Bermuda Triangle of the Ohio River?

Currently part of the Wikipedia article for Maysville, Kentucky:

The story of Maysville's Bermuda Triangle began around 1992 when a barge sank near the Kentucky shoreline in West Maysville Kentucky. A subsequent salvage operation in 1994 tried to raise the sunken barge with two Navy minesweepers. The minesweepers were the next victim as they became stuck in the mud. A towboat trying to free the minesweepers also fell victim when damage to its engines rendered it crippled. Next came a salvage barge named The Hercules. The Maysville Bermuda Triangle made short work of it as well. While hoisting the original barge, the crane aboard The Hercules broke as the barge reached the surface, and down it sank again. Then The Hercules itself sank, coming to rest on top of the barge it was supposed to save. Eventually the minesweepers and the towboat sank as well. The entire salvage operation nick-named John Beatty's Navy, after its owner, fell victim to what an Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson would later call, "The Bermuda Triangle of the Ohio River".

Like much of Wikipedia, the section of text is unsourced. In fact, it may not remain on the article long since it's already been tagged as needing a citation and it's part of a trivia section that will likely get deleted. (Also in that same trivia section: "Seen from above at night, the streetlights of the downtown area form the outline of the Liberty Bell, crack included". Hmmmm. Now that I gotta see.)

I'm still researching this "Maysville Bermuda Triangle" matter, but nothing surprises me about the Ohio River. Time and time again, it's proven to be a very strange and, I daresay, cursed place.

Indian Head Rock

For many years, a rock protruding from the middle of the Ohio River along Greenup County was a popular spot for swimmers and waders to venture out to and have their picture taken. The rock also became well-known for a petroglyph of an oddly simplistic face.

Not everyone agrees on the significance and origin of the face. According to Wikipedia:

It has been theorized that the face was carved by an Native American artist as a petroglyph, a boatman as a river gauge, or was carved by John Book from Portsmouth, Ohio who later fought in the Battle of Shiloh. Other theories include that a band of robbers used it to mark their nearby stash and that a quarry man carved the face with a metal device.

Seeking to preserve the rock from eventual destruction from erosion or defacement, Ohio historian Steve Shaffer took it upon himself to remove the rock from the river and haul it over to Ohio, where it was placed on display.

And then all hell broke loose.

The Greenup County Attorney declared that Shaffer's removal of the rock could be a violation of Kentucky’s Antiquity Act (a Class D felony) and the Army Corps of Engineers also opined that the rock was Kentucky property and its removal violated the Federal Rivers and Harborment Act of 1899. After three years of legal wrangling - which included having the Mayor of Portsmouth, OH dragged before the Grand Jury - the rock is finally being returned to Kentucky. Says the Courier-Journal:

Under an agreed order dismissing a suit filed in federal court, the city of Portsmouth, Ohio, will relinquish control of the rock and permit it to be returned to Kentucky.

The so-called Indian Head Rock will be taken to a Greenup County garage until a permanent home can be found and money can be identified to put it on display for public viewing, Greenup County Judge-Executive Robert Carpenter said in a release from the Kentucky Heritage Council.

Latest Kentucky Floods of 2011

While the world watches and waits to see what further ill effects may occur from the Destruction of the Birds Point Levee, the storm fronts keeps moving in, rain keeps coming down, and flood waters keep rising like in the old Johnny Cash song.

Union County is essentially closed off and surrounded by high water now. According to the Henderson Gleaner, Union County schools and postal services are almost completely out. The Union post office has had to make an emergency relocation to nearby Henderson County.

Livingston County is under emergency evacuation as I type this. The evacuations in Smithland are mandatory and police-enforced, while residents of the towns of Iuke, Ledbetter, and Tiline are also being urged to evacuate for their own safety at this hour. Kentucky State Police have set up a temporary command post at Grand Rivers, and will be organizing all Fire, ambulance, and rescue operations from here.

In Fulton County, many worried citizens have been fleeing Hickman. Gov. Beshear has been monitoring the area in person, and said on Tuesday that blowing up the levee in Missouri was the right decision, because it's helping to take the pressure off Kentucky's own floodwalls.

In McCracken County, The Republic is reporting "The National Weather Service in Paducah forecast a crest of 55 feet, or 3 feet above flood stage, on the Ohio River in Paducah".

Kenton County was declared a disaster area last week when floodwaters closed a dozen roads and tornadoes ripped through the area. They, along with most of Northern Kentucky, are listed on today's flood advisory again as I type this.

Calloway County was, according to thenews.org, under a flood warning until this morning, and it will still take a lot of time for the water to go down. There is water over many roads, although none are closed down at this time.

In Jefferson County, flood waters crossed River Road and lapped at the edges of the Yum! Center and at Butchertown's flood walls. Today the water levels of the Ohio River are receding, but heavy rain is expected in the forecast and it remains to be seen whether the flooding here is truly over.

Land of Tomorrow

It's often been repeated in years past - by me, even - that there's an old legend about Kentucky's name coming from a Native American word for "dark and bloody ground". The legend, of course, isn't true - but hey, it's always been a useful meme, because Native Americans did use that specific phrase to describe this area.

We still don't really know for certain where the word "Kentucky" comes from. George Rogers Clark said it came from a Native American word meaning "river of blood". That's pretty awesome, but really, there's no reason not to make the more logical assumption that it comes from the Mohawk word Kentah-Ke, meaning "meadow".

But that doesn't mean we have to abandon the "dark and bloody ground" concept, not by any stretch. The term really was applied by Native Americans to describe the territory that would become Transylvania, and then eventually our modern-day Commonwealth of Kentucky. In Steven A. Channing's Kentucky: A Bicentennial History:

When representatives of the Transylvania Land Company
signed the Treaty of Sycamore Shoals in 1775, Chief Dragging Canoe of the Cherokee said they had secured "a dark and bloody ground."

Why dark and bloody, exactly? Well, it's complicated. Northern and southern tribes, such as the Cherokee and Shawnee, had been fighting over the land for as long as either side could remember. But the curious thing is, they weren't fighting for it for the purpose of living there. They wanted the land strictly for its qualities as a superb hunting ground, but one that spooked all concerned (perhaps it was, even then, teeming with Devil Deer.) There was something about this land, even in ancient times, that early man seemed fearful of.

And it seems to go back to early, early man, ones that even predate our own Native Americans.

In his 1806 book Travels In America, Thomas Ashe writes of his experiences with a vast network of huge open-room caverns originally discovered in 1783 beneath the city of Lexington, containing exotic artifacts, a stone altar for sacrifices, human skulls and bones piled high, and mummified remains.

These mummies were very strange looking, of unusually tall stature, and had red hair. The local native Americans claimed that these were the remnants of an ancient race predating their own; one that died out long ago and about which they knew very little.

