had a small dog that he would let out and it would go downstairs and play in the foyer. He thought it was cute how this pup would play with itself, running in circles and jumping up and around. The kicker to this tale is that his dog’s name was Chloe. “Oh my! Could it be that Chloe has been playing with a ghost child all this time?”, he asked.
Stuart’s father was a hands-on work ethic type of Dad. He made arrangements to make some upgrades in the basement and Stuart was to help. At one-point Stuart ‘s dad asked him to pass him the hammer and the hammer was passed to his dad. Then he asked Stuart for another tool but this time he did not receive it in hand. He turned and looked to see why Stuart had not given him the tool and Stuart was not there. He yelled for Stuart to see where he had gone. Stuart came back downstairs and asked his dad what he wanted. He told Stuart that he was passing him the tools and then he stopped. Stuart told him that he had to run upstairs, and he was not passing the tools to him. While they were working together in the basement Stuart had to leave for a quick errand and went upstairs. So, who was handing the tools to his Dad?
Stuart told me that the history started when the original building was the home of a Bishop back in the late 1800’s through the early 1900’s. The Bishop and his wife could not have children, so they decided to adopt a young girl around 5 years old. Shortly after she joined the family the Bishop felt she was quiet a handful and decided that there was the need for a nanny. The child was rather difficult and acted out many times. As he continued the story, after a while the child seemed to be missing from the family. Speculations started what might have happened to her. It was believed that the little girl was thrown down a deep well located in the basement, by the nanny. Some thought it might have been the Bishop and they blamed the nanny. Back in the 1800’s there was little concern for a child’s wellbeing and when they went missing a lot of times there was no investigation.
For years, the house went from owner to owner and in the 1970’s it became abandoned. It was known as a crack house where drug addicts and drug dealers would hang out. People in the neighborhood knew of its reputation and to stay away from this house.
Another episode developed when a man moved to Lexington from Texas, who bought the house and turned it into small apartments. Somehow, he would lure homeless and drug addicts back to the house and imprison them. He would take them down into the basement and restrain them. He would beat them and harm them through disgusting acts until they died. He had even set up a gynecologist’s table with a long chain assembled with handcuffs that hung down over this medical table to hold them captive.
I am not sure how or why the police got involved but they discovered the murdered victims in the basement, and they arrested this man. When they put him in the system, they learned that he was wanted in the state of TX for multiple killings. He was released to the Texas authorities and as of 2002 was till serving his sentence in a Texas prison.
If that was not enough another man bought the building and improved the apartments to be rented out for income. He fixed up the attic and lived there while running his apartment business. Unbeknownst to his tenets he wired all the rooms, including the bathroom with cameras. He would then go into one of his rooms in the attic and watch his tenets in their most private moments. This man was not caught but when he sold the building the new owners found all the cameras and his watching station.
This all leads up to the current owner, Stuart. After the purchase of this promising building, he also renovated each apartment in hopes to keep it rented for his income and to finance any repairs or improvements that might come up. In the beginning, Stuart had no idea about the history of this place. After he started receiving so many complaints about these unexplained activities, he imagined that this old building might be haunted. At this conclusion he started doing the research and learning the history of this building.
Once Stuart called me and I agreed to do this investigation I named this case the Bishop House. If you try to google it, since I created the name there is no information available about the Bishop House in Lexington, KY. I did however found a link from Chip Coffey’s website where he made a page dedicated to this investigation.
Yes, I had the greatest honor to have Chip Coffey join me and my Ghost Chasers International team on the Bishop House Investigation. In 2001, Chip Coffey and I met over the phone one afternoon. Chip had been searching the net and he found my website and started to read my bio. He told me that he was a psychic medium and he was extremely interested in ghost hunting. I asked him when he became a psychic and how did he know he was psychic. We shared stories about our experiences in the paranormal. He saw that I grew up in Spartanburg South Carolina and was excited to know that we had that in common as well. At one time he lived in a little town just outside where I lived. We discovered as children we had gone to the same park to play and picnic with our parents. This was it. Since he had never been on a ghost hunt, I asked him if he wanted to come to stay with me in Lexington and I would take him with me on his first investigation. That way he could see firsthand how we did things. He agreed and within a few days he was visiting me in Lexington.
