The Bonine Mansion was built in 1820 by James E. Bonine along with his wife, Sarah Bogue, daughter of known underground railroad operatives Stephen and Hannah Bogue. The Bonine Mansion has a long history of connections with the underground railroad, including ties to the Carriage house, which was the central terminal to shelter fugitive slaves. The Bonine's along with this beautiful home, as owned an area across Cass County known as "Paradise Lake", which developed into a popular african american community. Ramptown, which consisted of many cabins on their land to house hundreds of fugitive slaves, and the Zachariah Shugart House which was the location of the 1847 Kentucky Raid where slave hunters raided this home in search of their fugitive slaves. Unfortunately, the Zachariah Shugart House no longer remains, but a marker has been placed to mark where the house once stood.
In recent history of the Bonine Mansion, this beautiful home was purchased by Tom Crosslin and was later joined by his boyfriend Rollie Rohm. Crosslin also owned 34 acres of land that became known as Rainbow Farms in the 1990's, this piece of land would become a well known stop on the hippie trail. For thousands of blue-collar pilgrims this land became a vacationing campground where Labor day marijuana parties were held every year. In 2001 Rollie and Tom were facing drug and firearm charges brought against them by prosecutor Scott Teter. Tom decided to set the place on fire thus provoking the 4 year public fued between them and the prosecutor, it ended 5 days later with men dead and fires burning and changing lives forever. If you would like more information on this click Here
It comes with no suprise that this house has seen it's fair share of 9 generations of Bonine's, the underground railroad, and a connection to the Rainbow Farms incedent. So is it haunted? We believe it is! In 2009, I was in this house that was up for sale at the time (it has now been auctioned off for restoration). I have a picture (below) that has a black mass infront of the original doors still standing in this old beautiful house, and we also have 2 EVP's (Electronic Voice Phenomina) that were recording inside this house! We had one last opportunity to re-visit this house and it's spirits. We had several things happen to our group while inside, we know of a little boy named "Jimmy" that is probably 2nd or 3rd generation of the Bonine family. We brought Jimmy a ball to play with that night and set the ball in a marked spot and told him it was his to play with. After returning to the room after about 30 minutes or so....the ball had moved to another spot on the floor. The house does slant due to the foundation crumbling, but it slants to the west and the ball moved north! We also had reports of people getting touched by something, including myself and my husband. We also caught several questionable pictures again, (some of which I do not have yet, but will soon so please check back for more photos of this house), these images are also listed below.
Some of our pictures have what is called "ORB'S", while we tend to dis-credited these from the ghost hunting field, (because they could be explained away easily) I did want to post them as some are very cool! So please look around and I have provided some links above for more history on the Bonine Mansion and the Rainbow Farms incedent.
IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ MORE ABOUT THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, PLEASE USE THE LINK BELOW. I WILL BE ADDING TO THIS PAGE AS I FIND MORE INFORMATION TO BE ENTERED AS THERE IS TONS OF INFORMATION OUT THERE ABOUT THIS PIECE OF OUR HISTORY. I WILL DO MY BEST TO PROVIDE ACURATE INFORMATION AS I FIND IT AND ALSO LINKS TO MORE WEBSITES PERTAINING TO THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. Take me there....