Respected historian George W. Ranck, writing in 1872, also discussed this "lost city" buried beneath Lexington, and Don Edwards, writing a century later in the Lexington Herald-Leader, noted that when construction workers were preparing to build one of the downtown hotels, they took many more core drillings of the ground than usual - just to be sure they weren't building atop one of the legendary giant caverns.

Lexington isn't the only place that strange Kentucky mummies have been found. Check your copy of Weird Kentucky for information on the mummies discovered in Mammoth Cave - mummies that continue to confound our current ethnological paradigm.


And in 1792, General John Payne made a strange discovery while building his house in the tiny town of Augusta, KY, 63 miles North of Lexington. Payne's firsthand account is related in Historical Sketches of Kentucky by Lewis Collins:

"The bottom on which Augusta is situated is a large burying ground of the ancients...They have been found in great numbers, and of all sizes, everywhere between the mouths of Bracken and Locust Creeks, a distance of about a mile and a half. From the cellar under my dwelling, 60 by 70 feet, over a hundred and ten skeletons were taken. I measured them by skulls, and there might have been more, whose skulls had crumbled into dust...The skeletons were of all sizes, from seven feet to infant.

David Kilgour (who was a tall and very large man) passed our village at the time I was excavating my cellar, and we took him down and applied a thigh bone to his. The man, if well-proportioned, must have been 10 to 12 inches taller than Kilgour, and the lower jaw bone would slip on over his, skin and all. Who were they? How came their bones here?

When I was in the army, I inquired of old Crane, a Wyandot and of Anglerson, a Delaware, both intelligent old chiefs, and they could give me no information in reference to these remains of antiquity. Some of the largest trees of the forest were growing over the remains when the land was cleared in 1792."

A few years later, on December 21, 1806, the town of Augusta, KY was visited by Harman Blennerhassett, lawyer, occultist, and member of the Illuminati. Was he aware of the ancient underground civilization in the region?

Blennerhassett was born on October 8, 1764 in Ireland and moved to the USA with his wife, where they settled on Blennerhassett Island on the Ohio River. Blennerhassett was a friend and colleague of Adam Weishaupt, and a member of his Order of the Illuminati, reaching the level of Illuminatus Magus. He was also a friend of Vice President Aaron Burr, with whom he, some allege, engaged in a conspiracy to, among other things, remove President Thomas Jefferson from power. The plot was discovered, and Blennerhassett's secret camp at Marietta was destroyed on December 19, 1806.

Blennerhassett fled with about 50 of his fellow initiates, leaving his wife, his sons and the rest of his guerrilla troops behind. But here's what has always puzzled me: instead of making a direct exit, Blennerhassett risked making a mysterious side trip to Augusta, KY, arriving on the day of the solstice. Given his penchant for mystical folderol, it seems clear to me that there must have been some occult significance to his visit to Augusta. But what? We may never know.

That Blennerhassett was interested in Kentucky's forgotten ancient civilization is a distinct possibility, however. And did the Marquis de Lafayette have similar thoughts in mind when he toured America with an eye for ancient burial mounds and significance found in calendar dates?

(By the way, I originally wrote an essay on these subjects on my old, now defunct, original version of the UnK site, and much of that material was cut and pasted with some unwelcome alterations and reprinted on other sites with credit given not to me but someone else. So here on this Halloween, I hereby declare the Curse of Grillo's Grandfather and will also mention that I have some excellent attorneys.)

And then there's The Kentucky Anomaly, which is something I ran across accidentally while combing through a mind-numbing quantity of old NASA technical reports. NASA subsequently pulled the report from the URL at which it had previously occupied, and replaced it with something else. But the original report had spoken of "a very prominent magnetic anomaly measured by MAGSAT over the eastern mid-continent of the United States was inferred to have a source region beneath Kentucky and Tennessee. Prominent aeromagnetic and gravity anomalies are also associated with the inferred source region."

Gravity anomalies. Caused by something beneath Kentucky. Seriously. Now that's news! Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find out much else about this so-called "Kentucky Anomaly". What does it all mean? Dunno. I'm working on it. But if, as NASA says, this thing goes back to Pre-Cambrian times, consider that this could be the smoking gun as to why this territory has had a palpably weird vibe for as long as humans have dwelt on its soil.


On the other hand, the Ohio River along Kentucky's upper border also seems to be a source-point for spookiness, from the burial mounds of the Ashland area where Charles Manson grew up, to the aforementioned Augusta, to the anomalous Welsh-speaking people that implausibly turned up in the area that would later become Louisville (Again, consult your copy of Weird Kentucky.)

The mysterious and awe-inspiring Great Serpent Mound is just on the other side of the river in Ohio, but definitely related to all this other ancient activity in the Kentucky/Ohio Valley region. The tribes involved have been alternately theorized to be the Hopewell, the Fort Ancient, the Adena, and a prehistoric precursor of the Allegheny tribe known as the Tallagewi. Still others contend that it all goes back even further, to lost cultures about whom we know absolutely nothing.

Of the Great Serpent Mound, Wikipedia has this to say:

The mound is located on a plateau with a unique cryptoexplosion structure that contains faulted and folded bedrock, usually produced either by a meteorite or a volcanic explosion.

Determining exactly what formed the Serpent Mound Cryptoexplosion Structure is a problem that geologists continue to debate. Two main solutions have been offered. Some geologists think the structure is a meteorite or asteroid crater. Others suggest that the structure was caused by forces from inside the earth, probably an explosive eruption of gases derived from a deep magma source in the basement rocks.

A similar anomaly exists at Jeptha Knob in Clayvillage, KY (Shelby County). Jeptha Knob was originally thought to be a cryptovolcanic structure but now is considered to be the site where a massive asteroid struck the Earth 425 million years ago.

One could go quite mad studying all the puzzling evidence - and some have.

This Halloween, my fellow Kentuckians, count yourself lucky to be living in one of our country's most interesting states - but also consider that "may you live in an interesting state" could be an equally effective variant of the Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times."

There's yet another proposed meaning for the word Kentucky - some say it comes from a Wyandot word meaning "Land of Tomorrow". Though not as plausible as some of the ones we addressed at the outset, I just like the sound of it, and the implication it carries - that as interesting as Kentucky is now, it's going to get even more interesting in the future...

Scuffletown

Another of Kentucky's Ghost Towns is Henderson County's Scuffletown, which is on the Kentucky-Indiana border along the Ohio River, just above the mouth of Green River.

According to the 1976 book The Annals and Scandals of Henderson County by Maralea Arnett, Scuffletown was built up around a tavern/trading post run by one Jonathan Thomas Stott. "Since he kept a good supply of liquor, it became a rendezvous for flatboatmen and others on the river. Often a general fight developed after several hours of drinking and the place received the name of Scuffletown."

A tobacco-processing operation in Scuffletown was quite successful, exporting 400 to 450 hogsheads of tobacco per year to Europe, for pipe tobacco and nasal snuff.

