When people think of Kentucky they think of the beautiful towns and cities such as Louisville, Lexington, and Covington. Little do most people know, the history of Kentucky is wrought with bloodshed as well as beauty. And though some places are off limits to visitors, there are plenty of places where the darker reaches of Kentucky’s older locations have manifested spirits unlike anything seen in the daylight. And Kentucky has its own share of urban legends to go along with these ghosts. And of the locations in Kentucky, none strike fear into the hearts of locals of Breathitt county as the Salyersville Haunted Bible Institute which has a long history of paranormal activity.
The institute was once a coed school for studying biblical texts. Due to the surrounding area’s difficult to traverse terrain, students who studied here would often live on campus. In 1939, a great flood washed down into the basin in which the Bible Institute is located and as the waters rose, several of the students found refuge in the boiler room of the school. The news reports had indicated a tornado would be coming, not a flood. The students knew if they left the boiler room they may very well perish. The tornado never came, but by the end of the night several of the students had perished from the flood. After the flood, little remained of the Institute. Today it is merely a skeleton of what once was a thriving school, ripped of its student body but not its memories.
Though the property is strictly off limits, those working in the area would be struck by how little is left of the once thriving school building, merely the tattered remains hardly clinging together of a dorm, a gym, and a chapel made of stone. The “punishment rooms,” as they were called by the staff when the school was still in business, have been reported to emanate an unearthly heat even on cold nights when no one is around. This heat can be felt all the way from the stair-well, according to the management. Some of those who maintain the grounds have even reported pairs of glowing eyes staring out at visitors from the second floor as visitors walk through the rooms, and from the ground out the windows. The source of these strange glowing eyes is unknown, but some say it may have something to do with the tragic flood that had hit the schoolyard years ago. The laughter of children can be heard from the ground floor, and on the second level this laughter quickly turns to anguished screaming and crying. Crying has also been reported around the boiler room. A large chapel was built with an aboveground basement in the field just outside the main hall. Some say the muddy black whirlpool in the middle of the ground has a sinister purpose, and can act as a gateway, but to where no one was able to say.
Some rumors even indicate it has been torn down due to the dangerous liability it serves to any visitors. Still others say a building such as this cannot be torn down, and still exists in another sort of world, one not quite real and yet still more than mere imagination. A world between worlds where the lost souls of the Institute’s Flood can find a home.
