Carroll Blue Nash

Parapsychology expert Carroll Blue Nash was born in 1914 in Louisville. His mother had a keen interest in spiritualism which influenced him in his youth to accept the possibilities of the paranormal. As a child, Carroll visited spiritualist camps and attended seances. He was unconvinced of the authenticity of these displays, and this was the impetus for his taking up formal scientific research on such matters in his adulthood.

He studied at George Washington University, Washington, D.C. and the University of Maryland, and went on to a teaching career in zoology and biology. However, parapsychology remained his true passion, and in 1939 he organized a historic series of ESP experiments utilizing dice, rather than cards, which involved psychokinesis as well as what would later be known as Remote Viewing. For these experiments, he used his own University of Arizona zoology students as test subjects.

By 1948, Nash had set up his very own parapsychology department at St. Joseph's College in Maryland. This was observed with great interest by the OSS and later by the NSA. I'm curious if Nash's path ever crossed with Alfred M. Hubbard's?

In 1988, Nash authored a book, Parapsychology : The Science of Psiology, which remains a highly popular item with ESP enthusiasts to this day. The internet doesn't reflect much of his important and long career for some reason, with only scant information available - I can't even find a photo of the man. A Google search did turn up a reference to an article for Zetetic Scholar magazine, and an odd 1973 interview with Bawa Muhaiyaddeen.

Voodoo Video

My weird/fringe/noir video store, Voodoo Video, led a brief but fizzy existence in 2003, occupying the filthy basement of the Sqecial Media building, 371 South Limestone, Lexington.

I've always been fascinated with the fundamental mechanics of stores, businesses and trades, and the veil of mystery that shrouds their true nature to the average citizen. This veil of mystery increases proportionally as one goes from a more rural area to an more urban one. When a man in a big city wants to start a business, he does market research, seeks investors for startup capital, studies locations, etc. in a process that sometimes takes years before actually opening the damn thing. But when a man in a rural area wants to open a business, he basically just hangs out his shingle and declares himself open for business, simple as that, done deal. I like that.

Although misinterpreted by metropolitan eggheads as a work of fiction, the Beverly Hillbillies TV program reveals the true face of Southern entrepreneurship. When Jethro wakes up one morning and decides he wants to be a fry cook, he immediately sets out to make it so - before the sun sets that day. And when he decides two weeks later that he's tired of that and wants to be a movie producer or a double-naught spy, he just does it. When Granny decides one morning to open a dental office in Mr.Drysdale's building, she simply paints a sign that says "Granny's Dentist Office" and voila, it's done, with precisely the same sort of occult magic worked by the Federal Reserve when it declares the intrinsic value of the American dollar merely on their say-so.

That these enterprises aren't necessarily "successful" in a linear financial sense is not the point. The Medium is indeed the Message, and the reward is indeed the trip, not the destination. (And even with its "business as performance art" mentality, my store still turned a profit. Suck on that, John Maynard Keynes.)


It was with that in mind that I envisioned Voodoo Video in late 2002. It opened in the dirty, moldy downstairs of the Sqecial Media building in Lexington in January 2003, and as with practically everything I've ever done in my life, it was done with very little forethought, planning, or preparation. Like my paintings, it was all about immediacy, action, results. "This is a video store because I say it is so shut up".


Shelves were hastily slapped together from the cheapest lumber available at Lowe's, and a small fortune was spent on hastily stocking the place with the weirdest possible uncommercial movies: obscure art films, low-budget amateur porn, shoddy indie productions donated by friends, grade-Z horror flicks, foreign films with and without subtitles (some without boxes, even), and the most obscure selections from the Something Weird catalog. We even put out for rental "found" VHS tapes from yard sales and Salvation Army stores, containing the family reunions of unknown persons and shows they taped off the TV twenty years ago. Also an old Burger King employee training video, and a 1984 videotape of a hotel lobby where someone left a static video camera turned on for almost two hours for seemingly no reason.


