Blue Moon of Kentucky

Last night was said to be, according to those who say such things, a "blue moon". Whatever that means. There are at least four different competing memes for just what constitutes this "blue moon" they speak of, and none of them are particularly satisfying to me. Apparently much of the misconceptions about it go back to a 1946 article in Sky & Telescope that was utterly, completely wrong - which just goes to show you can't always trust the "experts".


I've already mused on this blog about the various weirdnesses involving blue moons, blue people, aliens, and Elvis, but this latest spate of media attention to the "blue moon" concept has my coffee-oiled gears turning again regarding Kentucky's peculiar obsession with blueness. Of course, what comes to mind first are those ubiquitous Kentucky Wildcats of the University of Kentucky, with their slogans like "Go Big Blue!" and "I Bleed Blue". And much of our state's blue fetish is actually about misplaced blueness - blue moons aren't really blue, and neither is bluegrass.

Blue people seem to be on the rise, culturally, what with Blue Man Group and Avatar. But for over a billion people on Earth, it's nothing new: Krishna has been predominantly portrayed as blue-skinned in the Hindu religion.


But it's the idea of blue light that interests me most, as far as our discussions about Kentucky go. Reported nocturnal sightings of eerie blue lights - sometimes called "ghost lights" - in the Kentucky mountains have been shrugged off mostly as "swamp gas" (what would skeptics do without this crutch?) but on the other hand, it is possible that in earlier times, the many burning springs and natural gas vents dotting our state's landscape burned with a blue flame.

Kentucky's curiously-named "Moonshine" also burns with a blue flame.

Many of the UFOs seen around here are blue in color, such as in this report of blue lights in the sky above Fort Campbell (although the testimony doesn't make a whole lot of sense). Coincidentally, Fort Campbell was once home to an elite corps of secret Special Forces known as Blue Light.

Then there's two different "Lady in Blue" haunting legends - one is said to haunt the Seelbach Hotel in Louisville, and a similar one dwells in the Keen Johnson Ballroom at Eastern Kentucky University (Consult your copy of Weird Kentucky for more info on both). And maybe the "Gray Lady" of Liberty Hall is actually a very pale blue. Perhaps blue just happens to be the basic color of mystical energy, or "life force", or whatever you want to call it if you believe in that sort of thing.


Interestingly, although blue has an extremely short wavelength, the receptors in the human eye are specially geared to detect blue to a greater degree.

Dreaming Creek

The city of Richmond was built on Dreaming Creek, which had once been a very large stream that flowed through the center of town. It's been compromised somewhat since then, diverted into pipes and shunted behind homes and under streets. A large portion of it was paved over for an Eastern Kentucky University parking lot.

A relatively unspoiled stretch of it can be found at the Madison Country Club, as seen on Google Maps here.

Dreaming Creek is so named because of a story Daniel Boone often told. He said that he arrived in this area during a bear-trapping expedition, and after drinking from this creek he grew very sleepy and climbed into a giant hollowed-out sycamore tree to snooze for the night. He dreamed he was surrounded by Indians, who captured him.

When he awoke, as Daniel told the tale, he was indeed surrounded by Indians, just like in the dream. However, he tricked them into being caught in his bear trap and made his escape.

We'll never know for sure whether the story is just a tall tale that Boone liked to titillate his fans with, or has its basis in truth.

And did drinking from Dreaming Creek's waters really induce a psychic dream vision in Daniel Boone? Was there something in it that altered one's consciousness, much like the mysterious vapors of the Oracle of Delphi? Some have ascribed the Delphic vapors to methane or ethylene gas escaping, and that just might be a very similar phenomenon to the many burning springs that once riddled Kentucky's landscape.

Sullivan Hall Ghost

From the ol' JSH mailbag comes this missive from Andrew Beck:

I found your site while browsing around on the internet tonight searching for ghosts and oddities in Kentucky. I was surprised to hear that you live in Madison County, because I have lived in Richmond all my life. I graduated from EKU a few years ago and while there I lived in Sullivan Hall. One of our traditions (before the Fire Marshall shut us down) was the Sullivan Haunted Hall. I'm sure you've heard the stories of the nursing student who killed herself on the fourth floor of Sullivan (a room which I lived across the hall from).

