Dowsing in Kentucky

The art of dowsing, also known colloquially as "water-witching" or "doodlebugging", is an ancient tradition brought to America by its early European settlers. And it's alive and well in Kentucky.

The Tri-state Dowsers are an organization uniting dowsing-rod experimenters across Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. Member Duane Walter was interviewed in the Evansville Courier Press awhile back, and said he's actually rarely been called upon to use his divining gift to find water. Most times, he's asked to help locate unmarked graves.

"I don't encounter mistrust very much, but it happened this one time in Owensboro (Ky.). This church was planning to move their cemetery, and they wanted to make sure all the bodies were accounted for. There were a few people who stood at the window and watched. Didn't want to come outside. Called me a warlock. Didn't scare me off, though. I did the job I was asked to do."

While Walter has a toolbox full of dowsing tools and pendulums, he's just as likely to use a simple "L-rod" that can be fashioned from a coat hanger.

He and his wife, Phyllis, live in a log cabin built in the late 1970s. Their 80-acre farm has been in the family for five generations.

"At first I was skeptical," Phyllis Walter admits, smiling, "but when he went to two cemeteries, and I watched him find some long-forgotten graves, I became a believer."

Dowsing is often attributed not to any special gift of the dowser, but to Ley Lines. This phenomena may indeed aid a dowser at certain points, but I don't think that's the whole of the story. Dowsing seems to work just about anywhere, anytime, not just near alleged Ley Lines or power-points on the Earth's grid. And then there's also Telluric Currents, Morphic Fields, Bruce Cathie's World Grid, Songlines, and the "Dragon Currents" of Feng Shui.

According to a 1978 study by Z.V. Harvalik, dowsers respond to a 60hz electromagnetic field but this response supposedly does not occur if the kidney area or brain are shielded. I would posit that it isn't the kidneys that are involved in the abdomen, but the gut brain, the literal second brain that humans have which was only discovered a few years ago and was unknown in 1978.

Far less credible to me are those are claim to use dowsing rods as ghost detectors. Someone calling themselves Whistling Owl tells a story of entering the haunted Talbott Tavern in Bardstown (see page 194 in your copy of Weird Kentucky) with a divining rod and asking out loud, "are there any ghosts present in this room?". Supposedly the divining rod swung around and pointed behind the dowser, who also claims that when they got home and listened back to a tape recorder left on in the room, a ghostly voice was clearly heard whispering "behind you!"


Famous dowsers in recent history include:

Thomas Charles Lethbridge, who authored many paranormal-themed books, including Ghost and Divining Rod in 1963 and The Power of the Pendulum in 1978.

Uri Geller, whose long career of self-induced paranormal phenomena included dowsing. Despite controversy and accusations of charlatanism by professional skeptics like James Randi (who has been accused of exaggeration, falsification, and charlatanism himself), his powers have been verified to some degree by Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ of the spooky Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International).

Karl Spiesberger, the German mystic best known for his pendulum dowsing, his theories linking it to The Odic Force, and his membership in the mysterious Brotherhood of Saturn.

Bull Durham Ghost Sign

One of Georgetown's Ghost Signs that hasn't been repainted and touched up: since there are two different Bull Durham Tobacco painted signs superimposed upon one another here, presumably they couldn't decide which one to preserve. I like it just as it is, seeing simultaneous flickers of two different time periods, like the timespace channel-surfing of Star Trek's Guardian of Forever or Douglas Adams' Total Perspective Vortex.

Hump

This sign, spotted by srhbth, is presumably intended as a noun and not a verb.

Northern Wrestling Federation

Forget all that commercialized TV wrestling and the nauseating "Mixed Martial Arts" junk. There's some real wrestling going on right here in your backyard, that good old-school southern-fried boppin' people over the heads with metal folding chairs and trash cans while wearing masks, capes, and speedos. Wholesome family entertainment.

