Belle of Louisville Haunted?

This past weekend, the Belle of Louisville had an unfortunate incident about a quarter-mile north of Harrods Creek: reportedly a strong and unexpected gust of wind blew the ship off course, crashing it into a parked barge on the Ohio River.

According to FOX News:

Belle of Louisville CEO Linda Harris told The Courier-Journal of Louisville that about 300 people — many of them elderly — were aboard the steamboat and that about six to eight people suffered minor injuries.

David Karem, executive director of the Waterfront Development Corp. that manages the Belle for the city, said the steamboat was pushed into the barge by a strong wind while it was on a public cruise that started around noon.

The Belle suffered paddlewheel damage and lost power.

According to various online sources, the Belle is supposedly haunted by a former Captain named Ben Winters who died on board from a heart attack. Paranormalknowledge.com says:

Workers have also died in both the engine room and by the paddlewheel. One of these men was crushed to death when a piece of machinery was turned on by accident, and the other man was killed while conducting maintenance on the paddlewheel because it went into motion. Ghostly activity has been known to occur in these areas, primarily in the morning hours when just the workers are around. When new people begin working on the Belle of Louisville, they are told that they may potentially experience paranormal activity.

If they do, they are allowed to talk about it amongst themselves, but no official record can be released due to fear of scaring people away. Due to this policy, no official record of a haunting has ever been released to the public.

Robert W. Parker's Louisville Ghost Walks site suggests that the steamboat's name may be part of the reason for the ghost of Captain Winters' displeasure. The boat was originally called the Idlewild but was renamed to the Avalon on his deathbed, as his final request. (Does anyone know why he made this request?) But in 1963, it was changed to the Belle of Louisville.

Ride the Ducks

"Quack-tacular fun", it says here. Basically, it's a sightseeing tour of the area taken by boat, which sounds like fun to me, but I actually had previously assumed the whole deal was some sort of action water-ride thing. The website says, "Your Captain will en-tour-tain you with stories of past and present. Learn about Newport and Ohio history, the Ohio River, its famous personalities and its impact on the state and our nation."

The Ride The Ducks attraction's starting point - "Duck Central", they call it - is located at the Newport on the Levee Entertainment Complex outside Newport Aquarium.

The Sherley Family Plot

Recently spent another day on safari, deep in the heart of darkest Cave Hill, just before a rainstorm of Biblical proportions dropped on my head.

Visited the Sherley family plot, which has a doorway-to-nowhere portal that I find very interesting for a lot of reasons, probably deeply ingrained in childhood pop culture imprinting of walking through magical doorways (The Chronicles of Narnia, Star Trek, Land of the Lost, etc.) and maybe a few past lives as well.

Z.M. Sherley's grave is also very eye-catching, being a roughly hewn round-ish boulder with his name spelled out in copper appliques in an exquisite font. Z.M. Sherley's name is a memorable one to local historians, not just as a Civil War figure, but for his involvement with U of L's Medical Department and The American Printinghouse for the Blind, for the ferryboat named after him, and for his philanthropic contributions that helped maintain and beautify Cave Hill Cemetery itself during his lifetime.

According to the book Gould's History of River Navigation by Emerson W. Gould, Z.M. Sherley had an identical twin named Thomas, and so identical were they that not even Thomas' wife could tell them apart. Thomas drowned in the Mississippi River while transporting cattle via barge.

Meanwhile, George Douglass Sherley's grave - a large stone cross laying flat on the ground - has a great inscription: "Whatever is, is Best". It immediately struck me as almost Buddhist-like in its transcendent acceptance, but I did a little research and found it's actually quoting a Rosicrucian poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

I know there are no errors
In the great Eternal plan,
And all things work together
For the final good of man.
And I know when my soul speeds onward,
In its grand Eternal quest,
I shall say as I look back earthward,
Whatever is, is best.

George Douglass Sherley was a writer and poet who attended Centre College in Danville, and authored several books including The Valley of Unrest, The Inner Sisterhood, and A Spray of Kentucky Pine.