According to them there Wikipedia folks:

The site witnessed numerous Civil War-era activities. It may have been the intended target of a raid by a handful of Confederate cavalrymen from Tennessee led by Captain Jake Bennett. It was Colonel's Johnson set up his cannon a few miles below Scuffletown to take Newburgh. The Silver Lake No. 2, a sternwheel packet (steamboat) weighing some 129 tons and outfitted with six cannons capable of firing 24 pound shot, stopped at Scuffletown during its patrols of the Ohio. In 1863, eight Union companies of infantry and one company of artillery were stationed at Scuffletown to protect the area of Confederate raiders. Scuffletown is mentioned in the Civil War account Operations of the Mississippi Squadron during Morgan's Raid.

In 1893 the Southern Cherokee Nation were welcomed to Kentucky in Scuffletown and recognized as an Indian tribe by Governor John Y. Brown. The Southern Cherokee is still living on the Green River today.

The 1913 flood greatly devastated the city, causing a mass exodus that they never recovered from. Its post office closed permanently the following year. An even larger flood in 1937 decimated what was left, and a vast chunk of real estate has sat inexplicably deserted ever since. There's been talk for a decade about having it declared a protected wetland and setting up a national wildlife refuge there, but so far not much has happened.

Rudell Stitch

One from our Transylvania Gentlemen blog:


On a recent visit to Louisville's troubled Eastern Cemetery, I noticed a grave I'd somehow always overlooked in my taphophilic expeditions - that of the great champion boxer Rudell Stitch.

Stitch started boxing locally in Kentucky in 1956, and by 1959 he was at Madison Square Garden fighting Gaspar "El Indio" Ortega. At the time of his death in 1960, Stitch ranked second in the world in Welterweight and was well on his way to becoming champion.

Stitch's heroism outside the ring earned him accolades as well, and ultimately led to his demise. In 1959, he saved a man from drowning in the accursed Ohio River, an act for which he was awarded the Carnegie Hero Fund medal of honor.

And the following summer, it happened again - only not with a happy ending. From Wikipedia:

On June 5, 1960, Stitch went fishing with Bud Bruner, Bruner's son, and Charles Oliver, a friend. They were fishing on a rock shelf below the McAlpine Locks and Dam when Oliver slipped. He grabbed Stitch, and they both went into the Ohio River. As he was swimming back to shore, Stitch heard Oliver yelling and went back to get him. Stitch and Oliver, both weighed downed by heavy waders and coats, disappeared in the turbulent water. Their bodies were found by the Coast Guard hours later.

For his tremendous sacrifice, Stitch posthumously received another medal from the Carnegie Hero Fund. Only three other people have received two Carnegie Hero Fund medals.

Given Stitch's importance, I'm surprised he was laid to rest in Eastern Cemetery rather than Cave Hill. It was, as we now know, an unfortunate choice. In 1989 came the sickening revelation that Eastern Cemetery officials had been secretly burying multiple people in the same grave since the 1920s, and that many people's remains were never even interred. What happened to their remains? No one knows.

Stitch's wife, Rosa Mae Huguely, died in 1964 but for some reason her death inscription remains blank. I don't know whether she end up being buried somewhere else, or whether she's here and nobody ever got around to noting it properly on the stone?


I hereby make a motion that Stitch's body - if, in fact, the Hannibal Lecters that ran this cemetery did indeed bury him as they were supposed to - be moved to another cemetery. One with the prestige befitting a Kentucky hero of his stature, and one with even a modicum of security.

Squirrel invasion of 1801

In September 1801, Napoleon’s French Army was pulling out of Egypt. Thomas Jefferson was in his first year as President and was probably already pondering his first State of the Union address that lay ahead in December. A battle was fought in the Seychelles between the British vessel Victor and the French ship La Flêche. And inventor Robert Fulton was close to developing the first functional steamboat.

Meanwhile, in Newport, Kentucky, something truly historic was taking place.

It began on September 1st, when a locust-like plague of tens of thousands of squirrels descended upon the city, seemingly out of nowhere. Crawling all over everything in sight, it must have been a horrific experience on a par with scenes from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. If you’ve ever had one squirrel get into your home accidentally and driven yourself mad trying to get this chattering, scampering, spastic creature out, imagine an entire city coated in a thick blanket of living, squirming, squirrelness. My teeth are on edge just thinking about it.

No one seems to know where this impossible quantity of squirrels apported from, or how they all came to be traveling en masse (squirrels are generally solitary animals that do not travel in herds or packs). There were no reported natural disasters nearby such as an earthquake or forest fire, but such an event wouldn’t create a mob of squirrels in such impossible numbers anyhow, nor would it cause them to march together in a specific direction with seemingly unified purpose.

Attempts to stave off their attack were chaotic as people began flailing wildly with all manner of implements, and even shooting them with guns. Wherever you fired, you were certain to hit a squirrel, but the sheer numbers of the rodentlike beasts made it a losing proposition. “We fired our guns and the squirrels kept-a-comin’.”

The Ohio River didn’t mean the end of the line for the squirrel blitz. The newspapers reported that the squirrels, seemingly mesmerized and being summoned by some pied piper, plunged right into the river and swam across to Cincinnati. They’d already been warned by folks on the Kentucky side about the furry armada on the march, and had their own guns ready and blazing to greet the critters.

It took several days to get the squirrels under control, with hundreds per day being killed and countless more finally being scared away and dispersed. I wonder what they did with all the mountains of squirrel carcasses? Burgoo might have been served at dinner tables for countless weeks to come.

Coming of the Corn

As I write this late on Friday night, MSNBC is having a ball ridiculing an article on the website of televangelist Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network: on it, CBN employee Kimberly Daniels makes some crackpot assertions about Halloween candy being literally possessed by demonic entities:

"Most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches," Daniels wrote. "I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference."

"Halloween is much more than a holiday filled with fun and tricks or treats," she wrote. "It is a time for the gathering of evil that masquerades behind the fictitious characters of Dracula, werewolves, mummies and witches on brooms. The truth is that these demons that have been presented as scary cartoons actually exist. I have prayed for witches who are addicted to drinking blood and howling at the moon."

MSNBC, not surprisingly, is treating CBN like they're nuts - which, I admit, they certainly are - but the snarky intellectuals at MSNBC are too much of a rationalist-skeptic bunch to even entertain the notion that something really could be possessed by some sort of spirit.

Myself, I tend to live in a world-view not unlike that of the Algonquin Tribe and their "Manitou" concept, one where everything is haunted by a very real and very tangible living spirit - trees, rocks, birds, dirt, pencils, shoes, laptops, rutabagas, etc. Not only all things, but all classifications of things and components of things, and components of the components. And so on. (It's really not as maddening as it sounds.)

But even without opening that philosophical can of nightcrawlers, there is one instance where CBN's fear of eating food possessed by spirits may clearly be justified.

