Beautiful Stranger

In the late 1800’s, a beautiful woman was traveling alone. She stopped one rainy night at the Harrodsburg Springs Hotel. As was her usual custom, she used a false name for check-in.

That evening, she decided to attend a dance in the ballroom of the hotel. As she entered the room, most, if not all, of the men became enchanted with her beauty. Each man in attendance vied for a dance with the beautiful stranger. After much exhaustive dancing, she agreed to one final dance with a young gentleman from Lexington who was there on business. As the dance came to an end, he felt her body go limp. Unbeknownst to him, the young woman had died. Frantic, the Lexington man tried to revive her unsuccessfully.

The men attending the dance decided to pay for her funeral since no one knew her and each were scared of the consequences surrounding her death. Each felt that he had caused her death. The desk clerk had a plot of unused land behind the hotel to donate for her burial.

One hundred years to the day of the young woman’s death, the hotel burned. The heirs decided to leave the property unused for the next ten years due to financial problems. Finally, the town of Harrodsburg bought the property to build a recreation park.

During the construction of the park, workers swore that in the late evenings, they could see a dark figure of a woman floating around, as if dancing by herself. One man approached the figure only for it to disappear behind some trees. When he reached the area where the figure had fled to, it was nowhere to be found.

It is said that to this very day, park visitors can see a figure of a woman dancing by herself in the late evenings. No one, as of yet, has had the courage to approach her.

Special K (B. Scott Kelley)

GSP Professor

Wayne County High School