Kentucky is Strange.

Early Native American settlers in Kentucky knew this place was odd, they have various stories and legends to illustrate their claims. If you have lived in Kentucky you know it to be true. We are a weird state full of quirky, unusual people. The following is just a sample of things that make Kentucky weird.

1. Two of the most haunted places on earth, according to the folks that track that sort of thing,

are located in Kentucky. Waverly Hills Sanatorium, and Bobby Mackey’s Music World. Since I have a whole post dedicated to Waverly Hills I won’t dwell on it here. Bobby Mackey’s is a nightclub in the northern Kentucky town of Wilder. There is a plethora of urban legends about this club, from suicides to murder, bootleggers and old school gangsters. Some even claim it is a portal to hell. Bobby Mackey himself has tried to link at least one of the alleged hauntings to the murder of Pearl Bryan. The 22 year old Indiana native was found decapitated a few miles from the club. Her head was never recovered. No hard evidence exists to link her 1896 with the site of Bobby Mackey’s.

2. We are the site of, to my knowledge, the only incident of a UFO hitting a train. The first I heard about it was in the book Weird Kentucky, if its in a book it must be true...right? Here is the deal, no one is dispute that a train suffered extensive damage that night. According to official reports from CSX debris fell off a hillside and damaged the train. They have an official report on the matter. NUFORC, the UFO reporting people also have a file on this. I will let you decide for yourself which version of events you believe.

3. Sometimes meat just falls from the sky. On March 3, 1876 Mrs. Allen Crouch was in the yard

A preserved sample located
in the Arthur Byrd Cabinet, Transylvania University

making soap in the rural Olympia community, when suddenly out of a clear sky meat began to fall. The shower was contained to a relatively small 100-by-50-yard area near the couples. Samples of the flesh were sent to various labs which confirmed it to be lung and muscular tissue from a horse. What caused this is still up for debate, but most agree that engorged vultures vomited up their meal.

4. Kentucky is home to the only town built inside a meteor crater. Middlesboro, at town of around 10,000 people sits in the Cumberland Gap, where Daniel Boone and early settlers ventured into the state. Although settlers had been in the area since the late 1700’s and the town was officially founded in 1886 it wasn’t until 1962 that the U. S. Geological Survey identified it as an impact crater from a meteor some 300 million years ago.

5. We have blue people. Devotees of a certain college team may claim to bleed blue, and Paul Karason dosed himself with enough colloidal silver to turn himself blue but only the Blue Fugates of Troublesome Creek can claim to be naturally blue. Martin Fugate settled in a rural area of Perry county known as Troublesome creek. He met and married a local girl named Elizabeth Smith. Little did the pair know that they both carried recessive genes for methemoglobinemia. They had high levels of methemoglobin in their bodies resulting in a blue appearance. In the 1860’s that a hematologist that the University of Kentucky heard about the “Blue people” and traveled into the mountains to investigate things for himself. He was able to successfully treat them with methylene blue clearing up their blue complexions.

6. We elect dogs to political offices. You may have heard that Lucy Lou, the Border Collie mayor of Rabbit Hash will announce her candidacy for President Labor Day weekend. I am personally a little apprehensive of having another Kentuckian as president. Remember the

whole civil war was fought between two native Kentuckians. Lucy Lou is one in a long line of Dog mayors of Rabbit Hash the tradition dating back to the late 1990's. The tiny community on the banks of the Ohio river is home to 315 people and one amazing old country store.