Many bands performed after-hours in the moist subterranean cellar, with concrete walls and flooring plus shelving of video boxes providing truly squidgy and unorthodox acoustics for performances. Among the bands that graced the store's floor were hardcore punk band Cadaver In Drag, trippy experimental combo Lemonmoonhome, and the interplanetary transgendered garage band The Crunchies (see image below).


We also started the "Voodoo Video Cheesecake Girls", a feature on our website in which we encouraged female customers (and sometimes employees) to pose nude, near-nude, or just plain sexily right there in the store. This lowbrow exercise in art photography was short-lived but extremely popular. A late-night "after hours" invitation-only burlesque show held there was also a success, and showed promise for bigger and crazier things to come, had the store stayed in business. This was the embryonic beginning of the Voraxium series of shows.

Needless to say, however, all this public nudity and punk rock didn't sit well with the religious coffeehouse that moved in upstairs towards the end of Voodoo Video's lifespan. The coffee house, its obnoxious owner, and his frightening zombie-like teenage lackeys made the entire building an insufferable place to be with their constant complaints. They held disruptive "Christian Rave" events and fire-and-brimstone preaching on the sidewalk out front, using Jed Smock-style tactics of insulting passersby and yelling at them that they're all going to Hell. These events were broadcast at ear-splitting wind-tunnel volume with a huge and expensive sound system. Fortunately, the switchbox for power to the entire building was in the basement, in my store. I'm not ashamed to say I took special glee in pulling that switch on them more than once.

After almost a year of Voodoo Video, I was ready to move on, though. What had been conceived as an extremely elaborate installation/prank had quickly morphed into a very real and functioning alternative video rental store, and I don't have the patience to actually become a shopkeeper. I wasn't painting as much as I should (my only major show that year was Desperate Telegrams at the Gallerie Soleil) and I was being pulled in other directions by my photography work and paralegal duties. So, at the apex of the store's greatness, I baffled everyone by putting a gun to the store's head and calling it quits. It was fun while it lasted, but I had bigger fish to fry.

Jimi Hendrix and Fort Campbell

There's a conspiracy-oriented book in progress by Dave McGowan that can be read online, called Inside The LC: The Strange but Mostly True Story of Laurel Canyon and the Birth of the Hippie Generation. According to McGowan's worldview, some sort of ill-defined CIA/Pentagon/mob conspiracy is behind the scenes of the careers of Laurel Canyon-based musicians such as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Canned Heat, Flying Burrito Brothers, Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention, Mamas & The Papas, The Turtles, Jan & Dean, The Byrds, Janis Joplin, and even The Monkees. It sounds ludicrous on the face of it, but it's actually fairly gripping reading. There's a lot of smoke there, but there's some fire.

In particular, I was stunned to learn that Jimi Hendrix served in the military and was stationed in Kentucky's super-spooky Fort Campbell. From McGowan's book:

Though he rarely spoke of it, Jimi had served a stint in the U.S. Army with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell. His official records indicate that he was forced into the service by the courts and then released after just one year when he purportedly proved to be a poor soldier. One wonders, though, why he was assigned to such an elite division if he was indeed such a failure. One also wonders why he wasn’t subjected to disciplinary measures rather than being handed a free pass out of his ostensibly court-ordered service. In any event, Jimi himself once told reporters that he was given a medical discharge after breaking an ankle during a parachute jump.

These are indeed interesting questions, and it's also interesting to note, in this vaguely ominous context of nebulous conspiracy theory, that Fort Campbell is also home to the Black Helicopters of the 160th Spec-Ops "Night Stalkers".


I had never heard anything about Hendrix having been in the military, let alone in Kentucky of all places, but sure enough, the story checks out. Hendrix was arrested on stolen-car charges, and was indeed given the choice between prison and the Army by a judge. During his 13 months at Fort Campbell, he met bass player Billy Cox, and together they formed a band called The King Kasuals. They played mostly roadhouse saloons along the Kentucky-Tennessee border during this time, then became the backup band for an R&B singer named Johnny Jones. With Jones, they played prestigious gigs in Nashville, including appearances with Little Richard on the Night Train TV show. Surviving 1965 Night Train footage is currently the oldest video known of Hendrix performing, backing a R&B duo called Buddy & Stacey.


