The
Lamplighter’s Girlfriend
In
the early 1900’s, Bowling Green was lit by gaslights. In fact the
gas pipes still lie below the streets. In those days, the job of
lamplighter belonged to a man named Valentine Fitzhugh Makely. Val
was in love with a lovely young Bowling Green girl whom he had known
since childhood. When she turned eighteen, she accepted his proposal
of marriage and the two set a June wedding date.
Alas!
His fiancé took sick, and after a brief illness died. After her
wake, which was held at the Bowling Green Baptist Church, the young
lady’s body was sealed in her coffin, where it remained for the
night in the sanctuary. Val’s uncontrollable grief was known far
and wide. He was so sorrowful that he kept a vigil, sitting with his
head in his hands on the front steps of the church.
Suddenly
he thought he heard his fiancé calling for help! “She is still
alive,” he thought. He could hear her pounding on the lid of the
box which entombed her and making the most awful cries. Desperately,
he tried to get into the church – but all the doors were locked.
He ran for help, but to no avail.
Everyone
assumed the grieving man had lost his mind. He ran and ran, calling
to anyone who would listen, trying to pull the minister and deacons
from their beds and beating on the doors of the town folk over and
over again. Finally they came, but none too quickly. As the sun
rose overhead he insisted they pry open the coffin and there they
made a grisly discovery. Bloody fingernail scratches on the lid
showed she had indeed been alive. She had suffocated to death.
Val
never married, nor looked at another woman. He lived to be 85 years
old, and is buried in Lakewood Cemetery. After his death in 1945,
town residents began to be disturbed by loud knocks upon their doors
in the middle of the night.
Fearing
some calamity, they hurried to the doors only to find no one there.
Older residents who remember Val say it is his spirit reliving that
awful night of tragedy.
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