NEWPORT, Ky. – The Historic Southgate House has a rich history in politics, music and the paranormal. In this musical venue, it seems that one person’s history is another person’s haunting.
Located just across the street from Newport on the Levee on Third Street, the 200-year-old house is said to possess some of the eeriest tales of ghosts who mirror the portraits hanging in the first floor parlor.
To understand the hauntings, first you have to understand the history of the house and its namesake.
Situated on top of a hill overlooking the Ohio River from the third floor, the Southgate House is best known for its first owner, the Tommy Gun and its music acts.
Upon walking into the old mansion, the first thing that can be seen is the long, tall, stairs with a decoratively carved banister leading to the second floor parlor. Above is a chandelier and in front of you is a long, wide hallway with the upcoming musical acts coming to play.
A turn to the left takes you back in time. Portraits line the bar illustrating the famous over the years who frequented the home of Richard Southgate.
The Man Behind The House—
From Abraham Lincoln to author Harriet Beecher Stowe, many stayed with Richard Southgate, a mercantile business owner and award-winning silk manufacturer, said The Southgate House owner Ross Raleigh.
In fact, the character Mr. Shelby, Kentucky slave owner in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is based on Southgate, a slave owner of six himself. His home, the Southgate House, according to Raleigh, was built over two years -- from 1812 to 1814 -- by British prisoners and Southgate's slaves, his wife Ann Hilde, daughter of Dr. Thomas Hinde, and their eight children.
Southgate played a role in politics, like many of his houseguests, such as Jefferson Davis, Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, John Tyler, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and James K. Polk.
Southgate was a lawyer and heavily involved in politics when he moved from New York to Kentucky in 1795. He was appointed as the Campbell County Commonwealth’s Attorney. He was elected to the State House of Representatives in the early 1800s and then senator from 1817-21, according to the Campbell County Historical Society.
Richard Southgate, like many of his relatives before and after him, died in his home the Southgate House in 1857 at the age of 83.
Richard Southgate—Obituary
Richard Southgate died on Friday afternoon, July 24, 1857, at 4 o'clock, one of the oldest residents of this valley. He died at his mansion in Newport, Kentucky, after a very long illness, in the eighty-third year of his age, having been born on the 23rd day of January 1774.
Mr. Southgate came to Kentucky at an early day and settled in Newport, where he perused his profession with signal success. He was educated in his profession at Albany, New York. While pursuing his studies he enjoyed opportunities to hear at the bar Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the other great men who lived in that day and filled the whole country with their renown.
Mr. Southgate stood deservedly at the head of his profession. He was well and favorably known on both sides of the Ohio River. As a citizen his public spirit and extensive usefulnes will make his loss keenly felt by his fellow-citizens in both States; while a large and affectionate family circle, from which his noble example and extensive intelligence are withdrawn, will realized a loss which no human intellect can fill.
Funeral services from his late residence, on Sunday afternoon, at 4 o'clock.
Courtesy of Ancestory.com.
The Tommygun Is Born—
A historical marker sits just outside the Southgate House and tells tale all its own.
It states that Brig. Gen. John T. Thompson, grandson of Richard Southgate, was born in the Southgate home in 1860. He was a West Point graduate and advocated for automatic weapons. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal as Director in Arsenals in World War I.
Thompson would later invent the Thompson submachine gun, dubbed the ‘Tommygun.’ He died in 1940 at the age of 79, “laminating the notoriety of the ‘Tommygun’ as a gangster weapon.”
An Entertainment Venue Comes Alive—
Ross Raleigh, owner of the Southgate House for more than 30 years, said there was something that drove him to purchase the Southgate family home-turned Knights of Columbus Hall in 1976.
There has always been something about the place that drew him in—something that he has never been able to explain. It’s just a feeling, he said.
The 65 year old said the building, which he admits has been a struggle to keep open for 33 years, seemed like a worthy investment. He also admitted that he was interested in historic preservation, but that came later. His fascination funded the building.
“I bought it on a whim,” he said. “[I was] guided by a spirit. I can’t explain why I bought it.”
