“DOG SEES”: The Ghosts of Bobby Mackey’s and my mechanical bull

What goes through the mind of a slaughter-house worker in the days before the modern electric shock that is applied to animals prior to slaying them? Imagine hour by hour, day by day, week after week in a turn of the century slaughter-house slitting the throat of thousands of animals listening to the turbulent frightful last moments of an animal’s life and what that might have done to a mind over a period of time. Imagine that same slaughter-house with its troubled souls who died of natural causes but were so warped psychologically from their production line slaughter-house methods that the ghosts of those lost souls in anger at their eternal captivity on earth made a deal with what they believe to be the devil and coaxed a man to cut off the head of his pregnant girl friend and throw it down the well in the basement as a sacrifice to the devil. Maybe they did it just to see if they could, to vent their anger at their eternal captivity at the slaughter-house. Then a few years later, for those who know the history of Newport, Kentucky as Sin City, that served as the model for Las Vegas because of the prostitution, gambling and virtually every sin known to man. All the decadence a mind could conger up could be found on Monmouth Street and just up the Licking River in Wilder along the railroad tracks, a hot spot gambling house where a show girl named Johanna committed suicide back stage in that popular building formally known as the slaughter-house. The building would sit empty for many years after these tragedies until a country singer known as Bobby Mackey came along and bought it so he could open a country western bar and play live music every weekend. However, his music would reflect the haunted past of his new bar, as he discovered that his tavern was inhabited by two centuries of turbulent souls who had died and refused to move on to the next phase of life embedding themselves to the building now known as Bobby Mackey’s Music World. (OFFICIAL WEB SITE  http://bobbymackey.com/)

Is Bobby Mackey’s haunted? Yes. Without question. My family, particularly my youngest daughter and my wife have a connection with haunted beings that eludes the logic of my mind. I do not have the same experiences that those two do. My oldest daughter is like me; she’s a bit too skeptical to believe in such things and based on my own observations I will have to determine that it’s because our minds aren’t tuned to see those things that live in between the cracks of reality. To satisfy my youngest daughters interests we have embarked on several ghost hunting adventures and could tell plenty of stories that would curl your toes, that defy scientific explanation, leaving me to conclude that something living in some form that exists outside of our visual, and hearing spectrums does roam the earth in abundance and does play a part in the daily lives of human beings. My family has visited the Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, Moonville out in Athens, Ohio. We’ve crawled through some of the most haunted cemeteries in the small hours of the morning known, and seen a lot of strange stuff, the most violent entity we encountered was a “Shadow Man.” (Click the link to learn more)


My family has chased down UFO’s with our car only to have the things vanish in the sky right in front of us. Locally at the Screaming Bridge in Liberty Twp, I recently shared my personal stories with a group of Overmanwarriors over lunch to not so much conclude spiritual presence at that place but added to the stories, the preponderance of some places on this planet that are filled with violence for no apparent reason. Some may call them demons. Some may call them ultraterrestrials. Some may call them troubled souls trying to move on to the next life. Whatever they are, they are there, and Bobby Mackey’s is filled with them. That’s why this episode of Ghost Hunters about Bobby Mackey’s attracted my attention because I like the way TAPS does paranormal investigations. They approach each case with logic and try to debunk claims, which 80% can almost always be explained away. When I watched this episode it brought back some thoughts to my mind that I had while visiting Bobby Mackey’s and it is the dog that fixates on the pole that has stuck with me. Later at the end of this show, if you’ll take the time to watch it, an EVP recording picks up the voice of something that says clearly, “DOG SEES.”

“DOG SEES” what? I suppose that scene strikes my interest because I recognize that animals see and hear things beyond human sense perception so what that dog was so interested in at the pillar in the middle of the bar is a mystery, then to have a EVP voice acknowledge that the dog sees something they think is hidden is a bit disturbing. My experience at Bobby Mackey’s is not from one of the ghost tours he offers on the weekends after the place has closed, or even that of a paying customer. Back in 1993, before it was well-known that the place was haunted to the general public, I bought a mechanical bull from Mr. Mackey for a business I was working on, and his staff took me and a friend down into the basement where the well was, supposedly in the heart of the haunted aspects of the place. That’s where the extra mechanical bull we were buying was. We paid $400 for the mechanical bull and left to get a truck to come back and pick it up as a series of catastrophes prevented us from ever being able to come back and pick up that damn bull. I refused to acknowledge it at the time, but it almost felt as though something followed us home and wrecked everything involving that mechanical bull for weeks thereafter. It was as though we had picked up at Bobby Mackey’s an unusual string of bad luck that defied logic.
I have been to Bobby Mackey’s as a customer listening to Mr. Mackey sing his country songs as patrons dance, drink beer and ride the mechanical bull in his popular country night club, and I’ve been there as a business interest in the bowls of the place, and yes, there is some unsettling emotions that come and go from your mind while there. It seemed to be much less when the place was full of people, than when the place was empty. And the basement had almost a wall of energy that seemed unusually aggressive. I’m a person that could have a bomb go off right next to me and I wouldn’t flinch. So I stay pretty calm even under the most troubling circumstances, and there was something about that basement that made me consciously have to fight back an overwhelming sense of doubt.

My experience with ghosts are that they are very much like everyday people, except more primal in nature. If you ignore them, you will find they won’t interact with you very much. If you pay attention to them and try to befriend them, then you could have some trouble. Because for whatever reason, these beings are stuck as a collection of spiritual energy that do not have bodies, and they are stuck for a reason. If you provide them with an emotional vehicle to latch on to and gain some attention, then you’ve given them what they were looking for. I prefer the TAPS method of paranormal investigation that is very scientific as opposed to the Ghost Adventures methods of Zack and his crew. But watch this next episode of Ghost Adventures where these guys return to Bobby Mackey’s and attempt to provoke the ghosts there, which appear to be up to 7 at a time with these guys. Picking a fight with a ghost is the same as picking a fight with a human. If you watch this episode you’ll see the ghosts react the same when called out to a fight. As I listen to the dialog between these ghost hunters and the ghosts I think of the numb to death slaughter-house workers who can’t seem to move on, who are stuck to that building in a primal state of defiance, and think nothing of killing and harming the living, simply because they are jealous of those who have bodies.

It is without question that there are many forces on our earth that science has not yet figured out, that only religion has attempted to touch. I don’t fear any human being, so I surely don’t fear a creature that doesn’t even have a body. And my mind is too secure to be penetrated by them, so there is little to be concerned about in my personal life from disembodied entities. But they are quite manipulative, and they do enjoy interrupting the minds of the naive, or intellectually challenged. They do visit often the drunk, the stoned, the human with vacant brain activity, and they do seek to live out their frustrations at being stuck to a region for an indefinite period of time.

For me—the most haunting clip in the above episodes is that dog, “DOG SEES.” Dog sees what? What is in that pillar that the dog sees and these spirits are so concerned about? That is a perplexing mystery that has me fascinated and might just call for another trip to Bobby Mackey’s so I can see if my mechanical bull is still in the basement. Sure, it’s been twenty years, but so what, maybe the ghosts have been riding it down there and kept it maintained. Who knows, but one thing is for sure. Something is going on at Bobby Mackey’s Music World that exists between our world and something else. It can be seen and felt now, even if science struggles with an explanation.

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Rich Hoffman

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