Kingston Advice

I often bemoan how the internet is increasingly cluttered with junk data, and here's a prime example. Check out this Topix post made last weekend, advising us of some alleged paranormal phenomena described in only the vaguest possible terms:

Lots of strange things have been happening around the area of kingston. Strange lights in the sky and weird shadow-like things seen moving on the streets and through peoples yards. It seems like it came out of nowhere. I first noticed it a couple of weeks ago. No one around here is talking about it though.

"Lots of strange things?" Okay, so what are they? "Strange lights in the sky and weird shadow-like things"? Well, there's two. Two isn't "lots". Why were the lights "strange"? They didn't say. Who, exactly, saw these "shadow-like things", and can they give us a better description? They didn't say. Did the poster see these events firsthand? They didn't say. And if not, how did they hear about it if "no one around here is talking about it"?

(Am I some sort of jerk for wanting people to actually communicate if they're going to communicate?)

Fortunately, one of the few - very few - useful things about the interactivity of the internet is that sometimes a post of useless rumors can lead to others chiming in with more detailed reports:

I'm glad I'm not the only one who has noticed. I live in the Kingston area (Bobtown) and it's been going on for quite a while now, actually.

There's been a few curious incidents (I've seen quite a few shooting stars or what appeared to be shooting stars over the course of the course of the past year and a half) but on Friday October 23rd, 2009 around 6:00 to 6:30 p.m. sometime far before the sun had started to set and dusk started to settle in, I observed a strange white light in the Eastern sky that seemed to be located somewhere in between Smith Lane and the end of Blue Lick Road. It looked just like a bright, white star in the daylight, moving quite slowly. I observed this peculiar anomaly for about a minute and a half before it finally vanished behind a distant tree line. I haven't seen it since.

Well, okay, this is better. Now we have a time, a date, and an actual location. Even if the story turns out to be nothing, at least the post seems made in good faith, and is real data, not junk data.

Unfortunately, the poster doesn't tell us what is such a "peculiar anomaly" about a point of light moving slowly thru the sky at dusk. The poster doesn't say why he doesn't believe it was a plane, which is what it sounds like.

Another poster adds:

I for one know that there are strange things happening in the Kingston Area, i live beside Kingston Elementary School, i see a lot of bright lights in the sky in the kings trace sub. There have also been people saying that their car alarms are going off at the same time almost every night. I dont know whats going on, but it's creepy. And if i'm not mistaken that area was a battlefield.

Need more info. Lots more info. It's the 21st century and the sky is, at any given time, filled with planes, biplanes, jets, military craft, drones, helicopters, autogyros, satellites, meteor showers, hot air balloons, weather balloons, and the Heene family.

I see what are essentially less-than-100%-identified lights in the sky every day. For it to be something really strange or weird or spooky or creepy, it had better contain a bat-frog-man or have a pulsing light and throbbing hum. It better look like 2001's monolith, or freak out an entire airport, or contain aliens who tell you to "Drop the Tunug!"

Joseph Mulhattan

Another dubious Kentucky first: we can boast being the home of the undisputed king of media liars.

No, no, I don't mean Ann Coulter - she's from Connecticut. I mean Joseph Mulhattan, the traveling salesman from Louisville who wrote bogus newspaper articles as a sideline.

Mulhattan released hundreds of journalistic hoax memes into the ecosystem in the late 19th and early 20th century, many of which are still infectious to this very day. (Case in point: last summer I was puzzling over an 1878 report of a mummy-filled cave in Glasgow whose grandeur reportedly surpassed even Mammoth Cave's. As it turns out, the story was pure Mulhattan cruft.)

While traipsing around as a door to door shill for various companies such as the Kentucky Jeans Company, W.B. Belknap & Company, Hart & Company, and Rankins-Snyder Hardware, Mulhattan developed the odd hobby of mischievously submitting fake news stories to various newspapers using various pseudonyms (the enigmatic "Orange Blossom" was his favorite nom de plume). Most newspaper editors were apparently too rushed and/or too desperate for material to bother fact-checking Mulhattan's folderol, and the crazier the story, the more likely it would see print.

As a certain old German paper hanger once said, the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.