The music venue has gone through several genres over the years. It started as a country western bar, but then the owner said he closed it down to run another venue. Raleigh returned in 1980 and spent the next six months fixing up the place, all while working a full-time job at the Northern Kentucky District Health Department as an environmental supervisor.
In 1981, the Southgate House re-opened as a venue for private parties, coupling that with booking musical talents on the off days. Raleigh said they booked a montage of events, from wrestling to boxing, frat parties to wedding receptions. In the midst of all the different sounds coming from the bar -- from punk rock to heavy metal or rockabilly -- somehow the stage gave way to indie rock. The different sounds are what keep people coming back Raleigh said.
“[It] adds flavor to the SH, an eclectic sound. People say, ‘All I have to do is come in and I know I’ll like it.’”
Now the Southgate House is home to a full range of music including rhythm/blues, indie rock, etc. Raleigh regularly uses the basement’s ballroom for national musical acts; the first and second floors for local or lesser-known acts; and the third floor for an art gallery, which showcases local and as well as employees’ artwork.
Visitors Can’t Stay Away—
The owner admits he believes in ghosts.
“I believe there is something. That many people can’t wrong,” Raleigh said.
In fact, a group of some 20 people in the third floor’s art gallery were conversing during an art opening. Raleigh said that a few of them later told him that they were discussing the artwork with an older man. Then immediately and with no warning the man that they were talking to vanished.
Over the years, employees, musicians and patrons to the two bars and the art gallery have told their own tales from beyond, happening right there in the historic Southgate House.
Raleigh said he as well as employees see two ghosts on a regular basis. One is a man in a gray military uniform, who has been seen in the kitchen downstairs and upstairs; the other is a woman who they call “Elizabeth.”
“I could feel things, like animal instincts, when you fear something,” said the building's owner, who has seen the woman in a flowing gown and long hair. He described her as a “phantom.”
Another time he remembered laying on the sofa upstairs back in the ’80s when he said he saw the bust of a woman looking away from him. He lay there worried that she would turn her head toward him, but she didn’t. Instead, the woman walked into the wall, he said.
A woman who lives across the Ohio River in One Lytle Place has told Raleigh about something she saw on a nightly basis. She said that she could see the third floor of the Southgate House from her apartment. Every night, she would watch as a candle passed by each window as if someone was walking from one window to the next, as they might have in the 1800s.
Jeremy Pittman, an employee and musician, was sitting at the bar on the first floor prior to opening one night. He was getting ready with his band for their show at the Southgate House. Just as they were about to get up, Pittman remembered looking behind them at the utility closet because the door opened. He saw a man run across the hallway behind the bar. The man opened the kitchen door and kept running. Pittman immediately checked the kitchen. There was no one to be found.
Daughter of the owner, Morella Raleigh, was a bartender for Southgate House when she saw a glass shatter in a patron’s hand during a concert on the second floor, according to her father Ross Raleigh. It happened while she was tending bar in the parlor. While a woman stood at the bar watched the show, her glass shattered in her hand. The woman told the bartender that she had been watching the show when she looked over next to her and saw a man in a gray military uniform tapping his foot to the music. When he saw her watching him, her glass shattered.
Ross too saw an unexplainable event unfold in front of his own eyes while sitting at the bar on the first floor. He found himself at the bar one night with a few others when a wine glass lifted up on its own and then, in slow motion, spilled and came crashing down on the bar.
Rick McCarty, Southgate House's general manager for more than two years, said that he has never seen nor heard anything that he couldn’t explain. However, he said, there is something there.
“I'll be the first to admit I'm not a big proponent of ghost experiences, hauntings and the like, but I would say that there is definitely a presence or a spirit in the house,” McCarty said. “I'm not sure what it is, but there is certainly something in the walls.”
In fact, he said there have been a lot of people who have worked at the Southgate House, played the venue or visited from another part of the country and all seem to tell the same couple of stories.
“That's one thing that leads me to believe there is something there. Otherwise all of those people (who aren't connected in any way to one another) wouldn't tell the same tale.”
Raleigh said a psychic visited the SH a few years back. She told him that there have been “many happy memories here.”
Maybe that is why so many visitors don’t want to leave.