It's called corn.

We've previously discussed here the horrors of Kentucky corn implanted with human genes being experimentally genetically modified right here in the commonwealth. This is frightening enough in itself to keep a person wide-eyed at night, but that's actually just the tip of the genetically modified iceberg. According to some sources, over 80% of all corn/maize in the United States of America is genetically modified. If you've been trying to avoid eating it, you might as well give up. GMO corn is literally everywhere.

But the omnipresence of GMOs in our nation's corn gets even more disturbing when you consider the omnipresence of corn in our nation's diet. Two scientists at the University of Hawaii recently made a shocking discovery when they chose to analyze the most commonly-eaten foods in America: McDonald's, Wendy's, and Burger King. Using stable isotope analysis, they found that corn molecules were everywhere, in the burgers (corn-fed meat plus corn used as filler) in the buns (corn used in the flour), in the chicken sandwiches (corn-fed meat plus corn used as filler), in the french fries (coated in cornstarch and cooked in corn oil), even in the soft drinks (High Fructose Corn Syrup)! They didn't do Taco Bell, but if they had, needless to say, the ubiquitous corn tortillas would have made everything a forensic nightmare.

Most GMO corn is circulating freely in our food chain with little or no testing - in most cases, some paid lab shill force-fed the stuff to some rats, and if they didn't immediately drop dead or start bursting out with instant bladder cancer, then the corn was given a green light for you and me and children and babies and pets to eat. If someone finds out later that GMO corn causes some sort of zombie disease that takes decades to show up, it'll be too late for us because we're all devouring the stuff every single day of our lives without even knowing it.

Even the bourbon I'm sipping as I type these words is made from corn.

And just what is corn, anyway? That's a good question, and the short answer is that no one seems to know for sure. As columnist Roger Matile has observed, "For something so valuable and yet so common, corn is one of the nation's historical mysteries".

Corn is especially suited to genetic experimentation because of its rapid ability to grow, to hybridize, and to mutate. Unlike most other plants, a cross will show up in the very next generation. Native Americans were the first to "genetically modify" corn in the literal sense, by planting the kernels with deliberation in separate rows, observing which specimens gave the best results, and subsequently increasing production of those samples which had the most desirable attributes.

Scientists are still undecided about just what corn is, and where it came from. Mary Eubanks of Duke University believes ancient humans actually invented corn by interbreeding two varieties of wild grasses. Eubanks believes that Tripsacum dactyloides (Eastern gamagrass) and Zea diploperennis, a perennial variety of Teosinte (a tall annual grass found in Mexico) were crossed to create the original Maize.

There is no clear chain of evolution of corn to be found in the fossil record. Corn as we know it does not seem to have existed until after the Pleistocene era - seemingly, it just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The oldest corn evidence we have is actually quite sketchy - a specimen of alleged 80,000-year-old fossilized corn pollen, found buried 200 feet beneath the surface of Mexico City. Ears of popcorn, 5,600 years old, were found in Bat Cave, New Mexico. Archaeologists opened tombs in Peru and found kernels of popcorn that were 1,000 years old. They were so well preserved that they still popped when cooked. Remnants of corn from the year 400 have been found in Southern Ohio, near the Kentucky-Ohio border and the ever-spooky Ohio River.


The modern-day proponents of the cult of corn are everywhere, even in Kentucky. The Kentucky Corn Growers Association website seems innocuous enough at first glance, but then you realize that they're prominently linking to Sweet Surprise, a pro-HFCS ad campaign that goes beyond shameless in sheer blatant lies and disinformation. (You've seen their TV ads, which invariably portray pro-HFCS people as highly intelligent and happy, while they patiently try to educate an anti-HFCS person who is portrayed as irrational, uninformed, and just plain dumb. The ads are total "Straw man" fallacy, misrepresenting the anti-HFCS position, and then proceeding to argue with and tear down this false position.)

And then you start noticing troubling little things on the kycorn.org site, like prominent corporate logos for some of the most evil nature-wrecking entities on the planet, like DuPont, Syngenta and Monsanto. Ugh. Seeing Kentucky farmers openly and cheerfully endorsing these cynical and toxic polluters makes me want to hurl my corn-based dinner.


Sounds depressing, I know. And on a certain level, it is. But in the bigger picture, maybe, just maybe, the cornification of Earth is all part of the plan. Sir James Frazer, in his landmark tome The Golden Bough, observes:

Dionysus was not the only Greek deity whose tragic story and ritual appear to reflect the decay and revival of vegetation. In another form and with a different application the old tale reappears in the myth of Demeter and Persephone. Substantially their myth is identical with the Syrian one of Aphrodite (Astarte) and Adonis, the Phrygian one of Cybele and Attis, and the Egyptian one of Isis and Osiris. In the Greek fable, as in its Asiatic and Egyptian counterparts, a goddess mourns the loss of a loved one, who personifies the vegetation, more especially the corn, which dies in winter to revive in spring.

The oldest literary document which narrates the myth of Demeter and Persephone is the beautiful Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which critics assign to the seventh century before our era... It has been generally recognised, and indeed it seems scarcely open to doubt, that the main theme which the poet set before himself in composing this hymn was to describe the traditional foundation of the Eleusinian Mysteries by the goddess Demeter.

But there is yet another and a deeper secret of the mysteries which the author of the poem appears to have divulged under cover of his narrative. He tells us how, as soon as she had transformed the barren brown expanse of the Eleusinian plain into a field of golden grain, she gladdened the eyes of Triptolemus and the other Eleusinian princes by showing them the growing or standing corn. When we compare this part of the story with the statement of a Christian writer of the second century, Hippolytus, that the very heart of the mysteries consisted in showing to the initiated a reaped ear of corn, we can hardly doubt that the poet of the hymn was well acquainted with this solemn rite, and that he deliberately intended to explain its origin in precisely the same way as he explained other rites of the mysteries, namely by representing Demeter as having set the example of performing the ceremony in her own person. Thus myth and ritual mutually explain and confirm each other.

Let me repeat what he just said, and place it in bold face: the very heart of the mysteries consisted in showing to the initiated a reaped ear of corn.


Frazer goes on to systematically deconstruct the generally-held belief that Demeter represents an "Earth-Mother" archetype, and insists that Demeter is actually a personification of corn (and also barleycorn); a Corn Goddess, seeking domination over the Earth and its limitations, seeking to transcend the soil to which it is tethered. "The conclusion is confirmed by the monuments; for in ancient art Demeter and Persephone are alike characterised as goddesses of the corn by the crowns of corn which they wear on their heads and by the stalks of corn which they hold in their hands. Again, it was Demeter who first revealed to the Athenians the secret of the corn and diffused the beneficent discovery far and wide through the agency of Triptolemus, whom she sent forth as an itinerant missionary to communicate the boon to all mankind."

