The Frankfort Avenue Art House

Take a look at this amazingly decorated home on Frankfort Avenue near Butchertown in Louisville. We are unable to drive past it without slowing down for a long gaze at it, even if it means missing the green light. Like a Hieronymus Bosch painting, we see something different in it every time we study it.


More images and information about this wonderful building can be found in the Weird Kentucky book.


You can sort-of see all the stuff peppered all over the property on Google Maps.

The Raelian Movement in Kentucky

In 1973 a French racing-car journalist named Claude Vorilhon (who now calls himself "Rael") began having a series of visitations from extraterrestrial entities called the Elohim. According to Rael's bizarre writings, these beings reportedly wore swastikas and explained that the original, pre-Nazi meaning of the symbol is that "all is cyclic in infinite time" (and in fact, the swastika is an ancient symbol that predates the Third Reich’s twentieth-century appropriation of it).

Rael claims that the Elohim told him they created all life on earth thru a process very similar to cloning; he was given instructions to build a "space embassy" on Earth for the purpose of spiritually preparing mankind for the Elohim’s grand return, and to found a so-called "atheistic religion".

Eventually this became the International Raelian movement, headquartered in Las Vegas. Kentucky has a chapter as well - I've met with Carla Watson, the local contact person for the Kentucky Raelians, and found her enthusiasm for Raelism to be sincere and evident.

Try though I may to remain open-minded about this group, though, I can't get behind things like this and this and this.

Capt. Jones of Texas

Captain Jones.

No first name known? No birth date known?

Shot to death.

By whom? And under what circumstances? The Civil War, we presume?

I remember taking this photo three or four years ago but for the life of me, I can't recall what cemetery this was in. Frankfort? Cave Hill? If anyone knows - and also knows what the backstory about this man is - please let me know.

Murderers Ate Here

Ruby's Restaurant - In May 2007, O.J. Simpson was in town for the Kentucky Derby, and he and his entourage filed in to Jeff Ruby's Steakhouse, one of the state's most prestigious and upscale restaurants. As the anecdote is told, someone - either an employee or a customer - came up to Ruby all dazzled and star-struck by Simpson's presence. After just a moment of distaste and reflection, Ruby walked over to O.J.'s table and informed his party that they would have to leave immediately, as a show of solidarity with the Goldman and Brown families.

O.J. and his crew quietly gathered their coats and left without a fuss, and the dining room burst into applause for Ruby. Afterwards, there was some venting in the press by O.J.'s attorneys, but this soon died down as cooler heads prevailed and realized this was already enough of a bad PR situation as it was.

Ruby's restaurant is very highly recommended, incidentally, and its wild and lavish decor is worth checking out: the chandelier is from the famous and now-destroyed Cadillac Square Building, and its elevator facade came from the historic Chrysler Building.

Kim's Coffee - Although this cafe, a longtime Louisville tradition, no longer exists, it once stood at 1704 Rowan Street and once was the site of a Ted Bundy sighting. In 1977, serial killer Bundy was zigzagging around the nation after having escaped from jail in Aspen, Colorado, and found his way to Louisville for awhile. At least long enough for a cup of coffee and a danish.

Officially there has been no connection made between Bundy and any murders in the area during that time, although some have raised suspicions.

An apartment building stands at the spot today.

Waco Food Mart BP - In its glory days of yesteryear, the small spooky community of Waco was once home to a number of thriving mom-n-pop grocery stores and markets, but this large food mart/gas station is the last one standing.

Serial killer Glen Rogers reportedly ate, snacked and gassed up here whenever he was in the area and visiting relatives. He possibly also purchased here the can of beer that he hurled in desperation at the arresting detective when he realized the jig was up. Rogers' family owned property near Beattyville, KY and he often traveled on KY 52, passing through Richmond, Waco, Irvine and Ravenna, and frequenting several other restaurants along the way. (One of Rogers' victims ended up found dead in that Beattyville cabin, incidentally.)

Rogers' nationwide murder spree left a trail of victims from Hamilton, OH across the country to Los Angeles, and ended in Richmond, KY in November 1995 when a relative tipped off the Madison County police that he had just left her home. Currently Rogers is on Death Row in Raiford, FL.

Weird Kentucky book signings!

I, Jeffrey Scott Holland, your humble host of Kentucky kookiness, will be making book-signing appearances at:

June 12 - Barnes & Noble at The Summit, Louisville, KY. 7:00pm.

June 28 - A Reader's Corner, Louisville, KY. 1:00pm.

July 12 - Morris Book Store grand opening, Lexington, KY. TBA.

But if you're impatient and just can't wait till these events to obtain the book, the obsessive-compulsive folks over at Telecrylic International have compiled a price-comparison chart for online sources of Weird Kentucky. You just might be surprised at their findings; I certainly was.