In early October of 2005 (the same year we were shut down) the Sullivan Hall Council was going through the basement of our dorm to figure out the layout for that year's maze. As I was discussing the layout with one of my floor representatives, Reid Connelly, (pictured in the fore ground) I took a few pictures with my camera. Later, I had them developed, and noticed something VERY strange in the photo of Reid near the Coke machine. What I am e-mailing you is a scan of the original picture (hence the graininess; I didn't have a good scanner at the time). The original picture still resides (somewhere) in Sullivan Hall. We had it framed for posterity, but I moved out of Sullivan in Spring of 06, so I couldn't tell you what happened to it.

I think this would be a great edition to your website. I really do enjoy the interesting, unusual, and nostalgic articles you have.

Thanks, Andrew... I'm not really sure what to make of the photo. I'm inclined to believe that it's some kind of light-refraction thing related to the Coke machine, which in fact the anomaly is aligned with perfectly. Nevertheless, I don't have a specific explanation. And there have indeed been stories for a long long time about Sullivan Hall's haunted vibes, some of which I've experienced myself while creeping around its corridors in years past.

See page 186 of Weird Kentucky for more about Sullivan Hall.

The Eastern Accent

Does anyone recall the Eastern Accent, a now-defunct Eastern Kentucky University newspaper? It began in 1978 and only lasted a little over a year.

The Accent was sometimes rather idiosyncratic and primitive in its approach, with strange features like a regular column "written" by the editor's dog. The whole enterprise seemed especially quirky next to the comparatively slick Eastern Progress paper. (Why did anyone think a campus of EKU's size could support two school papers, when there was precious little news to report in the first place? I do not know the answer.)

The publisher, David Shew, just happened to be the son of Randall Shew, the publisher of The Richmond Register, the local newsdaily in Richmond. The Accent was reportedly printed on the Register's presses and, in fact, used identical fonts, layout, and style. It's possible they hoped to somehow eclipse the Progress and eventually become EKU's sole or primary paper. But it didn't happen.

But what really intrigued many of us about the paper was that they, in an apparent cost-cutting gambit, let a very young local elementary schoolkid from Model Laboratory School draw the paper's comics. Not once or twice as a cute gimmick, but on an ongoing basis. Most of the comics were surrealist swipes from Charles Schulz' Peanuts characters, but there was also "Fighto the Super Dog" and other oddities.




I recently spoke to that very same local elementary schoolkid, who is now in his 30s and operates from a bunker in an undisclosed location. On his early comics career, he had this to say:

"The Accent was hit with a "cease and desist" order… basically, the Syndicate didn't care that there was a nine year old boy who idolized Charles M. Schulz and was one of the biggest fans of "Peanuts" and wanted to express his love of the comic in this manner. It was infringing on the property of the Syndicate, and that was simply not allowed. However, since the newspaper wasn't really making money (it was given away for free) and it was, after all, being drawn by a nine year old who didn't quite understand the situation, certain changes had to be made if the comic strips were to continue: It could not be called "Peanuts" and the characters could not be named. I suppose they weren't too worried about the issue of the likenesses being infringed upon; my artwork wasn't that good.

And so, on January 29, 1979, a new era began … the comic strip known as "Weanuts". Hey, the Syndicate only said that the strip was not to be called "Peanuts"… this became a running gag for the next few weeks, as each week's strip had a different title, based on the theme of nuts … "Walnuts" … "Brazil Nuts" … "Spanish Nuts" … "Mixed Nuts" … "More Nuts" … apparently, the Syndicate was not amused, because they apparently griped enough that I was asked to do "something else" for the comic strip. And so, on April 2, 1979, my last "Peanuts"-inspired strip ran, the final part of a monumental three-part epic featuring Charlie Brown versus a fortune-telling vending machine that explodes on him, not once, but twice.

Unfortunately, the next school year, The Eastern Progress decided to go in a different direction and (wisely) decided not to bring me back as a regular feature. Oh well."

Does anyone out there still have copies of the Accent? Please let us know!

EKU's Mystery Arsonist

A series of unexplained fires on Eastern Kentucky University's campus - and during Fire Prevention Week, no less - have officials baffled and perturbed.

Four of the five fires have been concluded to be acts of arson. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader:

"Officials are still looking for suspects in three small fires that took place last week in the Dupree Hall dorm and one in the Powell Student Center. The fires all seem to be related and caused by arson, but officials aren't sure whether one person or a group is responsible..."

The department is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information leading to the arrest of a person responsible for the arsons. Anyone with information about the arsons should call the EKU Police Department at (859) 622-2821.

The Haunted Restrooms of EKU

In the early 1990s I received a firsthand account from a former Eastern Kentucky University janitor, who affirmed having witnessed the "glimpse from the corner of your eye" variety of ghosts in several of the restrooms in the Bert Combs Building.