In more modern times, the idea of the Corn Goddess is still with us. In Germany to this day, corn is commonly personified under the folkloric name of "The Corn-mother". When the wind causes waves to ripple across a field of corn, the farmers say, "There goes the Corn-mother" or "The Corn-mother is walking through the corn." She is believed to be present in the handful of corn which is left standing last on the field. Depending on local custom, she is either revered by turning that last corn stalk into a ritual doll, or she is exorcised and driven out like a demon.


Frazer continues his scholarly ponderings with a section entitled "The Spirit of the Corn embodied in Human Beings". Which brings us back to where we came in. Says Frazer:

"The spirit of the corn manifests itself not merely in vegetable but also in human form; the person who cuts the last sheaf or gives the last stroke at threshing passes for a temporary embodiment of the corn-spirit, just as much as the bunch of corn which he reaps or threshes".

In other words, you are what you kill, and you are what you eat.

That phrase, "you are what you eat", has its origins in the Anthelme Brillat-Savarin quote, "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es (Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are)". Many readers may recognize this as the maxim of the TV show Iron Chef, shown at the beginning of each episode. In the 21st century, we now know that, all allegory aside, we really are literally made of what we have eaten.

If you want a real scare this Halloween, look no further than the documentary film King Corn, in which two researchers set out to find out why corn is taking over the country, invading practically every food Americans consume. They had their hair analyzed by a lab and discovered that corn was even detected in their hair. They learned that the corn found in almost all processed foods is actually "not fit for human consumption", and yet we're eating it, and so are the animals we eat.


High Fructose Corn Syrup, which is the key ingredient to everything from soft drinks to candy, is made from this same low grade corn that was supposed to be classified inedible. The makers of King Corn could not, try though they did, gain access to any corn syrup factory to view the circumstances under which it is made. In other words, it's essentially as much a guarded and classified state secret as Area 51. You, as a member of the public, are not allowed to see how High Fructose Corn Syrup is manufactured even though you are forced to eat it every day of your life.

Rutgers professor Chi-Tang Ho has proven that soft drinks sweetened with High Fructose Corn Syrup are up to ten times richer in dangerous carbonyl compounds, including the mysterious methylglyoxal. Carbonyl compounds are highly elevated in the bloodstreams of diabetics, and are blamed for diabetic complications such as foot ulcers, nerve damage, and decreased vision.


Since almost all candies now contain High Fructose Corn Syrup, CBN's Pat Robertson and Kimberly Daniels are inadvertently speaking a sort of truth when they say that Halloween candy is possessed by spirits. That ancient spirit of the Corn Goddess is spreading to all that it touches, and it has very nearly touched everything. You, me, Pat Robertson, we're all part corn. It's in our hair. It's in our cells. Our brains. Our nerves. Our molecular structure. Our atomic structure. All living things are increasingly infected by the presence of corn, for better or for worse. And it's too late to stop it now even if we could. It may or may not truly impact us in our own lifetime, but the long-term difference it will make in the future trajectory of life on Earth is immense.

Like a virus and its host, corn has successfully used us as a means to enable it to multiply and spread itself.

To what ends? Probably nothing more sinister than that age-old simple reason for doing anything: survival. Corn is not only surviving and thriving, it is closer to world domination than any other plant in nature, thanks in part to our own inexplicable efforts to promulgate it. We're turning the entire planet into a corn domain, and we don't even know why we're doing it; we're just doing it because something is compelling us to do so. We don't ask questions, we just plough the fields and scatter.

Ride the Ducks

"Quack-tacular fun", it says here. Basically, it's a sightseeing tour of the area taken by boat, which sounds like fun to me, but I actually had previously assumed the whole deal was some sort of action water-ride thing. The website says, "Your Captain will en-tour-tain you with stories of past and present. Learn about Newport and Ohio history, the Ohio River, its famous personalities and its impact on the state and our nation."

The Ride The Ducks attraction's starting point - "Duck Central", they call it - is located at the Newport on the Levee Entertainment Complex outside Newport Aquarium.

Kentucky Liquor Tax

A rant from myself and J.T. Dockery's Transylvania Gentlemen blog:

With the toll that the economy crunch is taking on American citizens, some cities and states are realizing that loosening restrictions on liquor is a good way to keep revenue flowing and boosting local economy.

Many cities are extending bar hours, and some places, like the entire state of Arkansas, are doing away with the "no liquor on Sunday" laws that should have never existed in the first place. According to Ben Jenkins, a spokesman for the Distilled Spirits Council, states that lift the ban on Sunday sales see a significant boost in sales annually.

Jenkins also notes, "Dozens of states consider alcohol taxes, and every year most of them fail because the legislators become educated as to the effects a tax increase on alcohol would have on the hospitality industry".

Unfortunately, given the choice between loosening or tightening Governmental grip on alcohol, between increasing citizen spending or suppressing it, guess which one Kentucky chose? Yep, you guessed it.

Several economists have noted that the key to getting ourselves out of this current economic toilet is to have money continually in motion, to get people spending, to keep bills circulating, by any means necessary. Splopping yet another malodorous tax on Kentuckians, many of whom are just barely getting by right now, is a sure-fire way to suppress spending, depress the morale of citizens, slow the economy down, and generally just screw things up for everybody.

A liquor tax during more affluent times, when the economy was booming and everyone was partying, would still have been a bad idea. But to do it at a time like this when people are struggling just to stay afloat... to tell the average Joe that he has to pay more for that bottle of cheap wine or that six pack of Miller High Life, which may or may not be the closest thing to a splurge, a luxury, or a treat they ever get in their existence... well, there's a word for people who would do that to Kentucky's citizens at a time like this. Several words, actually. None of which are printable here.

The not-inconsiderable Bourbon distillers of our fair state agree. They recently protested and poured bottles of bourbon on the statehouse steps in Frankfort. And there's been some rumblings about how some distilleries are even considering moving across the border to Ohio, Indiana or Tennessee. According to Jerry Rogers, owner of multiple liquor stores in Kentucky:

I simply cannot understand why the members of the Kentucky legislature voted into office by voters who live in "wet" counties would allow another increase in the tax on alcohol after a 22 percent increase just four years ago. This tax burden has been placed on only 50 percent of the population of Kentucky.

This is just fine for legislators from "dry" counties as there is no additional tax burden placed on their constituents, ensuring their re-election. The distillers have said that they may reevaluate their stake in the Bluegrass, and they very well may. Some distillers have already moved their aging operations out of Kentucky due to taxation. It doesn't have to be distilled here to be bourbon.

When this new 6 percent tax -- which is on top of a 11 percent wholesale tax, which is on top of an excise tax -- costs Kentucky its competitive edge, not only will Indiana and Ohio shoppers stay on their side of the river, but many Kentuckians will cross the river to do their shopping.