The Northern Wrestling Federation has been wreaking havoc along the Cincinnati-Newport border for quite awhile now, cheerfully bringing low-budget wrestling to the masses "the way it's supposed to be", according to their posters. With a stable of talent with names like Hellena Heavenly, The Zodiac, T-Money, Stamp Lickage, The Playboy, The Genuine Superstar, The Warlock, Ice & Virus, The Fitness Machine, Sin-D, and Nasty Russ, how could they go wrong?


You can follow the wacky misadventures of the NWF crew on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Dairy Freeze

The term "Dairy Freeze" has become a generic name-brand these days, with most shops independently owned and many of them never having been part of the original Ohio franchise to begin with. The variations seem endless - some are still the classic roadside cone stand, while others have morphed into actual sit-down restaurants and even barbecue joints.

Above: East Main Dairy Freeze, Lebanon, KY. Below: Dairy Freeze, Georgetown, KY.



Below: Middleburg Dairy Freeze, Middleburg, KY. According to Lady of the Woods, the elephant statue in their yard was a frequent victim of "elephant tipping" from local teens, and so is now mounted to a concrete base.





Previously here, we've also reported on two now-defunct Kentucky Dairy Freezes: Red River Dairy Freeze in Clay City, and the Cree-Mee Drive-in Dairy Freeze in Stanford.

Lost River Cave

The only underground boat tour in Kentucky is at Lost River Cave in Bowling Green, or at least so says their website. It also says that Ripley's Believe It or Not has called this river the shortest, deepest in the world. They have a great underground ballroom for events and weddings.

Upcoming events at Lost River Cave include a geocaching tutorial on September 20; a fine art fair on October 3-4 (with wine tasting provided by Greenwood Spirits Shoppe, beer samples from the Bowling Green Brewing Company, and cheese samples from Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese); and a weekend of Civil War reenactments on October 16-18.

Birth of a Light Bulb

One from our retro-living blog Revelation Awaits An Appointed Time:


Some sources, like this one, state that Thomas Edison's light bulb was first demonstrated for the public in Louisville, at the Southern Exposition of 1883.

But other sources, such as this one, says the public first saw Edison's light bulb in a demonstration in his Menlo Park laboratory, December 31, 1879. So which is correct?


They're both correct. Although a few fortunate Jersey citizens first saw Edison's incandescent bulb in his informal sneak-peek laboratory demo of 1879, the first official ready-for-the-world unveiling of the product came in 1883 in Kentucky.

Prior to Edison's alleged "invention", however, vacuum tubes that lit up already existed, since as the Geissler Tube and the Crookes Tube. Joseph Wilson Swan is generally regarded today as the true inventor of Edison's own light bulb, as it was his British patents a year prior that Edison virtually copied verbatim for his own American version. Swan and Edison later buried the hatchet and joined forces, jointly starting up the Edison & Swan United Electric Light Company.

Additionally, Edison was beset with lawsuits from Hiram Maxim, who also laid claim to being inventor of the lightbulb. According to the book Edison's Electric Light by Robert Friedel and Paul Israel, there were at least 22 inventors of incandescent lamps prior to Swan and Edison.

Edison merely repurposed the pre-existing idea for commercial purposes, to maximize the amount of light such tubes generated and thus replace gaslight. But even then, his own assistant Nikola Tesla (image below) outdid him and invented the fluorescent light, which was a far superior product.



Sir Humphry Davy invented the first incandescent light in 1802, by passing direct electrical current through a thin strip of platinum. In 1809, Davy also created the first arc lamp by making a electrical connection between two carbon charcoal rods connected to a 2000-cell battery. James Bowman Lindsay created very effective incandescent lamps in 1835, but chose not to pursue the invention, focusing instead on wireless telegraphy.

But by the time American citizens flocked to Kentucky in 1883 to witness the unveiling of Edison's electric lights, history was ready to ignore all who had come before.

