Weird Kentucky: We could fill a book

The folks from 'Weird U.S.' series focus on the Bluegrass State

By Cheryl Truman ctruman@herald-leader.com

You probably don't spend much time fretting about whether Kentucky still has, or indeed ever had, families of blue-skinned people. Whether great chunks of Eastern Kentucky University are haunted. Whether there is evidence of a lost civilization under downtown Lexington.

Jeffrey Scott Holland, author of the new book Weird Kentucky: Your Travel Guide to Kentucky's ­Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets (Sterling, $19.95) has taken all the wondering out of those footnote conversations about Kentucky: Who, exactly, are the Melungeons? Has Bigfoot ever wandered near Henderson? What building in Lexington looks most like a UFO?

Holland, 41, is a Louisville artist who describes himself thusly: “Even before the Internet, I used to be the sort of Agent Mulder of Kentucky.” He kept notes of Kentucky oddities filed on index cards: Kentucky's “X Files,” if you will.

It all started in Jersey

You can say that some of the book's most lovingly told tales — such as the vanishing hitchhiker — are mere urban legends and the stuff of songs such as Strange Things Happen and Bringing Mary Home. Don't highway-roaming ghosts exist in all 50 states?

But Holland does not take well to suggestions that some items in the book — part of the Weird U.S. series, which started with a duo that scrutinized the assorted weirdness of New Jersey and now includes more than a dozen editions — give off the slightest whiff of urban legendry: “I am not fond of Snopes.com and other debunking sites of that ilk, which basically trade one kind of hearsay debunking for another.”

Holland says the anecdotes in Weird Kentucky are “not definitive in any way. I just put out there the concepts that are floating around. … In many ways in life and in all things, one often finds that the most unbelievable story turns out to be the true one.”

Hence Weird Kentucky includes accounts of an alleged 1976 UFO abduction in Stanford, a train's collision with a possible UFO near Paintsville in 2002, and “Herry,” the potential lake monster of Herrington Lake.

Light skin, blue skin

About the Melungeons: Who were they? Well, allegedly they were dark-haired, light-skinned settlers who predated Europeans and operated silver mines; their descendants allegedly included Abraham Lincoln, Ava Gardner and Elvis Presley. And no, you probably won't be able to find their cleverly hidden stash of invaluable coinage, but feel free to try.

And the blue people, who could join the Blue Man Group without makeup? They probably lacked a blood enzyme. As Holland archly notes in Weird Kentucky, “The very few family photographs known to exist of the blue-skinned people were taken, alas, with black-and-white film.”

Holland also has written, tongue in cheek, of such oddities as Murray's “vampire clan,” a group led by Rod Ferrell that decided to murder Floridians Richard Wendorf and Ruth Queen.

“Ruth put up a good fight and managed to throw scalding coffee on Ferrell,” Holland writes, but Ferrell managed to get the upper hand.

And about that lost civilization under Lexington?

Thomas Ashe's 1806 book Travels in America describes an underground chamber discovered beneath Lexington in 1783 that allegedly contained a stone altar, human skulls and mummified remains with red hair, folks who, according to local Native Americans, were the remnants of an ancient civilization that died out long ago.

The Lexington UFO building? The Coca-Cola building off Leestown Road, which, seen in the afternoon light, looks like a sci-fi mother ship.

And the hauntings at EKU? Holland writes that they're at Keene Hall, Sullivan Hall, the Keen Johnson ballroom and the Model Laboratory school. Bonus weirdness points are awarded for the alleged ghost dog behind the amphitheater and the Moore Building's naked female ghost.

We're thinking there's already an uptick in EKU applications.