St. Anne Convent

St. Anne Convent, located in Melbourne, KY, is affiliated with the Catholic organization Congregation of Divine Providence and is described on their website as a "spiritual gathering place for liturgies, retreats and celebrations" for over 600 sisters. Their website also says they were founded in 1889 "by a group of pioneering French women in Newport, Kentucky, along the Ohio River".


But most people on Earth's frame of reference for St. Anne's, whether they even know it or not, would be its appearance in the classic film Rain Man, starring Dustin Hoffman and Kentuckian Tom Cruise. St. Anne Convent was used by the filmmakers as the location of "Wallbrook", the fictitious mental institution where Hoffman's autistic character resides.

National Cornhole Day

The last Saturday of June has been declared National Cornhole Day. I'm pretty sure they're talking about the game of Cornhole, but then again, maybe not.

Anyway, the city of Carrollton is shrewdly capitalizing on this wave of Cornhole-mania that's sweeping the nation. They're hosting something called the HoleHeadz Fest, June 26, 27 and 28, at Point Park.


According to their press release:

To coincide with National Cornhole Day the ACO will hold its first annual HoleHeadz Fest the last weekend of June in Carrollton, Kentucky. The HoleHeadz Fest is camping fun where the two rivers meet. Everyone is invited. Expect family fun, spontaneous cornhole throughout the weekend, and a tournament for the cornhole crazies. Now that is a cornhole fest. Weekend cornhole is Free but there will be a guaranteed $1000.00 purse Luck of the Draw, Doubles Elimination Tournament Friday evening with a $20.00 entry and a guaranteed $4,000.00 purse Doubles Tournament Saturday called Cornhole Madness. After Saturday’s event Eight (8) Teams will each walk away with $500.00.

Point Park in Carrollton, Ky has perfect camping facilities located right at the Kentucky and Ohio River intersection and is gearing up for the National Cornhole Day weekend. There will be food, entertainment, and family fun with a Special Carrollton, Kentucky Proclamation on Saturday for National Cornhole Day.

So what IS Cornhole, anyway? Well, it's a complicated process by which you throw beanbags into a hole cut into a piece of wood.

That's it. Really.

No one knows how or why the game of Cornhole came to be, but Wikipedia claims it's widely believed to have originated in Kentucky or, some say, Cincinnati.

William Branham

The great Kentucky psychic faith-healer William Branham died on this day, Christmas Eve, in 1965.

Branham was born in Burkesville, KY in 1909 to a Catholic family. As a young man, he began racking up an impressive career as a boxer, with fifteen wins on his record. He coulda been a contender, but something happened that caused him to abruptly change his life's trajectory in favor of the Baptist church. He hung up his boxing gloves, donned a suit, and began preaching the gospel in tent revivals.

Preaching was definitely Branham's calling - he was very charismatic, so much so that he quickly acquired his own church with swelling ranks of devotees. As his congregation grew, so did his messianic nature. On June 11, 1933, while baptizing people in the Ohio River between Louisville and Jeffersonville, he claimed that a bright light descended upon him and a disembodied angelic voice told him, "As John the Baptist was sent to forerun the first coming of Jesus Christ, so your message will forerun His second coming."

As the 20th century progressed, many other thinkers and gifted individuals (including fellow Kentuckian Edgar Cayce) began feeling their way from traditional theology toward what would later be known as "New Age" philosophies. Branham's beliefs went from Baptist to Pentecostal, then gradually became more and more apocalyptic and further out past the fringes of mainstream Christianity.


Branham claimed to be the literal reincarnation of the Biblical prophet Elijah, and that his past lives extended throughout history. Says Branham, he was with Moses at the Burning Bush and saw the parting of the Red Sea. I've always wondered if he ever listened to the folk song "I Was Born About 10,000 Years Ago". (I like the Elvis version best!)

Branham was also a major proponent of the controversial "serpent seed" doctrine, which held that the snake in the Garden of Eden was actually a reptilian humanoid who mated with Eve to produce Cain. The idea did not originate with Branham, however; it was once a relatively accepted idea in early Jewish Midrashic texts and in the obscure Rabbinical treatise Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer (פרקי דרבי אליעזר).

Branham's grave is located in Jeffersonville, Indiana. Many of his followers are still active today.


Consult your copy of Weird Kentucky for more Branham revelations!

(Top image: Branham preaching. Middle image: the prophet Elijah, riding his flaming chariot across the sky. Bottom image: poster for a 1956 event with Branham. )

Louisville Crematory and Columbarium / Eastern Cemetery

The abandoned Louisville Crematory and Columbarium is part of Eastern Cemetery, which was shut down in 1989 when a sick discovery was made: that cemetery officials had been secretly burying multiple people in the same grave since the 1920s, and deliberately mishandling cremations as a cost-cutting measure.

In 2005 it was discovered that a walk-in crypt in the cemetery was actually unlocked, and filled with boxes of cremains (cremated human ashes)! Some of these boxes of ashes were labeled with multiple names, and still others simply said "unknown." From a WLKY news story that year:

"It was the burial ground for nearly all of Louisville's prominent 19th-century black leaders and many other dignitaries, but historic Eastern Cemetery has turned into a chilling horror story that only gets stranger as the years go by. It's basically abandoned after the discovery a decade ago that bodies are literally stacked on top of each other -- 48,000 people buried in 16,000 graves ...then a state investigator determined 95 percent of the infant graves here are as shallow as 6 inches deep. Now, we find a crypt on the middle of the property, not locked, containing what appears to be the cremated remains of dozens of people."

A shed in the back is filled with gravestones, some damaged badly. It would seem that no one is now able to determine where these stones are supposed to go. Even before I found out the backstory of these horrors, I've felt palpable vibes of despair - practically cries for help - emanating from this place when I drive by it.

A few years ago, in an article I wrote for the now-defunct Louisville Guide magazine, I interviewed a fellow who was sick and tired of how everyone had abandoned the cemetery. He took it upon himself to start mowing the lawns there, and to attempt to fix the damage done by vandals. I'm not sure if he's still taking on that herculean task, but someone is indeed still mowing it.

Grave desecration is commonplace here. When I drove through there today, I noticed numerous columns and headstones knocked over that had not so before. And I heard a rumor from a reputable journalist friend of mine that there is evidence of some sort of ritual animal sacrifices taking place here recently, whether by some arcane occult weirdos or by stupid goth kids (probably the latter). Four panels of marble have been forcibly removed from the mausoleum and the containers are now empty. Bronze nameplates have also been pried off of other panels. It's truly sickening.


Since Eastern Cemetery is adjacent to Cave Hill Cemetery, whose concertina-wire-lined superwall runs along two sides of the place, doesn't it make sense that it should just be taken over by them? Without some sort of major protections in place, this already tragically damaged cemetery will rapidly be destroyed completely at this rate.

