{"id":1195,"slug":"whitehaven-paducah-kentucky","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Whitehaven is the mansion that became a rest stop — Edward Anderson's brick farmhouse of 1865, bricks fired in a pit on the grounds, transformed in 1903 when Edward Atkins had Alda Lassiter wrap it in Classical Revival: the Corinthian portico, the grand staircase, the white paint that gave it the name. Mayor Smith called it Bide-A-Wee — 'come rest a while' — a prophesy the interstate made literal.","The house was dying when I-24 came for it — empty since the Smiths left in 1968, squatters and vandals and the highway's path all converging. Governor Brown diverted the construction around the mansion and made it the welcome center — the only historic house in America that's also a rest area, the tour in the former dining room, the 1983 opening that turned a demolition into Kentucky's front door.","The file keeps Whitehaven: the 1865 farmhouse, the 1903 transformation, the interstate's detour, and the welcome center that saved the mansion.","Whitehaven is the archive's Paducah file — the farmhouse that became the state's front porch."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Whitehaven is the archive's Paducah file — the 1865 farmhouse, the Classical Revival remake, and the rest-area rescue.","A mansion in the highway's path keeps its portico — the file's suggestion being that Whitehaven's hold is the diversion: the interstate that bent around the house, and the welcome center that made 'rest a while' its job."]}],"name":"Whitehaven","aliases":[],"type":"HISTORIC_HOUSE","type_label":"Historic House","cats":["HAUNTED_PLACE"],"groups":["hauntings","historic-sites"],"desc":"Historic house in Paducah; research record.","full_desc":"A historic house in Paducah, Kentucky, Whitehaven is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Historic house in Paducah; research record. It sits in the archive under haunted places. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend, every one filed as account rather than fact. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.","address":null,"city":"Paducah","county":null,"state":"Kentucky","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":37.070892,"lon":-88.644477,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery pass. Precise location, historical chronology and current visitor conditions require independent enrichment. Confidence concerns provenance only.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":43.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":475,"type":"HAUNTING","description":"Kentucky Tourism recounts apparitions and unexplained cooking smells. Former kitchen is where the accounts cluster — the site's own map of where to look. Whitehaven in Paducah, Kentucky is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. The account appears in 'Haunted Kentucky'. It's the kind of claim that outlives debunkings — too many witnesses, too few explanations.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":null,"where":"Former kitchen","first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.65,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Haunted Kentucky","url":"https://www.kentuckytourism.com/events/hauntedkentucky","publisher":"Kentucky Department of Tourism","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Kentucky Tourism recounts apparitions and unexplained cooking smells. The house's rooms are where the accounts concentrate — old houses keep their stories in the walls they were built around. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. 'Haunted Kentucky' carries the account. The legend does what legends do — it explains the place in a way the records can't.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Haunted Kentucky","url":"https://www.kentuckytourism.com/events/hauntedkentucky","publisher":"Kentucky Department of Tourism","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Haunted Kentucky","url":"https://www.kentuckytourism.com/events/hauntedkentucky","publisher":"Kentucky Department of Tourism","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Whitehaven (Paducah, Kentucky)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitehaven_(Paducah%2C_Kentucky)","desc":"United States historic place","extract":"Whitehaven is a historic plantation house in Paducah, Kentucky, in use since 1983 as the Kentucky welcome center on Interstate 24 (I-24) near the state border with Illinois. It is the only historic house in the United States also used as a rest area. The house was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on March 1, 1984.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/66/Whitehaven-ExteriorPhoto.jpg/330px-Whitehaven-ExteriorPhoto.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":90,"lat":37.05083333,"lon":-88.65277778},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":0,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":1}}