Versailles just had its annual Spooktacular and Halloween is Saturday, so it is that time of year for a good ghost story. But the tale we have to tell is not a fictional creation from the brain of Steven King.
This is a real story with more than a few rational, reasonable witnesses. And it all happened, and still happens, at The Woodford Sun . . . even in our reduced, renovated office.
The Sun was home to Atchison Bowmar, who, with his brother Dan, ran the paper from sometime in the 1880s when they took it over from their father, until 1942 when it was purchased by former Gov. (and U.S. Senator and Baseball Commissioner) Albert B. “Happy” Chandler Sr., who lived in Versailles. Happy originally came to Versailles to coach the Versailles High School’s football and girls’ basketball teams while also practicing law in the early 1920s.
The Bowmar brothers built The Woodford Sun building in 1891, from which we still publish the paper.
Mr. Aitchie, as he was known to his friends, died a little over a decade after selling to Chandler. But, as subsequent publishers and employees have discovered, Mr. Aitchie is still around. His presence is not malign, but encouraging, unobtrusive.
Thanks to Jennifer Chandler, the person who oversaw and designed the Sun’s new space, discovering an old article written in 1970 by her father-in-law and longtime Sun publisher, Ben Chandler Jr., we will begin this ghost story by sharing his experience.
Mr. Chandler wrote:
I became the editor of a country weekly newspaper upon two days’ notice and eight days training.
The paper, which is now 101 years old, is located in a small town, in a small county in Central Kentucky. Our paper is the only one in the county.
The paper was owned from about 1880 until 1942 by the Bowmar family. First the father and then two of his sons, Aitchie and Dan, were the editors and publishers. Due to their father’s incapacitating illness, Aitchie and Dan had taken the paper over at ages 18 and 16. They ran it until Aitchie was 74 and Dan, at age 72, was taken by death. A few months after Dan’s death, his widow and Aitchie sold the paper to my father.
No member of my family knew anything about running a newspaper, so a succession of editors came and went from 1942 until 1957. At that time, a contemporary of mine who happened to be the editor, decided to take a job elsewhere and called me to say that I should consider running the paper myself or advise my father to sell it. I decided to give it a whirl, and the next day made virtually my first appearance inside the building.
I watched and helped the editor put out the edition that week (he sold the ads, wrote the copy, and did much of the make-up work). Then, as we started on the next week’s edition, he stood over my shoulder and commented as I began to do all the things I had seen him do the previous week.
On the eighth day after my arrival, the paper was put in the mail and the editor was gone. I felt very much alone and, of course, felt every person in our small county was waiting to see just what would happen the following week.
As I started into the planning and writing of the following week’s paper, I gradually realized that I was not alone by any means… Aitchie and Dan were with me.
I must digress to tell you about Mr. Aitchie.
He and his wife Mary and my family had been next door neighbors through most of the 30’s and 40’s (on Elm Street). He had been an old man and I a child and a teenager. My memories of the Bowmars included seeing Mr. Aitchie walk up the street to work each day, dressed in a black suit and vest, totally deaf, humming to himself, and carrying a long black umbrella. His wife would generally drive to town once each day, in a little black Ford. It was about three-quarters of a mile to downtown and Mary would stay in first gear for the first two-thirds of the trip and finally get as far as second gear as she coasted down into town. I’m not sure she ever got the car into third gear as long as they owned it.
I don’t ever remember having a real conversation with Mr. Aitchie, and I’m certain I never did with Mr. Dan, who lived across town.
As I started to do the work on that first week’s paper, and ever since, I began to feel the presence of a Bowmar, and that presence was not the least bit malevolent.
It is now 14 years later and I’m the publisher. My two best friends are the editor and the ad manager. The former has been here about ten years and the latter as long as I have. We have all three had numerous encounters with our friend.
We know that it’s Mr. Aitchie.
We have heard him, felt him, brushed into him, and Moss (Vance), the editor, has seen him. He’s here, alright, and each of us would gladly take a lie detector test to affirm what we know. Mr. Aitchie wishes us well. He served us, our parents, and the grandparents of many of us. This newspaper was his life and he poured his life into it.
As the first few weeks and months of my stewardship here began to pass along, I began to appreciate just how much the Bowmars were still contributing through the old files. Every conceivable event, activity, tragedy, drama, and crisis had been covered down through the years. News and events have a way of repeating themselves, with slight variations. I have been able to get invaluable guidance on the care and treatment of a story simply by glancing through the old files and taking note of how the Bowmars handled such and such event. Their comments on war and peace, politics and religion, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July are still very pertinent.