Edward Wayne Edwards Admits Sex with Victim

"Men Behaving Badly" seems to be an unfortunate recurring theme in Kentucky news lately... in just the last month and a half, I've had to report on a psycho politician, a pastor turned pedo, a pedo turned pastor, a soldier turned pedo and psycho, a coach who has your kids baptized without permission, and a coach who cheated on his wife by having sex in a restaurant.

On behalf on my gender, I urge you, dear reader, not to hold it against menfolk in general. Some of us are perfectly gentlemanly metrosexuals who listen to Belle & Sebastian and run their juicer daily. And as your humble editor and blogger, I apologize for all this depressing "Guys Gone Bad" stuff as of late, but really, it's all just too seethingly nutsy not to cover. I promise to talk more about ducks and stuff in the near future.

And with that, I'm afraid I must now delve into yet another story about yet another scumbag: our old fiend Edward Wayne Edwards from Louisville is in the news again.

Edwards is currently facing trial for the murders of teenage newlyweds Tim Hack and Kelly Drew, and probably soon to face trial for other killings as well, like that of Dannie Boy Edwards. He has currently not entered a plea, but it's expected he'll plead not guilty, since he's now claiming he didn't kill anyone. According to the Associated Press:

Asked how his DNA got on Drew's pants, Edwards said he drank with Hack and Drew and had consensual sex with her in a field outside the reception hall, prosecutors said. The complaint does not specify where the three allegedly drank.

Edwards told detectives he saw Hack fight with two men, and the men stomped Hack to death as Drew screamed. He then saw three men stomp Drew to death as she lay on her back. He said he didn't intervene or tell police because he didn't want to get involved, according to the complaint.

So, Edwards would have us believe that a 19-year old bride had consensual sex with this shambling heap of a man in a field on the evening of her wedding reception? And that her new husband was apparently cool with that? And that they all sat around drinking together when the young couple should logically be headed off on their honeymoon? And then a team of unknown assailants suddenly jumped out of the bushes and killed the two teens but not Edwards? And that he didn't call the cops because he "didn't want to get involved"?

Clearly, this man is not running on all his cylinders.

Crazy Ed's story not only doesn't jibe with common sense, it doesn't fit the forensics. If he, as he now claims, watched these mystery men stomp Kelly Drew to death, why did the autopsy clearly indicate her wrists and ankles had been tied up? Why were her clothes cut into pieces and strewn around a road five miles away? Why was she strangled, and why was the groom stabbed, if Edwards says he saw them "stomped to death"?

New MMMB photos

Just received from drummer Ellen Bush, these are images of the March Madness Marching Band, taken live in action in Lexington last week.

The Dark Side of Steve Nunn

As reported here on the 12th, Republican politician Steve Nunn was found bleeding in a graveyard during a manhunt for him after the woman who filed a restraining order against him was mysteriously shot and killed.

Now they're saying Nunn has officially been charged with the murder of Amanda Ross, and that his attorney Astrida Lemkins is publicly maintaining his innocence. Be that as it may, police have revealed that Nunn was certainly talking like a guilty man while in custody. Reportedly, he openly spoke of his desire for revenge on Ross, and how he would go to the penitentiary for what he had done.

Nunn's ex-wife Tracey Damron has granted an interview to the Courier-Journal, in which she says something very strange came over him in the Spring of 2004. She says that Nunn was a model husband until she went alone to Florida for a weeklong family visit, and then....

When she returned, she said, Nunn was a different person.

"I came back to an absolute stranger. And I don't know what happened to him that week," she said. "He had kind of a beard. Steve didn't ever have a beard. And he was very, very distant. He did not want me around him."

"I asked Steve to seek help. But obviously to Steve — this new being that he is — he thought he was perfectly fine."

Damron said it was clear she and her husband were on “different paths” and they agreed to separate, and later divorce.

While she said she was aware of her ex-husband's problems, she wasn’t aware how severe they were, Damron said: "I knew it was dark, but I had no clue it was utter darkness."