The Smoking Gun website has copies of documents pertaining to Jimi Hendrix's military period, which you can view here.

The borderline-kooky idea that Hendrix was murdered by the CIA has been floating around for years now - supposedly the high concept is that U.S. Government secret agents were fighting a "covert war against rock", trying to get rid of the counter-culture's heroes and destabilize the hippie movement. While I find that idea to be pure baloney (the hippie movement was already pretty much deflated by the time Jimi died in September 1970), I find it slightly less baloney-istic to consider the remote possibility that there's some sort of connection between MK-ULTRA, Hendrix's time spent at Fort Campbell, and Hendrix's death.


And that's where Hendrix's manager, one Michael Jeffery, comes in. Jeffery, believed to have been connected to both the British and the U.S. intelligence communities, has long been a source of suspicion and speculation. Just three weeks ago, the London Telegraph reported that Hendrix's ER doctor believes it is plausible that foul play may have been involved. And Tappy Wright, in his new book Rock Roadie, states that Michael Jeffery drunkenly confessed to killing Jimi Hendrix by force-feeding him pills and wine. Jeffery stood to collect millions of dollars on the star's life insurance policy, says Wright.

Dave McGowan again:

On March 5, 1973, a shadowy character named Michael Jeffery, who had managed both Hendrix and [Eric] Burden, was killed in a mid-air plane collision. Jeffery was known to openly boast of having organized crime connections and of working for the CIA. After Jimi’s death, it was discovered that Jeffery had been funneling most of Hendrix’s gross earnings into offshore accounts in the Bahamas linked to international drug trafficking.

I dunno. After awhile, this kind of stuff turns my mind to mush and I have to go lay down. Next thing you know, someone'll be saying that the CIA brought down Buddy Holly's plane. (Oh wait, someone already has.)

Sqecial Media

The passage of time has nudged Sqecial Media (pronounced "skeshal", not "squeshal" or "special") from being a mere "hippie shop" into becoming one of Lexington's great historic treasures, a sort of elder statesman of Fayette County hipster retail.

Sqecial Media was founded in 1972 by Madison Countian David Adams, who went on to cofound Morgan-Adams Books in 1990. David died on December 1, 2005 at the age of 66. Originally, Sqecial Media had more of a "head shop" vibe than it does today - or at least had a notorious reputation for it - but today it's a more innocuous source for college students to obtain their prerequisite incense, candles, tarot cards, clove cigarettes, New Age books, essential oils, buddhist statuary, vegan cookbooks, gag gifts, zines, Salvador Dali posters, and Jack Kerouac postcards.

A great many other famous/infamous fringe businesses have graced the downstairs realms of the Sqecial Media building, including Bear's Wax Records, Sami's Music, Voodoo Video (my own weird video store), Paisley Peacock, and an ever-shifting lineup of restaurants.


Due to crazy construction ongoing in the area, you have to take a rather Rube Goldberg circuitous path to get to Sqecial Media. Consult the map below before traveling to 371 South Limestone, and remember, never, never, never park at the McDonalds parking lot adjacent to it. They have minions ready and eager to call a tow truck the moment they see you get out of your car and walk into Sqecial.



(Photos filched from Lori-Lyn Hurley and mightyquinninlex.)

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.

2009 State Fair Attractions

The Kentucky State Fair opens August 20! Time once again for carny games, funnel cake, Freddy Farm Bureau, funnel cake, 4-H exhibits, funnel cake, the inflatable cone, funnel cake, rides, funnel cake, watching chicks hatch, funnel cake, free ham samples, funnel cake, pig races, and of course, my personal favorite: funnel cake.


A couple of oddball attractions new to the fair this year:

Michelle "Statue Viva" Harrell - a performance artist who looks like a statue and stands motionless, then abruptly moves and freaks people out when they least suspect it.

Timber Tina's World Champion Lumberjills - Female timber sports competitors demonstrate log rolling, cross-cut sawing, ax throwing and chain-saw carving in the South Wing parking lot. Yee-haw.

