HAUNTED LAWRENCE

Because Lawrence is a college town, some of the houses in the city are
rented out to a rotating selection of students, many of whom live with
roommates. Sharing a living space with another person can be an uncertain
experience: sometimes roommates are great, sometimes they are horrible
and sometimes—as in the peculiar case of the Priestly House—they just
might be a ghost.
The residence, located just east of the University of Kansas campus, was
constructed in 1864 by John Bowles. A few years later, in 1872, the house
was purchased by William Priestly, a former captain in the Union army from
Baldwin, Kansas. According to the National Park Service, Priestly purchased
the house for convenience—he wanted his children to be able to walk to the
nearby university and its associated preparatory school with ease.
The Priestly family remained at 1505 Kentucky Street for generations
until two of William Priestly’s descendants sold the house to John
McGrew in 1986. Because McGrew wanted to demolish the building
and use the plot of land for a commercial building project, the Lawrence
Preservation Alliance swooped in and bought the house. A year later, the
structure was sold to William Haw after he agreed to abide by a number
of regulations that heavily restricted the sorts of modifications that he
could make to the building. In 1988, the house was added to the National
Register of Historic Places, and four years later, Dr. Dan Rockhill (an
architecture and urban design professor at KU) refurbished the entire
residence, turning it into two different apartment units.
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Over the years, many of those who have lived in the house have come
to believe it to be haunted. In 1994, Haw told the University Daily Kansan
that while he never personally experienced anything paranormal in the
old building, he nevertheless believed it to be home to a spirit because of
its “creepy atmosphere.” In the mid-1990s, several years after Haw moved
out of the house, a group of law students, including Ryan Denk and Alan
Tikwart, moved in. Initially, the occupants of the house did not experience
anything out of the ordinary, but after a bizarre incident that occurred
during a party, they came to believe that the house might be haunted.
According to Denk, the group was attempting to play Dexys Midnight
Runners’ early 1980s hit “Come on Eileen” on a stereo, but every time
that the name “Eileen” would emanate from the speakers, the entire stereo
system would turn off. This happened five times. At first, those at the house
thought that the electrical outlet was faulty, but they soon realized that a
television and VCR were plugged into the same outlet, and both remained
functional whenever the stereo died.
Deprived of a logical answer, the group began to wildly speculate,
eventually coming to the rather grandiose conclusion that they were rooming
The front of the Priestly House. Author’s collection.
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with a specter. Of course, this did not answer the question of why it would
want to shut off a stereo. Perhaps the ghost did not like the lewd content
of the song’s lyrics, or perhaps the spirit was trying to tell the partygoers
its name. Denk and his friends went with this latter hypothesis and lovingly
nicknamed the presence “Eileen.”
Another strange occurrence was to follow. One night, Tikwart loaded the
washing machine located in the house and went to bed. Throughout the
night, the machine would finish its cycle but then immediately restart. While
it is likely that a defective washer was to blame, Tikwart nevertheless joked
that Eileen “just didn’t think that the clothes were clean enough.”
Just who exactly was Eileen? In an interview the University Daily Kansan,
Haw revealed that when he had lived in the house, he and his roommate
had discovered a trove of glass-plate negatives in the building’s attic, which
had presumably been misplaced by their original owner. All the pictures
featured, in the words of Haw, “a spooky lady [who] was real old, real skinny
and wore a black dress.” This led Haw to speculate that she might be the
presence that haunted the old Priestly House.
It is entirely within reason that the woman in these pictures was none
other than William Priestly’s wife, Ellen (d. 1916). If that is indeed the case,
perhaps she is the house’s resident spirit; after all, both “Ellen” and “Eileen”
do sound somewhat alike.
Since 1994, the ghost has been mostly quiet. Mostly. In 2003, a man
named Matthew Woodard contacted the Watkins Museum of History and
inquired about the ghost. Included in his message was a reference (albeit, a
vague one) to odd happenings that were still going on in the house:
I…understand that [the Priestly House] or perhaps the ground(s), is
said to be “haunted.” I have a friend who lives in the house. I have visited
recently and there were a few interesting occurrences during my visit.…I
had considered moving in when my friend moved out. I’m not sure if I still
would or not.
There is a chance that the house is no longer haunted (or was never
haunted to begin with). There is also a chance Eileen has simply decided
to live peacefully with her roommates and tolerate their (sometimes
questionable) taste in music.
The Priestly House is located at 1505 Kentucky Street.