When he arrived and after showing him where he would be sleeping, we went into the living room to meet my team. That was 20 years ago and most of the team that he met that day are still friends. As we sat down the eat lunch and go over details of the investigation one of my team member, Jason, received a phone call on his cell phone. He looked at the number and refused to answer it since he did not recognize the number. In just a minute or two Jason’s phone rang again. He checked it and once again he did not answer. When his phone rang for the third time, I asked him to tell me the number to see if I recognized it. When he told me the number coming through Chip said, “What? Are you kidding me? That is my phone number”. Now remember, Chip had just met my team and there is no way he would know Jason’s number and he had been sitting on the couch eating lunch and had not called anyone from his phone.
I asked Chip to check his phone and when he reached into his pocket to get his phone it was not there. We all started searching for Chip’s phone and found it in the next room over on the dining room table. Chip checked his phone and there was not an outgoing call registered.
After the Jason and Chip Coffey weird phone calls my phone started to ring. When I looked at my phone answering machine, I could see the number coming through was Stuart’s number. I was thinking he might be needing to tell me something before my team and I arrived for the ghost investigation. I answered and all I could hear was a heavy static. I repeatedly said hello, but no answer came through. I hung up the phone and called Stuart back. When he answered I asked him why did he call? He was confused at my questions and said that he had not called me. I told him that his number come up on my answering machine but when I answered it was only static. He assured me that he did not call me. Wow! What an awesome beginning to a super ghost hunt!
As the day started to wind down, we all got in our cars and headed to the Bishop House. Once we arrived and completed our group prayer we decided to start in the basement. Stuart being our guide led us to the entry of the basement. The basement entry was located out back of the building. It was a bit grown over with ivy and at the base of the steps were dead leaves. As we stepped down a few steps to reach the opening of the basement I noticed what looked like a weird fountain on the outside wall to the left of the basement door. That was a red flag. Why did someone put that there just as you are about to enter the basement. Was that something installed by the Bishop? It did look extremely old. When I asked Chip about this strange vessel, he said it was a holy water font. As soon as I returned home that evening, I looked up the meaning of the holy water font; A holy water font or stoup is a vessel containing holy water which is generally placed near the entrance of a church. It is often placed at the base of a crucifix or religious representation. I have no idea why it would be placed at the entrance of a doorway that led into the basement. Did it have anything to do with the story that the little girl was thrown down into the basement well? Or could it have been originally installed at the front door entrance and the Serial killer removed it and put it on the wall entrance to the basement to bless himself before committing the tortures and murders?
As we continued into the basement it was larger than I expected. You walked into a large main room and there were two smaller rooms to the right. It was very dark, but we had plenty of flashlights and there was one main light in the entry room. It was the most eerie place that I had ever investigated. The energy was dark and thick but in some other spaces not so bad. When we entered the side room to the left, we found a gynecologist examining table. It was not as shocking as when I saw a chain hanging down from the ceiling with two hand cuffs on the end of the chain swinging down over the center of the examining table. What in the world did his twisted mind cause him to do to his victim can only be horribly imaged?
Shortly after going into the basement while walking through each room we found the closed covering to the deep well where the little girl was supposed to have been thrown down. As we walked around in this area Chip began to feel the little girl’s presence. I looked over to the side of the room and noticed a light bulb hanging down from the celling and it was barely lit. It started to flicker. At that time, I asked Chip if he would ask the little yes and no questions to see if she would use the light to blink on for yes. He agreed and started asking questions. Are you the little girl that haunts this place? The light flickered as a response for yes. Were you happy when you were here? The light did not flicker as a response of no. Were you afraid of the Bishop? The light flickered as a response of yes. Did you die here? The light flickered as a response of yes. As Chip was answering these questions, I started checking out the light and followed the cord that ran across the top of one of the beams. To my amazement I noticed that the electric cord was severed and there was no power going to the lightbulb. I pointed that out to Chip and the communication with the little girl stopped and the light hung dark.