The mind reels, wondering just what happened to Nunn during those seven days that transformed him so radically. A blow to the head? A mini-stroke? Did he drop acid? Too much Splenda and Nutrasweet? Mind control black-ops? Reaction to toxic anti-depressants? Or some sort of spiritual dark night of the soul, a Black Satori of the sort that comes with knowledge of things after which no man, having learned them, can ever be the same?

Or was it, maybe, just a good old fashioned midlife crisis?

Reportedly, Nunn was placing personals ads on dating sites, swingers sites, and "sugardaddy" sites, wherein rich men agree to lavish their dates with money and gifts in exchange for companionship, just barely skirting around prostitution laws by a wafer-thin margin.

And it gets weirder. According to this report:

A day before former state Rep. Steve Nunn was found by state police in a Hart County cemetery with his wrists slit, he stopped by Borders Monument Co. to make a request: He wanted to add some details to his gravestone.

Abe Shelton, owner of the Glasgow business that specializes in monuments and memorials, said Nunn came in Thursday to discuss designs and wrote down what he wanted to say on the stone. His request freaked out Shelton.

Shelton refused to say what Nunn asked him to put on the stone. He declined to say whether Nunn requested a Sept. 11 death date.

But based on Nunn's demeanor — and what Nunn wanted put on the stone — Shelton said he could tell Nunn was distraught and needed help.

"That's what freaked me out," he said. "I was absolutely floored."

Sex Offender Becomes Pastor

I'm not sure what all the hubbub is about, but some people are really going ape over Mark Hourigan becoming an ordained pastor at City of Refuge Worship Center in Louisville's Germantown. There's protests and angry mobs, and petitions, mostly from people who don't even go to that church.

If registered sex offenders aren't supposed to be allowed to ever DO anything with their lives after they get out, then we might as well just put them to sleep like shelter animals, right? (Unfortunately, many of the protestors would probably love nothing more.)

When I was a kid, we were told in Civics class that you commit a crime, you do time in prison, and then you've paid your debt to society and that's that, back to normal life. Somewhere along the way it's turned into this weird situation where sex offenders are second class citizens whose civil rights are practically nil, and yet they're expected to go out and find a career and have some sort of life. That's kind of hard to do when you're blacklisted on some online pervert database and you have to constantly report to Big Brother and check in, and you can't work here and you can't work there, and you can't do this and you can't do that.

But they're still expected to pay taxes, of course.

Crazy thing is, even axe murderers don't have to go through such nonsense. No one has to go knocking on doors saying "Hello, I served time for manslaughter and I'm required by law to alert all my new neighbors that I've moved here". I guess they'll get around to that sooner or later.

Like some book I found in a drawer in a motel once said, "Let he who is without Sin cast the first stone".

Bigfoot Photographed in Fairdale?

Kenny Mahoney of Fairdale, KY, has inadvertently snapped a mysterious photograph that some people believe is a Bigfoot-type cryptid.

Mahoney operates a motion-detecting hunting camera, which usually picks up mundane critters such as deer, rabbits and possums. But recently his camera took a strange image that appears to be a gorilla, or something like one.

Hate to be a spoilsport, but the longer I stare at the image, the more it seems to me that the two blurry blobs that look like arms are actually large birds, and the blurry blob that appears to be its head and torso is just the general background of the dark woods. I'd like to see what other photos without the alleged Bigfoot, taken in this exact same spot, look like.

On the other hand, if there was a place where a Kentucky Bigfoot could thrive, it would indeed be near Fairdale, which is a community just a couple miles East of Penile. Check a map, and you'll see that inside the triangle formed by Fairdale, Kosmosdale, and Shepherdsville, there's a vast expanse of wilderness with very little civilization going on.


On the other hand, the Fairdale Bigfoot has a Facebook and a Twitter, so he must be real, right?