Classic Pair of Cave Hill Statues

More from Cave Hill Cemetery's inexhaustible supply of interesting graves. This pair in particular, I think, rather exemplifies the statues there, as it contains two of the more common recurring motifs: doves being released from someone's hands, and women standing with arms open and palms up.

Kentucky Webcams

Tonight I'm grilling sirloin steakburgers on the back porch, even as near-tornadic windstorms are hurling huge tree branches and garbage all around me. I'm looking at the effects the current storms are having on our fair state on the city-cams at kywebcams.com. Unfortunately, most don't really give you a good street-level view of what's happening. Purty pictures, though.

Livermore Bridge

The Livermore Bridge, located in McLean County near the city of Livermore, has often been referred to as "the longest bridge in the world", and was so designated by Ripley's Believe it or Not. The claim isn't even close to being true, however - I did a quick Googling and found that although people don't quite agree on what exactly is the longest bridge on Earth, Kentucky's Livermore Bridge is nowhere in the running.

The Lake Ponchartrain Causeway is generally regarded as the longest bridge in the world, unless you count the Bang Na Expressway, which is an elevated overpass spanning 33 miles but doesn't cross any body of water.


The Livermore Bridge does have a claim to fame for the record books, though: it begins in one county (McLean), crosses over not one but two rivers (the Green and Rough Rivers), and then passes over a separate county (Ohio County), then ends up back in the county it started in. This is the only known occurrence of this kind in the world, and though it may not be Guinness Book of World Records material, it's unusual enough for me.

KFC Secret Recipe Moved

From Yahoo News:

Colonel Sanders' handwritten recipe for fried chicken was back in its Kentucky home Tuesday after five months in hiding while KFC upgraded security around its top corporate secret.

Nothing went afoul when the recipe was returned from an undisclosed location to KFC's headquarters late Monday in a lockbox handcuffed to the wrist of a security consultant.

KFC President Roger Eaton was visibly relieved when the door to a new electronic safe was shut with the single sheet of yellowing paper stashed inside. "Mission accomplished," he said.

"It was very nerve wracking," Eaton said later of the recipe's hiatus from a vault where it has been kept for decades. "I don't want to be the only president who's lost the recipe."

KFC is a subsidiary of Louisville-based Yum Brands Inc., which also owns Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's and A&W All-American Food.

The recipe lays out a mix of 11 herbs and spices that coat the chain's Original Recipe chicken, including exact amounts for each ingredient. It is written in pencil and signed by Harland Sanders.

The iconic recipe is now protected by an array of high-tech security gadgets, including motion detectors and cameras that allow guards to monitor the vault around the clock.

"It's like an onion of security — many layers," said security expert Bo Dietl, who brought the recipe back to the building.

Thick concrete blocks encapsulate the vault, situated near office cubicles, that is connected to a backup generator to keep the security system operating in times of power outages.

"I can guarantee you, once it's in there, it will be safe," Dietl assured Eaton.

The recipe is such a tightly held secret that not even Eaton knows its full contents. Only two company executives at any time have access to the recipe. KFC won't release their names or titles, and it uses multiple suppliers who produce and blend the ingredients but know only a part of the entire contents.

"We've very comfortable with the security," Eaton said. "I don't think anyone can break into it."

Ordo Templi Orientis in Kentucky

I like to keep up with unusual religions (you may have noticed by now that I rarely use the word "cult") and am often surprised to see the variety of belief systems one can find in our fair state.

Why, there's even a Louisville O.T.O. chapter, believe it or not.

The O.T.O., or Ordo Templi Orientis, is described on their own website as a "hierarchical, religious membership organization" whose mission is to "effect and promote the doctrines and practices of the philosophical and religious system known as Thelema, with particular emphasis on cultivating the ideals of individual liberty, self-discipline, self-knowledge, and universal brotherhood".

