Barry's Bowls and things

10/03/2026

10/03/2026

10/03/2026

Just off Interstate 24 on the edge of Paducah, there's a rest stop unlike any other in the country, because it's not a building, it's a 160 year old mansion. 👻

Whitehaven started out in 1865 as a simple brick farmhouse, built by a to***co dealer named Edward Anderson. A later owner, Edward Atkins, turned it into the grand Classical Revival showpiece you'd recognize today, with towering Corinthian columns out front. Eventually it became the home of Paducah's own mayor, James P. Smith, who renamed it Bide-A-Wee, a Scottish phrase that roughly means "stay a while." His family lived there until 1968.

Here's the wait, what part: after sitting vandalized and falling apart for over a decade, the mansion was restored in the early 1980s and reopened in 1983 as Kentucky's official I-24 welcome center, the only historic house in the entire United States doing double duty as a highway rest stop. And ever since, travelers stopping in for directions or a bathroom break have reported something stranger than bad coffee. People say they catch the smell of supper cooking, drifting out of a kitchen that's been empty for decades. Nobody knows who she is. Nobody ever confirmed anyone died there. But the staff will tell you, something about that house never quite checked out.

Have you ever stopped at Whitehaven off I-24? Did you notice anything, or hear the stories before you pulled in?