During the time we spent in the basement one of the team members froze in her stance and would not move. She stared out into space and started to shake. When we noticed the strange behavior and approached her, she blurted out, “Don’t touch me!” I became concerned for her and called for Chip to come over to us to see if he could help. As he approached her, he slowly lifted his hand to reach for her and asked her if she was ok. She turned to look at him and at that time we took a picture of her to see if we could capture anything around her in our photos. As Chip continued to talk to her, she seemed to come back to reality, and he asked her if he could lead her outside and away from the basement. She agreed and a few of us walked out with her. She told us that she was overcome by a horrible feeling of dread and fear. She had a roar in her ears and for a few seconds she could not hear us talking to her. She continued the investigation with us, but she refused to go back into the basement. When we looked at the photos that we took of her she had a red glow around her eyes. We checked with a few professional photographers to see if this was a red flare that you sometimes get when you would look into the camera straight ahead. They call it the red eye. She was looking to the side and not into the camera. This is what made the redness seem strange and very unusual and should have not caused the red around her eyes. I have included this photo below.
There was so much paranormal activity that we knew we would need a second investigation to cover the apartments, the attic, and the basement. I will continue with our investigations to let you know what type of interaction we were able to capture on the other investigations.
In one of our sessions, while down in the basement, Chip decided to kneel to see if he could get the little girl to approach him. As he was holding out his hand, I took a picture of him with my camera. I was able to capture a big bright spirit orb to the right of him. I use a technique that I taught my student when taking pictures with a flash. I instructed them to not look at the viewfinder or screen but to look into the flash as they took a picture and at times you would be able to see the orb, apparition, shadow people, or other paranormal images with your natural eye. Another thing that made this picture so convincing was the spirit orb was also captured on video as my flash went off. Anytime you capture an image in two different mediums it gives it more credibility. This session turned out to be another learning lesson for me and my ghost hunting team.
When we planned our time inside the building we started in the foyer where the sounds of a little girl laughing and footsteps running up the steps had been heard. This was also the favorite area for Chloe, Stuart’s dog, to play. We were not sure what we would find so with cameras, videos, and audio recorders in hand we stood in silence to see what might happen. One member of the team was holding a cell sensor meter, EMF meter, that began to slowly beep indicating a disturbance in the electromagnetic field. Within a few seconds Chip jumps back with amazement after seeing the image of a little girl standing beside the team member with the meter. I am including this short video Of Chip down below.
While I was on the second floor, I had one of the tenets come out of their apartment to see what was going on. She wanted us to come inside her apartment so she could show us where the candles were. She explained to the group how they would be lit again when she would return home. While I was in the apartment my camera batters died so I put them on recharge. As you hear me explaining about the batteries, I managed to pick up an EVP on my audio recorder of a little girl who says, “He so sorry, I’m sorry to”. Upon reviewing my audio, I was more than delighted to have captured this message. I thought that maybe she was telling us that the Bishop was sorry for what he had done to her and she was saying she was sorry for being such a difficult child.
I wish that someday I could return to this place just to see if it is still as active as it was almost 20 years ago. Since that time, we have improved on ghost hunting equipment and different techniques of communication with the ghosts and spirits. It would be so exciting to try these to see if we could capture more evidence of paranormal activity there. My connection to this place is gone since Stuart sold it and moved away.
To find out more about the amazing Chip Coffey, World Renown Psychic Medium, please click here www.chipcoffey.com At the moment he is a regular cast member to the very popular paranormal show, “Kindred Spirits” on the Travel Channel. Also, I have this story on my YouTube channel as well. Please click the URL to view the Bishop House video.
He's so sorry, I'm sorry.
In one of our sessions, while down in the basement, Chip decided to kneel to see if he could get the little girl to approach him. As he was holding out his hand, I took a picture of him with my camera. I was able to capture a big bright spirit orb to the right of him. I use a technique that I taught my student when taking pictures with a flash. I instructed them to not look at the viewfinder or screen but to look into the flash as they took a picture and at times you would be able to see the orb, apparition, shadow people, or other paranormal images with your natural eye. Another thing that made this picture so convincing was the spirit orb was also captured on video as my flash went off. Anytime you capture an image in two different mediums it gives it more credibility. This session turned out to be another learning lesson for me and my ghost hunting team.
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