Though the group was founded in Germany in the late 19th century by Karl Kellner and Theodor Reuss, it is most famous today because of Aleister Crowley, who joined in 1910 and was running the British lodge by 1912. Because of his drug experimentation, hedonistic sex magick rituals, and general disdain for a significant portion of mankind, he was dubbed "The Wickedest Man In the World" by critics and wags in the media.

Crowley once said: "the O.T.O. is in possession of one supreme secret. The whole of its system is directed towards communicating to its members, by progressively plain hints, this all-important instruction."


The Louisville O.T.O. publishes a quarterly paper called the Fleur de Lis, which, much like the Eastern Accent before it, features a "Peanuts"-inspired comic strip called "Crowley Brown".

Geodes

Kentuckians have grown up around geodes their whole lives, and because of this, probably didn't realize that people in many areas have never heard of them.

That's because geodes, though distributed widely, are very concentrated in Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri; probably for some of the same reasons that caves are so plentiful here. According to Wikipedia:

Geodes are essentially rock cavities or vugs with internal crystal formations or concentric banding. The exterior of the most common geodes is generally limestone or a related rock, while the interior contains quartz crystals and/or chalcedony deposits. Other geodes are completely filled with crystal, being solid all the way through. These types of geodes are called nodules.

An eBay seller by the name of Miranda8912, based out of Liberty, KY, always has an interesting and goodly assortment of these mysterious hollow crystalline rocks for sale, including ones that rattle. These are the ones that are most likely to have nice crystal structures inside.

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.

Monkey's Eyebrow

When people sit around riffing on all the oddly named Kentucky towns, Monkeys Eyebrow is always sure to come up in the conversation. It's an unincorporated rural community in Ballard County, close to Bandana, KY.

According to Wikipedia, "There were two Monkey's Eyebrows, commonly known as Old Monkey and New Monkey. One was at the top of a small hill, the other at the bottom. There were stores at both locations. Today, there are no stores. According to an article nearly 30 years ago in the county newspaper, the Advance Yeoman, the area acquired its unique name around the turn of the 20th century". However, like most of Wikipedia's content, there are no sources given for these claims.

Roadside America says, "There used to be a store there, then a souvenir stand that sold t-shirts and trinkets, but I think the only thing there now is a sign for the Monkey's Eyebrow Taxidermy Service. There are several local accounts of how the name came to be, but some folks think it applied to a crescent-shaped hill called Beeler Hill, which someone thought looked like a monkey's eyebrow when the grass was tall."

I'm pretty sure I drove through Monkey's Eyebrow two summers ago while working on the book, but I'm not sure. I didn't actually see any indicators that I was there. I fear the aforementioned taxidermy sign may be gone. I also didn't see this sign that someone took a photo of in 2004.

Arrests made in burned-body killing

Following up on our earlier post about a burning body found under a bridge in Cold Spring, KY, the Cincinnati Enquirer is reporting that four people have so far been arrested in connection with the case.

Thursday night police arrested Marion Lawson Parker III in Arlington Heights, Ohio, said Covington Police Lt. Col. Spike Jones. Parker, 27, of Covington, who is known as "Timmy," is charged with murder while being held in the Hamilton County jail.

When Parker is brought back to Kentucky he will be charged with robbery, unlawful imprisonment and tampering with physical evidence.

Shawn Davis, 28, was found dead under the bridge on Dodsworth Lane in Cold Spring after firefighters responded to a report of a fire.

Three other people were arrested in the death.

Five days after Davis was found, Patrick Cooke, 24, of Covington; Samantha Mayse, 19, of Independence; and Mary Ann Hartbarger, 34, of Covington were all charged with complicity to commit murder and complicity to commit robbery.

Cooke and Hartbarger also are charged with tampering with physical evidence. Cooke faces an additional charge of first-degree unlawful imprisonment.

All three are being held without bail in the Kenton County jail.

Covington police Lt. Col. Spike Jones said Thursday that the tampering with physical evidence charges stem from the burning of the body.