"Metamorphosis of a Criminal"

We reported recently on how the long arm of the law caught up with accused killer Edward W. Edwards from Louisville, and there's been some speculation about whether Edwards may have committed other crimes. Well, wonder no more.

It's now been revealed that Ed was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List in 1961, that he may have robbed more than one bank, and that he wrote a book about his life of crime in 1972 called Metamorphosis of a Criminal. Unfortunately, booksellers have quickly become hip to this, and have jacked up their asking prices for used copies.

Stranger still, it's come out that he even recorded a spoken-word religious album called Build a Fire in the Person and Not Under Them at some point. Somebody, somewhere, please find me a copy of this record. I will pay you real money. Srsly.

On that album's liner notes, he reportedly admits he was arrested by Portland, Oregon police in 1960 for double murder, and that he escaped from prison the very next day. He doesn't go on to say what happened next.

Even more bizarre, apparently Edwards was a contestant on the game show To Tell The Truth at some point in his life, but we don't know when.

Something tells me the nuttiness factor is just going to keep growing exponentially with this guy as we learn more about his past life of crime. Developing........

Kentucky Kokopelli?

Your parents might not have ever heard of Kokopelli, but there's a good chance that you have. In recent years, the ancient Southwestern Native American symbol of Kokopelli has become trendy and hip, leading to greater awareness of this mysterious trickster music/agriculture/fertility deity. The first known images of Kokopelli appear on Hohokam pottery circa 750 A.D. and reportedly, the tradition goes back even further to the Ancient Pueblos, circa 1200 years B.C.

Kokopelli petroglyphs (see image above) usually depict him as a slightly hunchbacked humanoid figure (though some theorize he's actually intended to be a cartoonishly anthropomorphized insect) holding a sticklike object up to his face. Because music is among Kokopelli's realms of overseeing, the object is generally regarded to be a flute. Some say it may have originally been a blowgun but gradually gave way to a more peaceful, musical symbol. Still others contend it's actually a pipe for ceremonial smoking of tobacco and herbs.


Kokopelli is also sometimes depicted with obvious male genitalia, and protrusions from the head that variously resemble antennae, hair, horns, or long floppy ears like Walt Disney's Goofy.

Images of Kokopelli are ubiquitously found in the Southwestern states, and I've always wondered why his influence never spread to other parts of North America to states like, well, you-know-where.

But it just may be that the power of the Kokopelli myth did indeed make it to Kentucky in antiquity. I submit to you pages 24-26 of Rock Art of Kentucky, the ultimate compendium of prehistoric petroglyphs of our commonwealth. There you'll find information about the Reedyville Petroglyph (see image below). Located in Butler County, southeast of Reedyville, near the old Honaker's Ferry, this set of petroglyphs reside on a slab of Pennsylvanian sandstone known as "the Caseyville Formation". They show what clearly seem, to me, to be a Kokopelli-ish figure, hunched forward with protrusions from his head and holding something up to his face. A more primitive one is just inches away, with a head of "hair" that even more resembles Kokopelli, but is limbless and tree-trunk-like. Most importantly, look at the legs and feet and how they relate to the torso.


The sketch in Rock Art of Kentucky is just one person's attempt to draw what he saw there, of course. Unfortunately the photo in the book is a terrible one and shows very little. These glyphs lay flat, open to the elements, and were almost certainly much more detailed when they were new. Many details that would aid in analysis may have been eroded away.

Me, I'm convinced this is a rendering of Kokopelli, deliberately done as such by an ancient hand for reasons unknown.

Lundergan's Decorated Grave

I like it when people aren't afraid to go over-the-top in decorating the grave of a loved one with gifts, trinkets, decorations and such. I like it even more when cemeteries allow it - an unfortunately high percentage of them have strict rules against such things.

This wonderful grave comes to mind. John Lundergan, an Irish firefighter laid to rest in Louisville's Calvary Cemetery, has a shamrock thermometer, WHAS Crusade for Children stickers, toys, flags, plastic flowers, child's artwork, and an offering of bourbon.