Keven McQueen, in his great book Offbeat Kentuckians, tells of a Mulhattan hoax published in the Lexington Transcript. Purportedly, a Richmond man named Patrick Cunningham developed a mysterious magical liquid that, when rubbed on one's body, made oneself impervious to snakebite. Any snake that bit a human so treated with the elixir, said Mulhattan, would be both poisoned and electrocuted. Mulhattan went on to say that Cunningham had personally killed 17,000 snakes in Madison County alone in one summer with this magic potion, and that many other Kentuckians were begging him for assistance in snake-eradication efforts (Among them, one J.B. Parks of Kingston, Isaac Lumley of Lexington, and even Mayor Garner of Winchester).

Mulhattan is widely believed to have been the source of a fake news story regarding a man named David Lang from Gallatin, TN who supposedly vanished into thin air in full view of witnesses and then could be heard crying for help as a disembodied voice. Ambrose Bierce, who loved to mix fiction with fact, took the idea and expanded it into two different short stories - Charles Ashmore's Trail and The Difficulty in Crossing a Field. The story was treated as fact in the 1950s by Fate Magazine and by Frank Edwards in his book Stranger Than Science. In 1999, the avant-garde composer David Lang wrote an opera based on the myth that used his namesake. Art imitates life - or in this case, an imitation of life.

In 1887, Mulhattan wrote an article stating that George Washington's tomb had been opened and it was discovered that the former President had somehow ossified into a stone-like mummy, and that it would be erected like a statue. Tens of thousands of people fell for this hoax, even though it was sort of a retread of one he'd done earlier, in an 1875 report that Washington and Lincoln's corpses would be exhumed and put on public display for the Centennial celebration.

Another Mulhattan media prank: he claimed that a noted Kentucky astronomer, one "Professor Klein", had announced that the star of Bethlehem returned to Earth every 300 years, and that it was due to reappear in our skies again. Mulhattan's article whipped the astronomers of the world into a frenzy, taking great lengths to write rebuttals to the editors of newspapers, disputing his claims.


Mulhattan would have loved the Internet and probably would have been one of its most notorious trolls. Then again, the net is so loaded with disinfo and junk data that he may have just blended in with the crowd and been just another timewaster among many.

In his twilight years, Mulhattan wasn't so much fun. He descended into alcoholism and was frequently arrested for vagrancy, nuisance, and public intoxication charges. He died alone and broke in Louisville.

"Witch's Grave" - Not!

One of the graves in Eastern Cemetery has unfortunately developed a ridiculous reputation as a "Witch's Grave" or "Satanic Grave", for the stupidest of all possible reasons:

1. It has a five-pointed upside-down star on it.

2. It says "I'll live again".

And that's it. No, really.

First of all, it's commonly known (seriously, it's very commonly known) that a Masonic-oriented Bible-based organization for women known as the Order of the Eastern Star employs a five-pointed upside-down star as its emblem. It is seen on countless headstones in cemeteries. It's no big deal. It has nothing to do with satanism, witchcraft, Wicca, paganism, etc. and has no symbolic relation to Baphomet or the inverted pentagram symbol that pop-culture-overloaded youth, in their ignorance, so readily and superficially associate with all things occult.

Secondly, "I'll live again" is an extremely common sort of Christian sentiment found on graves, referring to the promised Biblical resurrection wherein the dead return to life, either literally on Earth, or spiritually in Heaven, depending on your interpretation of the Scriptures. Any old cemetery is filled with inscriptions like "I Will Live Again", "I Shall Return", "We Shall Meet Again", "I Am Not Dead But Only Sleeping", etc. It's no big deal.

There is every indication that this was simply a nice little old lady, a devout Christian, who spent time with her Eastern Star gal-pals knitting and tatting. Grow a brain and stop perpetuating this ridiculous rumor about someone's dead grandmother.

Napfor's "Tunnel Hill"

According to the Southeastern Kentucky Paranormal Society, this "Tunnel Hill" in rural Napfor, KY is something worth checking into.

Although the SKPS indulges in the sort of primitive "ghostbusting equipment" that I disdain - EMF gaussmeters and such - they have done a fair amount of puttering around the place, and gone to great lengths to try to find something, anything to show evidence for the claims that Tunnel Hill is (and I quote) "a terrifyingly active location". According to their site:

We investigated both tunnels, recording both video and audio, and taking still photos as well as temperature and EMF readings. There were no temperature or EMF fluctuations to speak of, and nothing unusual appeared either to the naked eye or on video. Digital still photos contained some shapes that some investigators would claim were "orbs," but are most probably dust particles lit by the camera's flash bulb...