The Wig Wam

The Wig Wam Restaurant has been an Estill County mainstay since as long as I can remember.

Though currently beige, it used to be Forest Green for most of my childhood, and apparently was a more garish assortment of colors way back in the day. Reportedly the building had more accoutrements back then to make it look more teepee-like too. Anyway, it's one of Kentucky's lesser-known examples of classic old-school mimetic architecture, and the burgers are dee-lish. Check it out next time you're in sunny downtown Ravenna.

Clown Pest Control!

This is a very old entry from our very first incarnation of the Unusual Kentucky site in 2002. These wonderful signs no longer exist, alas, but we'll always have the photos and the memories...

On Big Hill Avenue in Richmond, the was a large wooden sign in the yard of someone's home that advertises for a termite and pest control company. The fact this sign is in the front yard of a residence is kinda odd anyway. But when you take a look at the other side, there's a picture of a frightening clown! And the same phone number as the reverse side. So, um, were these people running a termite business AND a clown business? Did the clown use a bug-spray fumigator instead of a seltzer bottle?

But wait, there's more.... several blocks away down the street, at the corner of Big Hill and Main Street, there was another sign with the same clown and the same phone number in someone else's front yard! (We never did trespass and go up into their yard to see if the other side of the sign had the pest control logo on it, but we certainly were curious.)

Dairy Queen Monster Feet

This pair of tridactyl feet made of cement fascinated me for years and has been the subject of much speculation, much like the mystery four-toed stone foot on ABC's Lost. Whatever this statue was, it once stood in front of the Dairy Queen in Versailles, KY. Now even the base with the feet are gone, leaving only this photo and many unanswered questions, not the least of which is, who was this Elmer?

Masonic Neon Signs

Some of my friends and I have always been fixated on the idea of secret societies having neon signs.

Above: Frankfort. Below: Stanford.

UFO over Clays Ferry, 2005

A report filed with NUFORC:

Occurred : 4/25/2005 20:00 (Entered as : 04/25/1905 20:00)
Reported: 4/26/2005 12:52:21 PM 12:52
Posted: 5/11/2005
Location: Lexington, KY
Shape: Disk
Duration:20 minutes

Disk-shaped object hovering up in the sky and traveling slowly for about 20 minutes with a brief flash of light coming out of it.

"I was traveling down I-75 last night coming back to Lexington, Kentucky from Richmond, Kentucky where I attend graduate school classes.

It was directly in my line of sight right before the curve towards the Clays Ferry Exit. The sky had a few clouds but it was mostly clear. I saw it straight ahead and I saw a flash of light come from the other side and traveled halfway around the object and stopped. It did not flash all the way around the object. It only flashed once. It was a disk- shaped object that was a dark color like a dark grey or brown, not quite black.

The interstate wound around and the object was no longer in front of me but it was traveling along to my right. I was straining my eyes to see legs to a water tower, or helicoptor propellers, or wings to an airplane, but there was none of that. It was not a water tower because for one thing, I found out that it was moving and there was nothing sticking out of the object like wings or propellers. It was definitely going too slow to be an airplane.

The only other thing I could think of would be a blimp of some kind but it didn't have any kind of writing or basket and I don't know if those have lights. Also, it was 8:00pm on a Monday night and no events going on that would require a blimp that I know of and it simply did not look like a blimp. However, I am trying to justify this because it goes against everything I believe in or ever thought possible.

This thing was traveling in my line of sight for about 20 minutes. When i got off on the Man-o-War exit I turned the wrong way so that i could follow it and take a clear picture with my camera phone. By the time I could stop it was too far away to see it in the picture. My camera phone is not very clear at all, anyway. It just kept traveling away from me and I gave up and turned back around and went home.

I am just a Nutrition grad school student and I do not have any expertise in the aircraft area. All I know is what I saw. Can someone please tell me what this thing might have been? I need some peace of mind."

Dixie Highway

The stretch of Highway 31W, or “Dixie Highway,” that takes one out of Jefferson County has long fascinated me. It may not exactly be a “road less traveled” - in fact, the traffic can often be quite annoying - but it’s a road that many seek to avoid. It should come as no surprise to the reader, then, that’s it’s a road I enjoy greatly, for the very same reasons that others shun it.

Dixie Highway, to many people’s sense of aesthetics and decorum, is ugly. Dirty. Tacky. Businesses abound that still have that beautiful classic 1940s-1960s architecture and signage, which I’ll take any day over the dreary modern homogenized look. One of my favorite places here is Pepper Tackle, a fishing supply store whose sign features a gargantuan fiberglass fish. City officials, who wouldn’t know cultural beauty if it bit the psoriasis off their elbows, have made attempts to have the sign removed over various contrived technicalities. So far the enemy’s efforts have been unsuccessful. The price of eternal awesomeness is eternal vigilance.