The Crematory and Columbarium has been permanently bricked up, apparently to prevent vandals from gaining access. In so doing, however, they performed a sort of vandalism to the building themselves, by destroying the beautiful ornate entryway which had been the only nice thing about the edifice in the first place.

(Postscript: Very similar atrocities have occurred in Cincinnati's Wesleyan Cemetery... is it something about the dark mojo of the Ohio River that encourages such things?)

Ashland Man Sues 136 Companies Over Asbestos

A man named Ronald Eugene Withrow, who was diagnosed with asbestosis on March 28, 2010, has filed a civil suit against 136 companies that he blames en masse for his diagnosis.

That's according to the West Virginia Record legal journal, who says that Withrow - a resident of Ashland, KY - is claiming each of these 136 companies exposed him to asbestos and asbestos-containing products between 1954 and 1999. The defendants are being sued on "theories of negligence, contaminated buildings, breach of expressed/implied warranty, strict liability, intentional tort, conspiracy, misrepresentations and post-sale duty to warn", according to the journal.

The 136 companies named as defendants are:

3M Company; A.C.F. Industries, Inc.; A.K. Steel Corporation; A.W. Chesterton Company; Ajax Magnathermic Corporation; Aker Kvaerner, Inc.; American Crane and Equipment Corporation; American Electric Power; American Electric Power Service Corporation; Allegheny Energy Service Corporation; Allied Chemical Corporation; Amdura Corporation; Appalachian Power Company; Aristech Chemical Corporation; Ashland Oil, Inc.; Aurora Pump Company; Bay City Crane, Inc.; Borg-Warner Corporation; Brand Insulations, Inc.; Bucyrus International, Inc.; Buffalo Pumps, Inc.; Calgon Carbon Corporation; Cashco, Inc.; Caterpillar, Inc.; Certainteed Corporation; Chevron U.S.A., Inc.; Clark Equipment Company; Cleaver Brooks Company, Inc.; Columbus McKinnon Corporation; Copes-Vulcan, Inc.; Crane Company; Crown, Cork & Seal USA, Inc.; Dezurik, Inc.; Dow Chemical Company; Dravo Corporation; Durabla Manufacturing Company; Eaton Electrical Inc.; El DuPont de Nemours & Co.; Elliott Turbo Machinery Company, Inc.; Fairmont Supply Company; F.B. Wright Company; Flowserve US, Inc. as successor in interest to Bryon Jackson Pumps; Flowserve US, Inc. f/k/a Flowserve FSD Corporation f/k/a Durametallic Corp.; Flowserve US, Inc. f/k/a Durco International, Inc.; Ford Motor Company; Foseco, Inc.; Foster Wheeler Energy Corporation; General Electric Company, Inc.; General Refractories Company; Geo. V. Hamilton, Inc.; Georgia Pacific; the Gorman-Rupp Company; Goulds Pumps, Inc.; Grinnell Corporation; Honeywell International; Honeywell International, Inc.; Huntington Alloys Corporation; I.U. North America, Inc.; IMO Industries, Inc.; Industrial Holdings Corporation; Ingersoll-Rand Company; Insul Company, Inc.; ITT Corporation; I.U. North America, Inc. f/k/a the Gage Company; J.H. France Refractories; John Crane, Inc.; John Deere Company; Joy Technologies, Inc.; Kelsey-Hayes Company; Kentucky Power Company; KES Acquisition Company; Kramig Co.; Lawrence Pumps, Inc.; Lockheed Martin Corporation; Manitowoc Cranes, Inc.; McJunkin Corporation; Metropolitan Life Insurance Company; Milwaukee Valve Company, Inc.; Monongahela Power Company; Morgan Engineering Systems, Inc.; Mueller Steam Specialty; NACCO Materials Handling Group, Inc.; Nagle Pumps; Navistar, Inc.; NIBCO, Inc.; National Service Industries Venture, Inc.; Nitro Industrial Coverings, Inc.; Oakfabco, Inc.; Oglebay Norton Company; Ohio Power Company; Ohio Valley Insulating Company, Inc.; Ohio Valley Electric Corporation; Owens-Illinois, Inc.; P&H Mining Equipment, Inc. Peerless Pumps; Pneumo Abex Corporation; Premier Refractories, Inc.; Rapid American Corporation; Reading Crane; Rhone-Poulenc AG Company; Riley Power, Inc.; Rockwell Automation, Inc.; Ross Brothers Construction Co.; Rust Constructors, Inc.; Rust Engineering & Construction, Inc.; Rust International, Inc.; Schneider Electric USA, Inc.; State Electric Supply Company; Sterling Fluid Systems (USA); South Point Ethanol; Stockham Valves & Fittings; Superior Boiler Works, Inc.; Taco, Inc.; Tasco Insulations, Inc.; the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.; the F.D. Lawrence Electric Company; the Gage Company; Trecco Construction Services, Inc.; Thiem Corp.; UB West Virginia, Inc.; Union Carbide Chemical & Plastics Company; Uniroyal, Inc.; United Engineers and Contractors, Inc.; United Engineers & Constructors, Inc.; Viacom, Inc.; Vimasco Corporation; Warren Pumps, Inc.; Weil-McLain Company; West Virginia State Electric Supply; Westinghouse Air Brake Division of Trane U.S., Inc.; Westinghouse Air Brake and/or Wabco; Whiting Crane; Washington Group International; Yale Materials Handling Corporation; and Zurn Industries, Inc.

I doubt this scattershot approach will work out, but you never know. Many asbestosis and mesothelioma lawsuits are settled out of court. Others, however, like the infamous W.R. Grace case in Libby, Montana, dragged on and on and on. (W.R. Grace, incidentally, is the same company also involved in a trichloroethylene case in Massachusetts, as depicted in the John Travolta film A Civil Action. W.R. Grace also had a plant in New Albany, Indiana, just over the river from Louisville, for many years.)

Falls City (the City)

Nationwide drinkers of Falls City Beer probably thought the stuff was named after Falls City, Nebraska or Falls City, Oregon, if they even gave much thought to it at all.

But Falls City is actually an old nickname of Louisville's, one which may seem confusing at first since, after all, Louisville doesn't have any waterfalls, right? And then it hits you, oh yeah, we do - the Falls of the Ohio.

The Falls of the Ohio is generally associated with the Indiana side of the river, mainly because they've (sort of) preserved the fossil beds on their side, and built a park and "Interpretive Center" museum celebrating it. Unfortunately, there's not much left to celebrate - the original falls has been nearly decimated by removal of most of its limestone by the city of Louisville in the late 19th/early 20th century. What was once a towering and grandiose waterfall is now a gentle step only a few feet high.

And the much-touted fossil beds have frankly become a bit of a pathetic joke. According to the official Falls of the Ohio website, "The 386-million-year-old fossil beds are among the largest naturally exposed Devonian fossil beds in the world." And yet, tourists are allowed to tromp all over them, there is essentially zero security to keep people from plucking the beds clean of fossils, and at any given time, the place is filled with garbage, driftwood, dead appliances, chemical drums and other debris. It's not a very pleasant place to be.