The funeral for Mr. Davis is scheduled for 1 p.m. Monday at Don Catchen and Son Funeral Home, 313 W 19th Street, Covington, KY. He will be buried at Mother of God Cemetery in Fort Wright, KY.

Fireball in Franklin

From Mufon's casefiles, February 2, 2009:

"Traveling highway speed northbound on I-65 at exactly 8:30 PM near Franklin, KY - GPS fix: N36 45 W86 29. In the sky on right side, I saw a fast moving ball of light going northward, seemingly descending downward. I thought it was a comet or shooting star. The color was not white white but slightly off-white. Then there was a red "blip" where most, not all of it flashed red, then it disappeared. Lasted for approx. 1 second. It seemed strange because it seemed that at the end of its trajectory it speeded up quite a bit the split second before it vanished. There was a major car accident several miles earlier, which had stopped interstate travel for about 1 hour."

The Outcasts

The Outcasts from Ashland were another great lost Kentucky garage band. Their song "Loving You Sometimes" was released on the PLATO label out of nearby Milton, WV and has gradually come to be something of a belated underground hit over the years since it was originally recorded. According to band member Al Collinsworth in an interview on Garage Hangover (Where you can also download "Loving You Sometimes" as an mp3):

The record received local airplay and got on the Billboard charts. The amazing thing is that Lovin You has been released 4 different times on 4 different labels. Plato was the original release.

A second release was with a compilation record along with ZZ Tops' first release and The Allman Joys' first release (Allman Bros). I don't have a copy of this record. A third release was in 1984 with BFD records in Australia on a compilation called "Highs in the Mid Sixties Vol. 9 - Ohio". The liner notes read, "A Zombies-influenced, moody punk sound from Cincinnati, not to be confused with 18 other groups called the Outcasts!"

A 4th release was done in 2002 by Arista Records Hip-Hop Artists, DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist on the very popular "Product Placement" CD. Oddly, and I don't know why, Loving You Sometimes is now a very popular hip-hop hit. Remixes have been done by DJ Shadow and DJ Ayres. LSD Phone Calls (a NYC hip-hop e-magazine wrote, "Maybe the perfect song. Garage psych dorks who hate this also hate the Zombies. Who hates the Zombies!?"

Soul, Inc.

Talk about falling into an Orwellian memory hole - at one time a Louisville band called Soul,Inc. was one of the hottest acts in the music industry, and yet today they are all but unknown. One rarely even hears their biggest hit on oldies stations today: the powerful "I Belong to Nobody", which recalls the sombre power of Sean Bonniwell's Music Machine.

They only released a handful of singles in their short mid-1960s lifespan, and though they've been reissued now on CD, we at the Kentucky Talent Foundation are seeking any original copies of their records we can find. contact us if you have any for sale or trade.

They were apparently the first band to record the 1960s song called "Stronger than Dirt", which has appeared in many versions and mutations along the way, including The Daybreakers, Us Four, and later, the Mummies. It even subliminally seeps into the ending of The Doors' "Touch Me". Derived from the popular Ajax detergent commercial catchphrase (created by writer and sunken-ship hunter Clive Cussler), "Stronger than Dirt" seemed to strike a mysteriously virulent chord in garage bands nationwide. And Soul, Inc. were at the forefront of the meme.

Endlessly inventive, they were one of the first bands to use backwards guitar tracks. To create an Eastern sound on "60 Miles High", they made a makeshift sitar out of a banjo by tuning it to an exotic scale and letting one string be the "drone" note. In another song, they blew a trumpet into a bucket of water to create a psychedelic gurgling sound.

Soul, Inc.'s legacy also includes spinoff groups N.R.B.Q., Elysian Fields, and a modern-day band called the Shufflin' Granddads which reunites several Soul, Inc. members.

You can hear sound clips of Soul, Inc. at their official website.