Then there’s the plethora of porno stores and adult theaters, which lend a pleasantly gaudy bright pink je ne sais quoi to the area, as do the charming characters seen furtively shuffling and stumbling in and out of them. It’s no Bourbon Street, but the scene nevertheless conjures up a powerful sense of noble lowlife resonance with the denizens of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny".

The porno houses seem to drastically proliferate the closer one gets to Fort Knox. A coincidence, no doubt.

And then there’s Rubbertown, where all sorts of pleasant substances are manufactured, and many more are sloughed off. You’ll know it when you come upon it - look for the giant belching smokestacks. You can’t miss it. You also might smell some funny smells while passing through this area, but don’t worry, they wouldn’t be allowed to send toxic chemicals into the air, right? Responsible and far-sighted men in local and federal government have entire careers devoted to keep that from happening, right?

There’s an environmental activist group in Jefferson County called REACT, which stands for Rubbertown Emergency Action, who describe themselves as a “campaign to stop toxic air pollution coming from ten chemical plants located in the Rubbertown area of Louisville,” and go on to say: “Air monitors located in neighborhoods surrounding the chemical plants revealed that residents have been breathing in at least 18 toxic chemicals at levels sometimes as high as 540 times the health threshold established by the EPA.” The 18 toxic chemicals detected by the air monitors, chemicals such as 1,3-butadiene and vinyl chloride, can cause cancer, cardiovascular disease and central nervous system damage. REACT is a campaign of Rubbertown residents who have finally said, “Enough! We're not taking it anymore”, and are taking action to end Rubbertown's 'killer air.'

The history of Dixie Highway is as convoluted as its terrain. As I understand it, in 1914 it was decided to create a series of highways and roads that were generally regarded to be one unified highway, even though this included side roads, connecting roads, and multiple branches. Today Dixie Highway’s meandering paths have been renamed piecemeal, dependent on location, and now make up portions of other highways, such as U.S. 25. Most Kentuckians no longer refer to these roads as “Dixie Highway,” but the stretch of Highway 31W that we are discussing here is still referred to by that name by its locals.

Standing Stones in Jeffersontown

Once upon a time, the area that's now the city of Jeffersontown, KY was teeming with wildlife, especially bears, deer, wildcats, and buffalo. Some of the existing paved roads today began as ancient traditional trails and pathways blazed by buffalo as they stomped the same path year after year to the salt licks. These pathways were
etched into the wilderness by the buffalo long before humans set foot on this soil.

Over the years, there have been persistent rumors about an American Indian civilization, or several civilizations, that once erected standing stones in Jeffersontown, KY. Some versions of the myth describe them Stonehenge-style, while other reports describe them carved as totems, to resemble animals and strange beasts, possibly to commemorate these same critters that ruled this region and created the first corridors through these woods.

Both types of Indian-related stonework are common in Kentucky and its surrounding "dark and bloody ground" area. Although there's little traces today of these civilizations and their standing stones, we do have some possible glimpses into the past.

Following the roads towards Jeffersontown's Northeastern edge, we were intrigued by the large interestingly shaped rocks that dot the landscape. Much of this land today is occupied by an industrial park, but its tenants are spaced far apart and plenty of open green areas remain.
Many of the stones appear to have been moved into their current position as roadside decoration, but others are off the beaten path and some are now almost entirely buried with only a small bit protruding. It would appear that the stones were originally here when the industrial park was built, and then some of the stones were simply made use of as decoration.

A few visits to local businessmen in the area seem to confirm this: we couldn't find anyone who knew for sure about the prehistory of the giant rocks in their factory's front yard, but many could say with some degree of certainty that the rocks were not shipped in for decoration but pre-existed on the property when the buildings were
built.

The stones themselves certainly lend themselves to the myth of the Jeffersontown indian totems - many have a strikingly obvious resemblance to animals - especially turtles and bears, which would in fact be two of the key animals one would likely expect to be represented. These more exciting examples tend to be ones that have been moved out into the front yards for display, but the nearby area is pockmarked with plenty more that are hidden, and are probably still in their original locations.
Unfortunately, there's no really dependable way to know for sure. After all, there's no point in carbon dating a rock. Erosion from weather and creeks can make many a rock look zoomorphic with the passage of enough time and water. In fact, some say the Native Americans would actually seek out such large stones peculiarly shaped by water flow, either using them as is or using them as the starting point for their own additional sculpting. The presence of Amerind markings and petroglyphs would help, but even that doesn't actually prove anything in a concrete (no pun intended) scientific way.

In the meantime, we can continue the search for more relevant artifacts, and enjoy these curious stones for what they are, at face value.