Overall, we had no first-hand experiences that would indicate any real haunting. That's not to say there isn't any activity at Tunnel Hill - it simply means were unable to substantiate any claims during our investigation on that particular day, other than the two EVPs."

Well, at least they don't believe in "Orbs", thank goodness for that. But... EVPs? That would be "Electronic Voice Phenomena", which is the ignoble art of turning on a tape recorder in an allegedly haunted place and then swearing you hear ghostly voices on the tape. With all due respect to my colleagues at SKPS, I think EVPs are a truckload of old baloney. But you can check out their mp3 files of alleged ghost voices at Tunnel Hill and elsewhere, here.

Meanwhile, on the junk data-laden site Shadowlands:

"Tunnel Hill is located a couple of miles in the back roads of Napfor just before you get to low water bridge. Directly on top of the twin tunnels lie two cemeteries. But forget about the cemeteries for the tunnels are the sites of many bizarre occurrences. The story has it that there is a hidden chamber hidden among the manholes. It is said that the manhole will give way to the secret passage and those who have ventured into this passage have no recollection of how they got there. When walking through the tunnels all light sources will slowly drain and the further you venture into the tunnel total darkness. It is then that random light sources will appear from cracks and crevices on various places in the tunnel. Rather you go in the day or night the same will happen because most occurrences happen once you reach the middle of the tunnel. The right tunnel is much more active than the left. NEVER go alone. Beware these tunnels are still in service and actual trains still pass through each day. One such aspect of the haunting place is the ghost train, which you will actually hear and even feel beneath your feet. Faint train horns echo throughout this terrifying area. Also feel free to explore the large active cemeteries above. Rumors are there many more horrifying things that have happened and continue to happen that cannot be mentioned in this article."

Let's read that last sentence again, shall we?

"Rumors are there many more horrifying things that have happened and continue to happen that cannot be mentioned in this article."

Wow, they can't be mentioned! Even though they just did, sorta.... but they're only rumors.... but they can't tell us what the rumors are, exactly...... alrighty then!

So enough internet B.S., what's up with the real Tunnel Hill? Well, that's what I'm trying to figure out now. I've contacted a few people who live relatively near the area, and some say they've never heard a peep about the place being haunted. A couple of others indicated they're heard the rumors but know of no actual incidents. Is the whole thing just another legend that came about because railroad tunnels are dark and spooky and humans can't help making up stories?

Probably.

Or maybe not. Maybe there is a kernel of truth inside. Very old railroad tunnels such as this do tend to be places of death, because of the inevitable accidents that occur - ironically, they tend to increase when a "ghost story" becomes attached to a site and more and more goofs start going there to gawk.

I'll be one of those goofs myself come Spring, and will file a full report, dear readers. I don't think I'll be making it out there to Perry County during the winter. Meanwhile, if you live around the Napfor area, please get in touch and tell me if you know any other info about Tunnel Hill.

(photo by the SKPS)

World's Stupidest Haunting Reports: Jefferson Mall Restrooms

I've already bemoaned elsewhere the rising flood of junk information on useless websites, and Strange USA is no exception.

The problem with such sites is that they open up a forum where anyone can post anything anytime. And when you're dealing with humans, that's a recipe for disaster. Not only do some people blindly cut-and-paste thirdhand unverifiable tall tales, but some just feel obligated to post and make up something, just so they can take part. Look at sites like Kiss This Guy and Urban Dictionary. Both started out as pretty useful sources of info, but quickly degenerated into their current states where most of the entries are bogus, and apparently made up on the spot by bored schoolkids.

One entry on Strange USA exemplifies the uselessness of unedited online interactivity: a report about Jefferson Mall's restrooms being haunted. It consists of one simple sentence:

The screams of a small boy can be heard coming from the mall`s main restrooms.

Oh. Like all mall restrooms aren't already filled with screaming brats? As if!

Now, if it's a real haunted restroom you want, then drive to the Combs Building on EKU's campus.