Mothman Sighting in Russell

These two photographs have been circulating the net for several months now, and are alleged to be a Mothman sighting on a bridge connecting Russell, KY and Ironton, OH.

I'm not buying it, for several reasons; not the least of which is that I just don't believe in the "Mothman" in the first place. I'm also troubled by the fact that the two jpgs are small and of different sizes (where are the originals?). And it sure is a coincidence that the Mothman is seen clinging to a bridge on the Ohio River, just as in its original alleged 1966 sighting. The photos are claimed to have been taken in the evening near dusk, yet the second photo of the "Mothman" leaving shows a considerably lighter sky - indicating that the photos were taken in the morning as the sun is rapidly rising.

Finally, the story that the couple who took these photos claim to have seen its red eyes glowing - even from that huge distance - is just plain silly.

Abandoned Railroad Bridge Returns

The long-abandoned Big Four Railroad Bridge has been slated to be repurposed as a pedestrian walkway/bikeway, making travel between Louisville and Indiana fun.


When I first moved to Louisville several years ago, everyone was saying the pedestrian bridge in Butchertown was coming "any day now". After a couple of years I gave up on it, so it pleases me to see that they're finally making some progress on the construction of the on-ramp that will enable feet, bikes, and wheelchairs to make the trek across the Ohio River.

However, the trajectory of the on-ramp is such a wide one that simply getting to the bridge looks almost as long a journey as crossing the bridge itself. I was rather hoping for an elevator or something.

Aerial Mystery of 1880

Another great contribution from our friend David Domine:

When I found mention of the 1880s sighting of Spring Heeled Jack in Louisville by Jim Brandon, I went to the library and went through all the micro-fiched copies of the local papers around that time, in the hopes that I'd find the original article that spurred that reference. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the article in question, but strangely enough, I found other articles about strange aerial phenomena at the same time. Maybe they tie in?

I think Bart Nunnelly might refer to one of them in his book, but I found several others, including reports of a flying Spring-heeled Jack kind of character seen over Coney Island and "flying towards Kentucky."

What follows are key exceprts from the Courier-Journal news stories Domine passed along.

July 29, 1880:

A FLYING MACHINE
_________

WHAT TWO LOUISVILLIANS SAW LAST EVENING

Between 6 and 7 o’clock last evening while Messers. C. A. Youngman and Ben Flexner were standing at a side window of Haddart’s drug store, at Second and Chestnut Streets, looking skyward, they discovered an object high up in the air, apparently immediately above the Ohio river bridge, which they at first thought was the wreck of a toy balloon. As it got nearer they observed that it had the appearance of a man surrounded by machinery, which he seemed to be working with his feet and hands. He worked his feet as though he was running a treadle, and his arms seemed to be swinging to and fro above his head, though the latter movement sometimes appeared to be executed with wings or fans. The gazers became considerably worked up by the apparition, and inspected it very closely. They could see the delicate outlines of machinery, but the object was too high up to make out its exact construction. At times it would seem to be descending, and then the man appeared to exert himself considerably, and ran the machine faster, when it would ascend and assume a horizontal position. It did not travel as fast as a paper balloon, and its course seemed to be entirely under the control of the aeronaut. At first it was traveling a southeastward direction, but when it reached a point just over the city, and it turned and went due south, until it had passed nearly over the city, when it tacked to the southwest, in which direction it was going when it passed out of sight in the twilight of the evening. The gentlemen who saw it are confident that it was a man navigating the air on a flying machine. His movements were regular and the machine was under the most perfect control. If he belonged to this mundane sphere he should have dropped his card as he passed over, to enlighten those who saw him, and that his friends, if he has any, might be informed of his whereabouts.

July 30, 1880:

Lively times prevailed at Ruddart’s drug store on Second and Chestnut streets yesterday, requiring the greatest exertion on the part of the clerks to answer the questions of visitors and telephone calls in regard to the flying machine that was seen from this place the previous evening. Inquiries began to pour in as soon as the doors were opened yesterday morning, from early readers of the COURIER-JOURNAL, asking to have the machine explained to them in all its minuteness....

By the time the shades of night began to settle over the city, fully 500 visitors had called to inquire about it, and the telephone bell kept up a constant ringing all day, and, but for the fact that hardly two persons made the same inquiries, the clerks would have broken down at the task. Among the callers, however, was a lady living in the southern part of the city, who saw the areonaut himself, and called the attention of her husband to it. They did not get a good view of it, however, but saw enough to convince them, that it was the work of a "human agency."

August 6, 1880:

Dr. D. F. Dempsey, of Madisonville, Ky., has written the following to the Madisonville Times concerning the flying machine which was observed passing over this city two weeks ago:
"I interviewed Mr. Wells, the proprietor of the marble shop, North Main street, and Mr. Royster, a workman in said shop, in regard to what he and his family saw hop over Madisonville last Wednesday, but was not positive as to the day. Mr. Wells stated that Mr. Royster told him about it the day that an account of a flying machine over Louisville was published in the COURIER-JOURNAL. I asked them both, particularly Mr. Wells, was it before we received the COURIER-JOURNAL. The reply was emphatic, that it was in the morning of the day we received said COURIER-JOURNAL. Mr. Royster stated that the evening before, which would be Wednesday, between sundown and dark, his son Johnnie, six or seven years old, called his attention to something he saw hopping over Madisonville. He, Mr. Royster, said his wife and other children went out and looked at it. They live in southeastern Madisonville, about half mile from the railroad depot. He said there seemed to be a ball at each end of the thing, and it looked as if it was about over the depot. It sometimes appeared in a circular form and changed to an oval. It passed out of sight going, as well as he could determine, directly south. Everybody knows Mr. Wells and will believe that what he said in regard to the time Mr. Royster told him these things is strictly true."

New York Times, Sept. 12, 1880:

One day last week a marvelous apparition was seen near Coney Island. At the height of at least a thousand feet in the air a strange object was in the act of flying toward the New Jersey coast. It was apparently a man with bat’s wings and improved frog’s legs. The face of which could be distinctly seen, and it wore a cruel and determined expression. The movements made by the object closely resembled those of a frog in the act of swimming with his hind legs and flying with his front legs....

About a month ago an object of precisely the same nature was seen in the air over St. Louis by a number of citizens who happened to be sober and are believed to be trustworthy. A little later it was seen by various Kentucky persons as it flew across the state.

I'm still digesting these materials and mulling 'em over, but I have to say one of my first impressions is that it gives me pause that from one day to the next, the Courier-Journal couldn't get the name of the drugstore right. On the other hand, the interconnectivity between the Courier-Journal reports and the New York Times report is a huge step towards giving this story some legs.