Specifically, both sets of the third and fourth floor men's restrooms were said to be haunted (there's a men's room on diagonally opposite sides of each floor). The former EKU employee said he often felt an eerie presence in the rooms with him while cleaning the place up at the end of the day. He gradually grew accustomed to the entities, and reported that another janitor corroborated his story.

Tunnels Under Richmond

Most young boys growing up in Richmond, KY and attending Model Laboratory School in the 1970s were probably aware of the complicated lore regarding tunnels underneath the school. I know my own friends and I were fascinated with the rumors. Well, it turns out some of the rumors were true, as I have learned from a recent interview with a former classmate who prefers to remain anonymous, so we'll call him "T".

Unusual Kentucky: So first of all, where are these abandoned tunnels, really? How do you get in?

T: Well, I don't advise you go in, or anyone else go in. It's totally dangerous and I can't suggest anyone go down there. I'm pretty sure most of the old entrance ways have been closed by now. But you remember the old yellow signs that said "Danger - Electrical"? Those were always near entry points to the tunnels.

UnK: So was there really an electrical danger?

T: Oh yeah. There's bundles of very old wiring running along the ceiling and sometimes along the sides. Also scalding hot steam pipes. Very, very dangerous. We were stupid kids to ever mess around down there. It's a wonder no one got hurt. The Lord watches over the innocent!

UnK: Older kids would sell "Tunnel maps" to young and impressionable underclassmen like myself. Did you ever see any of those? Were they for real?

T: Some of those were probably my own maps! I was all about mapping them out completely. I treated it like a serious expedition and treated everything we found down there like it was a important historical discovery.

UnK: Like what?

T: Well, there was a roomful of huge barrels of water, dated from the early 1960s. We thought, "hmm, that's weird, what's the purpose of that?" until we came upon a room filled with metal tins of "survival biscuits" with the Government's Civil Defense logo on them. So the whole thing was, I guess, like a backup for emergency kind of thing, in case Castro or Russia dropped the bomb, you know.

UnK: Yes! A friend got several cans of those, and we actually devised ways to use them in cooking, in recipes.

T: I can't imagine eating them voluntarily. They tasted like unleavened crackers that had been left in a moist room for years. And you know, I guess that's exactly what they were!

UnK: What else did you find down there?

T: A lot of graffiti, mostly from the 1960s. There was a note written in, like, grease pencil, commenting about how John F. Kennedy had died that day. There were also the usual signs of civilization - Playboy magazines, condoms, liquor bottles.

UnK: And these tunnels go all under Eastern Kentucky University?

T: No. I'm very doubtful about that. I know the Model system of tunnels used to connect to a couple of nearby dorms and the Coliseum, but they don't anymore and I dont think they ever connected to most EKU buildings. There are different sets of other tunnels on campus, but they're from older buildings and probably not connected to Model's at all. But there are the storm drains, which would take you all over the place, under Richmond.

UnK: Yes! We called them "The Tubes", those cylindrical tunnels that were built to be storm drains but many of which apparently never served that function. I did explore those several times in my youth.

T: Some did. There was a steady stream of water running at all times down one that would deposit you out in some forest if you followed it long enough. You quickly learned how to run in a splay-legged position in those round drainage tunnels. I think all those have been done away with. Probably for the best.

UnK: Yes, I remember one had slightly buckled from above and cracks were forming. But we kept exploring them anyway.

T: Kids always think they're indestructible. I know I did.

UnK: What about the rumors of abandoned sewer tunnels that also connected to the EKU tunnels?

T: No, there was an open sewer manhole in the Model tunnels that had a never-ending river of sewage going by, very fast. We'd stand around it and watch it forever like it was television. But Richmond doesn't have any big-city kind of sewers that you could actually go down into and walk around.

UnK: Any other fun memories of Model's tunnels?

T: There used to be a tunnel that brought you up through a trap door into a teacher's office, which was a really weird, Hogan's Heroes kind of thing. I never could figure out what purpose such a tunnel could have been intended for. They boarded that up somewhere along the way. I also remember there were kids playing live-action Dungeons & Dragons down there, which I tried to discourage. I always felt protective of the tunnels and didn't want dumb people running around smashing things just because they could.

UnK: Would you like to ever go back down there, just for old times sake?

T: No way. It's way too dangerous and I can't stress strongly enough, nobody should ever go down there again.

UnK: It's enough just to know that they're there.

T: Yep. Kids today are more interested in playing video games than actually doing things anyhow. Maybe they'll make a virtual simulation of the tunnels one day!