The three of us managing this growing newspaper are continuously and freshly in their debt.
When Mr. Dan passed away, his lonely brother wrote this, “When my brother and I were tiny tots we shared one trundle bed. When heavy responsibilities fell upon us in our teens we shared them. Until we began to settle ourselves in life we had a common purse, each taking what he needed… with never a word of dissension. From early youth we worked within a few feet of each other, day after day, year after year. As boy and man my brother’s loyalty to me was absolute, although, with strong and firmly held opinions, he frequently differed from me. The loss to me in his passing is something no written words can express and the depths of which my mind cannot yet grasp. May I be able to forget my own sorrow in joy that he has passed from a world torn with agony to eternal Life and Light. May I be able to ‘carry on’ courageously, as he would have done. Till we meet again.”
Mr. Aitchie’s farewell to his readers is preserved in our files of May 28, 1942, and although I’ll not quote it here, it is a piece of real beauty. He lived another eight or 10 years after his retirement.
Although Mr. Aitchie and Mr. Dan are now standing on the ramparts of Valhalla, observing what we are doing with their newspaper, we know that they are wishing us well. And Mr. Aitchie is frequently still here in this building.
The three of us who now bear the responsibilities are occasionally required to come to work one or more nights during a particularly heavy week. I don’t believe any of us relish being here alone during such times. I definitely don’t.
The only thing worse than being alone is being alone, but not really. Mr. Aitchie is not always present . . . not even frequently. But, on occasion, and each of us has known such occasions, he is here. We each feel that he is merely inspecting the premises and the general condition of his newspaper. As a result, we have tried very hard over the past 14 years not to embarrass or humiliate him. He must sense, by now, that we too love the paper.
Well, when Mr. Chandler left the Sun to be succeeded first by his son, Whit, and then by Ben III, it was soon discovered that Mr. Aitchie stayed.
I asked Ben’s wife, Jennifer, to share a particularly remarkable experience she had with Mr. Aitchie just last year. Here’s what she said:
“During the 2025-26 renovation of The Woodford Sun building, I believe Mr. Aitchie was very interested in what I was doing to his building . . . and he was not initially a fan of my efforts!
“Very early in the project, on a Sunday afternoon, I was working alone, drawing a floor plan for the new office space. I was measuring and taping where new walls would go when my tape measure suddenly went missing. Frustrated with myself, I conducted a search of the building, retracing every step I’d taken in the last 10 minutes. After giving up, I returned to where I’d left my drawings, and there was my tape measure, in plain sight, precisely where I’d left it.
“A short while after that, I ‘had a talk’ with Mr. Aitchie. I told him (out loud) how much I respected what he and his brother had built and that our family dearly loved his newspaper. I told him I hoped the building restoration would make them proud.
“I’m happy to say he quit toying with me after that. Although I did nearly fall to my death through an open window during the renovation, I like to think Mr. Aitchie teamed up with my usual battalion of guardian angels to stop my fall . . . I do hope he likes what we did with his building.”
If you know Jennifer, then you know full well she neither suffers fools or foolishness, nor is she anything but frugal and practical. If she says she experienced Mr. Aitchie’s presence, you can darn well be certain it was real!
One last story. Like many editors before me (I’m now the “community liaison” and take my marching orders from the current editor, Lucie Chandler), I’ve spent many late nights at the Sun since I became involved in 2022. Trying to run a newspaper with no prior experience was a sharp learning curve, and I found myself learning and messing up on hundreds of things every day.
In the spring of 2025, around 11 p.m., probably a Monday or Tuesday, before the renovation had begun, I was in my first-floor office working on laying out the classified ads for that week’s paper. I heard distinct footsteps on the second floor above me. It could be anyone, as tons of people still had keys to the building, and unexpected visitors during non-business hours were never a surprise. I walked up the back stairs. It was pitch dark. I groped for and turned on the light.
Nothing. But it felt like someone was there. I walked through the entire second floor, back down and through the whole first floor and the old press room. Still, nothing. But someone was there.
This happened every week or so until June 2025. Lucie joined the Sun team and has reported similar encounters. Since then, I’ve never had the same experience, but I have felt many times that someone was with me late on some weeknights.
I’m not worried or scared. It’s Mr. Aitchie.
He is looking out for us and his newspaper. I’m just glad he doesn’t require a paycheck, given all the time he’s put in with his supervisory role.