Flint Road Ghost, Waco

In the late 1970s, I lived on this farm in the rural community of Waco, on Flint Road.

At that time, there had been a fence separating the front area of the farm from the second part, which was essentially a huge field. I often leaned on the gate and stared out across the field towards the woods in the distance, lost in thought.

On a brightly moonlit evening I was staring out at the field when I saw a male figure dressed in shabby coat and hat ambling across the adjacent Botner Farm to the right. He then climbed the fence and began traipsing across our property. This was no big deal, as there were always assorted bums and yokels taking shortcuts across our property. I watched him get to almost exactly the halfway point across the field, then I glanced away for just a mere second.

And he was gone.

I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, staring at the empty field. Freshly cut with no tall weeds to hide in. No holes or ditches he could be laying in. Just a plain empty field that had a man on it one second, then nothing the next.

This, more than anything else in my life, proved to me that things are not always what they seem, and that paranormal things do occur.

The picture above shows the fence at the point the man climbed over it from Botner's property. This was taken from the farmhouse side where I was originally observed him while facing the woods. The picture below was taken facing the other direction, looking back towards the house, and showing the exact spot where the ghostly figure vanished.

Mural at Richmond's A&W Root Beer

On the Eastern By-Pass in Richmond, the A&W root beer stand has a series of murals painted on the side that have a seriously queasy, thick, rubbery, pulpy quality to them, and none more so than the strawberry shake.

No matter how many times we look at it, it looks more to us like some sort of illustration from a 1960's medical text on ovarian surgery.

Barbecue Grill Cemetery

Memorial Day weekend is all about grilling out, and paying respect to the dead. Now here's a place where you can do both at the same time.

This Lexington cemetery is located off Rose Lane at Aylesford Place, behind student-housing apartment buildings. At least some developer took some care to avoid bulldozing the stones when the housing project was built (The Lost maxwell Cemetery comes to mind). However, the headstones are facing the parking-lot pavement - which means the bodies have probably been paved over.

The barbecue grill right behind their graves adds an extra indignity. I wonder how many college students over the years have sat there with lawn chairs grilling burgers, and then suddenly noticed they're in a cemetery?

Photos by Tim Stamps.

Henry's Ark

Henry's Ark, a.k.a. Moncada Farm, is a peculiar little farm with a petting zoo featuring over a hundred animals. There's the usual suspects such as goats, sheep, cattle, swans, ducks, geese and others -- but also extremely exotic selections such as bison, water buffalo, camels, emus, zebras, yak, elk, alpaca, porcupines, capybara, etc. There's a beautiful albino peacock as well.


The project was the dream of the late Henry Wallace, a former correspondent for Time magazine and several other news publications. During Henry's time, the zoo never charged admission and still doesn't. He told the New York Times in 1996:

"Very few people are going to open a place like this and not charge anything for it. It makes no sense. I do it anyway."



Wallace was a civil rights crusader in the 1960s but also supported Fidel Castro, which made him a tad too liberal for many of his neighbors. Henry received many pieces of hate mail in his day, one of which was an actual mailbomb. Nowadays things are much more quiet and peaceful around the farm, however, and it's more popular than ever for those in the know. Although there's no admission, there are several donation collection containers and you are strongly encouraged (by me, I mean) to put some cash in.

Henry's Ark is located at 7801 Rose Island Road in Prospect, KY.

Weird Kentucky Laws: Bathing Suits and Highways

For many years, there was a Kentucky law (Kentucky Revised Statute 436.140) that stated:

"No female shall appear in a bathing suit on any highway within this state unless she be escorted by at least two officers or unless she be armed with a club."

Later on, however, this absurd law was amended thusly:

"The provisions of this statute shall not apply to females weighing less than 90 pounds nor exceeding 200 pounds, nor shall it apply to female horses."

Well, I'm sure that much-needed clarification made everyone breathe a sigh of relief.

Although many stupid laws remain on the books to this day, this one finally got weeded out on January 1, 1975.

To illustrate this entry, I was going to get one of my models to pose in the road in a Wicked Weasel, but I didn't have time. So instead you get this old photo of the infamous "Red Bikini Woman" statue in Peoria, Illinois.

(Sadly, she's no longer in a bikini now and has since been dressed in a red sweater and blue skirt.)

U.S. 25

Kentucky's own "Route 66" of paranormal weirdness is Highway 25, running straight down the center of the state. An inordinate amount of our pieces here take place very near U.S. 25, making it an ideal roadtripping destination for those of you visiting from elsewhere.

Highway 25 begins at the KY/OH border, and from there it winds its way south, spending the next couple hours running alongside I-75. In Corbin U.S 25 splits into two, one going East (25 East), one going South (though for some reason they call it 25 West). Both 25E and 25W have their points of interest, but it's 25E that has that good ol' U.S. 25 feeling all the way to the Tennessee border.

And if it's an East-West drive you had in mind, U.S. 25 delivers you directly to access points to the Blue Grass Parkway (which will get you to Hopkinsville and Mammoth Cave), the Bert T. Combs Mountain Parkway (which will get you to Red River Gorge), and the Daniel Boone Parkway (which will get you to the Hazard area).