Editha Salomon

Editha Salomon, aka Ann O'Delia Dis Debar, Laura Horos, Ellora, Madame Helana, Swami Viva Ananda, Della Ann O'Sullivan, Angel Anna, Claudia D'Arvie, Editha Gilbert Montez, Vera Ava and Blanche Solomons, was an occultist and scam artist whose exploits were once legendary around the globe, yet this Kentuckian's story is all but forgotten today.

Harry Houdini referred to her as "one of the most extraordinary fake mediums and mystery swindlers the world has ever known". Despite this, she was apparently sincere about the paranormal on some level, and was genuinely influenced by more legitimate occult practices such as Helena Blavatsky's Theosophy. Blavatsky (pictured below) believed that all religions were true at the core of their innermost teachings. Her writings, combining esoteric spiritual philosophy with modern science is considered by many to be the progenitor of "New Age" thought.



In 1870, under the name Editha Gilbert Montez, she swindled a lot of money by passing herself off as the daughter of famous dancer/actress Lola Montez. By the 1880s she was in a fraudulent Spiritualism racket and claiming to be related to West Virginia lawmaker Joseph H. Diss Debar. In truth, she was born Editha Salomon in Harrodsburg, KY and raised in Louisville.

In 1888 she was sentenced to six months in prison on charges of fraud. After getting out of jail, she went right back to her phony-medium cons (as Vera P. Ava), and her fake-royalty pose (as Princess Editha Lolita). In 1898 she was living in New Orleans and it was there that she married her partner in crime, Frank Dutton Jackson.

After a brief jail stay in Louisiana, the pair next popped up in Paris, where they met occultist S. L. MacGregor Mathers. By claiming to be Anna Sprengel, Editha managed to gain access to top-secret texts of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which the pair subsequently absconded with. The incident is mentioned in a footnote about Mathers in The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats:


Interestingly, as it turns out, historians now believe there was no real Anna Sprengel, having been a hoax concocted by William Wynn Westcott. But Westcott's backstory of this mythical Anna Sprengel includes her being the daughter of Lola Montez, which begs the question: was it actually Editha who created the character? Was Westcott a co-conspirator, or he was duped by her into believing this persona? Yet, one must ask, why would she need to return to steal the secrets of the Golden Dawn, if she was in fact its co-creator? What a mess.

They spent time at the Koreshan Unity religious commune in Florida, learning about Hollow Earth theories of its bizarre founder, Cyrus Teed. (At some point in her exploits, Editha also operated a fruitarian colony in Florida, which may or may not have been related to the Koreshan Unity organization.) After leaving Florida, Editha and her husband gallivanted across Europe claiming to be high-ranking representatives of Teed's organization, which they most certainly were not.


In 1890 they were in South Africa, opening a "College of Occult Sciences" in Cape Town. As "Laura Horos", she lectured on the stolen teachings of the Golden Dawn and gave clairvoyant readings under various pseudonyms. Their college had moved to England by 1900, and their curriculum had expanded to include magnetic healing, parapsychology, clairvoyance, divination, materialization of ectoplasm, thaumaturgy, and channeling divine entities.

Some twisted sex magick was apparently also a big part of their system: in 1901 they were arrested for rape and buggery of a sixteen-year-old girl, jewelry theft and false pretenses. Jackson (who was by now calling himself "Theodore Horos") got 15 years, Editha got 7. She was released early, on July 1906, for good behavior.


The New York Times was seemingly fond of covering her sensationalist antics, as can be seen by combing through their archives. In them, you'll find a whole treasure trove of odd gossip about her adventures in addition to those mentioned here.

One of the many notches on Editha's arrest record was an incident in which she was caught stealing money from an elderly woman who had hired her to try to contact the ghost of her deceased husband in a private seance. Hearing of this, I have to wonder if The Rainbird Pattern, the 1972 novel which became Alfred Hitchcock's 1976 film Family Plot, was inspired in part by Editha and her husband. The book and film are about a husband-and-wife con duo whose scams revolve around her phony-psychic routine.

