Location: Marsten Manor is a historic residence located in the tiny community of Echo Run, twenty miles southwest from Louisville, Kentucky in Spencer County on Route 66 between Elk Creek and Mount Washington near the Plum River. Devastated by Confederate soldiers in the Civil War, not much of town exists except for a gas station at the crossroads, a post office and several homes. The house is located west of town, a mile off Route 66 on private property.

Description Of Place: Marsten Manor is an isolated edifice on twelve acres of property surrounded by fields and pastures. It is a two-story five-bedroom Victorian gabled manor house with a front porch and tower. The structure is filled with exquisitely carved wood, treated to look like mahogany and rosewood, intricate stenciling and stained glass windows with fine antiques and floral patterns at every turn. It includes a palatial master bedroom, Victorian dining room, library, parlor and interior living quarters for a staff of servants. The main hall contains a large grand wooden staircase with an iron staircase into the tower turret. A secret passageway from the parlor leads to a closed off room of the attic.

Ghostly Manifestations: The American Civil War is possibly responsible for giving birth to more ghost stories and haunted houses than any other event in American history, with the possible exception of the Revolutionary War itself. The twelve-acre grounds surrounding Marsten Manor include a graveyard where a reputed five hundred Union soldiers, who had died in the fields near this mansion were hastily buried after suffering incredible pain and physical discomfort. It is rumored the spirits of these soldiers still guard the grounds and can be seen racing over the grounds, hiding behind trees and crumbling stone walls and sprinting over creeks and furrows with rifles in hand. In the house itself, a tall terrifying brunette apparition wanders the interior eternally looking for peace.

"Her name is Kate Marsten, she's a solitary spirit." Jill Marsten comments. "I've never heard a scream nor a door slam in the middle of the night, but I have felt her presence in the house several times and heard her distant voice echoing in empty rooms talking to someone else I can't see."

Jill has been blind since she was eighteen, a victim of macular degeneration that took away her eyesight. Although she can't see most of the activity others have reported, she has felt Kate around her since she moved into the house, and at times, her presence is so strong that Jill can actually "see" Kate's image in her mind in front of her.

Kate is often described as an adult woman of extraordinary stature in dated clothing occasionally seen staring out one of the second-floor windows. History, however, tells us a bit less. She was the daughter of the original owner of Marsten Manor, and she vanished from the house sometime during the Civil War never to be seen again, until her bones were finally found in a secret room of the attic. Jill has had a dream about Kate nursing a fallen Confederate Soldier to full health up there, but history doesn't support that revelation.

Several guests and visitors have commented on the "eerie vibe" they feel upon entering the place. Jill and others have heard voices in the location when it was supposed to be empty, suggesting that Kate is not as solitary as she may seem. This other phantom is a believed to be a restless soldier who has been seen walking through the house and out the front porch. Some visitors have reported that he has been spotted a few times marching around the perimeter of the yard. Everywhere that he goes, the sound of his heavy boots accompanies his wandering. No one knows of this is Kate's former patient or just a random soldier who died on the grounds.

"On the grounds," Rob adds. "We've heard the sounds of gunshots and distant voices at night from the woods. The silhouette of a man has been seen getting on a horse off the driveway, but both the rider and horse have often vanished on discovery. We're not scared of the sounds, mostly because they happen so rarely, but they do get distracting."

History: Marsten Manor was built in 1830 by Silas Marsten, a munitions maker from Virginia, said to be part of a wedding day promise to his bride, Lillian. The majority of the property was deluged by the Battle of Elk Creek of October 5, 1863, one of the more forgotten skirmishes of the war and for good reason. Union cavalry officer Lt. Colonel Harold S. Maude from Ohio devastated Echo Run and burned the town to the ground thinking he was in Tennessee. Out-numbering him was Mississippi infantry commander Lt. Colonel Clayton Fowler whose own men actually picked off enough of their own side as they stumbled around in the dark woods trying to find Maude's men that moonless night. In his diary years later, Fowler adds "had he been given a chance, he would escaped over the Ohio River in embarrassment and turned over his own men to Maude for court-martial."