Bowman Cemetery

This is a very neglected cemetery, with many of its gravestones displaced or grown over. Several stones are leaning against this tree, and its unclear where they're really supposed to have been situated. Many other stones are seemingly lost.

That's a shame, because Bowman Cemetery in Calloway County is the final resting place of the great Nathan Stubblefield, the Kentucky farmer who invented radio years before Tesla, and years before Marconi stole Tesla's ideas.

See more about Nathan on page 100 of Weird Kentucky.

Tombstone Junction

Tombstone Junction was a Wild West themed amusement park featuring an actual internal railroad system of its own (not one of those miniature choo-choo rail cars like you see in some zoos). Tombstone Junction was located outside of Corbin, KY and entertained countless happy tourists until it burned down in not one, but two fires: one in 1989, the last in 1991.

Today little is left of Tombstone Junction, but it lives on the memories of those who saw it in its glory days. Tombstone Junction still commands an enthusiastic following to this day, judging by the volume of e-mails I've received about it over the years.

According to Karl Lusk, retired Executive Director of the Kentucky Railway Museum, the trains actually survived the fire, were auctioned off, and are still out in circulation, albeit in piecemeal fashion:

"I was at that sale, working for Ford Bros. auctioneers, Somerset, as rail equipment consultant and auctioneer. The two small steam locos were purchased by John Caperton, a rail enthusiast from Louisville. The larger loco was purchased on behalf of the Big South Fork Scenic Railway at Stearns, where it is currently undergoing restoration to operating condition. The cars, in bad repair, were, I believe scrapped, and the shop equipment, parts, etc. sold to a number of buyers, including the KY Railway Museum, Tennessee Valley Railway Museum, Diversified Rail Services, etc."

We've received many photos of Tombstone Junction that had lain dormant in the old vacation photo albums of several families, and will show some of them here soon. We always want to see more, though, so if you have Tombstone Junction photos, feel free to scan them and send them!


For more information, turn to page 160 in your copy of Weird Kentucky.

Birdhouse Mailbox

There are actually birds living in this delightful birdhouse/mailbox duplex, spotted in Lancaster, KY.

The Glyndon Hotel

Believe it or don't, not everyone likes being spotlighted by the Unusual Kentucky staff. Some people feel it's insulting, or beneath their dignity to be thought of as "weird" or unusual or interesting or potentially haunted or just plain cool. That's always puzzled me, because my purpose here is glorify, to exalt, to elevate, to honor, and to celebrate what's left of our fair state that hasn't been homogenized into this post-post-modern hell our society currently finds itself mired in.

Take, for instance, the guy who has a certain ice cream parlor in St.Matthews who came running out, furiously angry because I was taking a picture of the giant fiberglass ice cream cone on his sign.

"Is this for any sort of commercial purposes?" he asked haughtily.

"Not really", I replied, "I'm a photographer, and I'm working on a book..."

Before I could say more, he said, "That's a commercial purpose. Don't take any more pictures of my ice cream cone, please."

And yet, I would have been willing to do a whole-page spread about his business and his cone in the Weird Kentucky book. Free advertising. Great publicity. And he ran me off (I was also a regular customer). Now that's truly weird.

Then there was a run-down motor inn with a beautiful old star-shaped 1940's neon sign, and the woman who came scrambling out to inform me that the type of people who stayed at her motel valued their privacy and didn't want people with cameras skulking around. Never mind that I was only pointing the camera straight up at the sign, and never mind that she basically openly admitted her establishment was a "no-tell motel". Never mind that I was on a public sidewalk, and in theory can take a photo of whatever I damn well please.

And then there was the time that a certain writer sent me angry, cursing, obscene e-mails for referring to a certain Kentucky locale as "a sleepy little town". "You big city people come to Kentucky just to laugh at us hicks", he ranted. Apparently he didn't realize that not only am I from Kentucky, I still live in Kentucky and I am a "hick" myself, having grown up a hog-sloppin' farmboy proudly from Madison County's Waco, one of the sleepiest of all sleepy little towns in Kentucky. I would never mean to offend anyone by my coverage here, but on the other hand, I am not one to sit and agonize about political correctness and word-parsing to avoid the off chance that someone, somewhere, might potentially be offended for some abstract personal reasons.

Which brings us to the Glyndon Hotel.

I'm not saying anything about it. I'm just telling you that it exists. And that I love it. It's in Richmond. Go there and check it out for yourself.

That is all.

"Modern", eh?

A picture says a thousand words, doesn't it?


Top: Mt.Vernon. Bottom: Georgetown.

Disputanta Post Office

Disputanta, KY is a spooky little place in the mountains of Rockcastle County. Aside from its rural residents, there isn't much left here except a church, a graveyard or two, and this lovely old abandoned post office.

There is an old legend that Satan comes to visit Disputanta every Autumn, and novelist Johnny Payne used this legend as the basis for his play "The Devil In Disputanta".