Late in 1909, Editha was living alone in Cincinnati, Ohio, once again using the name Vera Ava. And then she just disappeared. We don't know where or when she died, and we don't know where she is buried. The proximity to Kentucky in her last known appearance nudges the imagination into supposing that she might have come back to her Kentucky.

Human Sacrifice Rites near Inez

In Tomahawk, KY (near Inez in Martin County), February 1933, an elderly woman was voluntarily killed by her own family during an ecstatic frenzy of a peculiar religious sect. This sect intended to attach the woman's corpse on fire on a cross-shaped altar in an extremely confused twisting of the Old Testament concept of the "burnt offering", or holocaust. The group were raided by police - too late to save the victim, alas - having been tipped off by suspicious neighbors.

According to the New York Times, Mrs. Lucinda Mills was "choked to death in a religious frenzy to prove their power over death" during a ritual celebrating "the death of sin". This ritual reportedly involved a week of prior dancing, fasting, and glossolalia. According to family members, the woman willingly agreed to be a human sacrifice, murdered by her own son's hand.


From the Marion, Ohio Star, February 9, 1933:

Praying for deliverance in a gutteral, unearthly chant, eight members of a mountain family are in jail today, seven of them charged with murder following the cult "sacrifice" of an aged mother.

Police said they crashed their way through barred doors into the desolate Mills homestead as plans were made to place the body of Mrs. Lucinda Mills, 72, on an altar. Interrupting the haunting ritual of fasting and mystic rites, which police say started last Friday, culminating in a mad frenzy of ardor, the officers arrested two daughters, two sons, a grandson, and two sons-in-laws and a daughter-in-law of the slain woman...

An inquest conducted by Judge T. J. Hardin brought a verdict that Mrs. Mills died "at the hands of her son John and others."

Questioned at the jail, members of the family told police that hours of praying, shouting, singing and dancing - a part of the bizarre ceremony - called forth "divine commands" that the life of one person presented be offered in "human sacrifice". Mrs. Mills was chosen, they said, and John grasped his mother by the neck as others looked on.

Blaine McGinnis told authorities he wanted to prevent the "sacrifice" but that "a feeling" impelled him to stand back. He said that his mother-in-law was strangled, a chain fastened about her throat, and preparations made for a "burnt offering"...

Police say the cult members claim they perform miracles, such as converting water into wine, and transforming grapevine stalks into curling snakes.

John H. Mills, the son who strangled his own mother, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment on April 12, 1933. He was 36. I'm currently trying to determine where he was buried, as well as Lucinda. Anyone have a clue?

International Mystery Writers Festival

Every year, the International Mystery Writers Festival is held in, of all places, Owensboro, KY. This year's festival runs from August 12th to the 16th. Their website says:

Mystery lovers worldwide are celebrating the International Mystery Writers' Festival. The Festival presents unique opportunities to discover plays, screenplays, and short stories professionally performed, published, or produced for the first time.

Discovering New Mysteries celebrates the best of new mystery works through an annual competition offering more than $20,000 in prize money. Audience members cast ballots during the festival and select the winners for The Angie Award categories. "The Angies" are named for the legendary Angela Lansbury, Kentucky's First Lady of Mystery 2007.

Among the luminaries who will be in attendance:

William Link - Award-winning writer-producer of TV shows such as Columbo, Murder She Wrote, The Bill Cosby Mysteries, Mannix, Ellery Queen, etc.

Sue Grafton - Louisville's own best-selling mystery chronicler. Grafton's many works include A is for Alibi, B is for Burglar, and C is for Cookie. (Okay, I may have hallucinated that last one.)

David Breckman - Hollywood producer, director, and former Saturday Night Live writer, currently writing for the hit television series Monk, starring Tony Shalhoub.

Zev Buffman - The Tony-nominated Broadway veteran actually lives in Owensboro, and is the CEO of River Park Center.

Gary Sandy - Best known for playing Travis on WKRP in Cincinnati, Gary really is from the southern Ohio area and will be attending the Festival to take part in the "Live Radio Theatre" enactments.