Cobb's Haunt

Every year around this time, between the Equinox and Samhain, Sunny Acres Farm hosts a Halloween corn maze called "Cobb's Haunt". Cobb's Haunt has no lights, and no flashlights are allowed. Sounds like my kind of place! But what goes on in the darkness? I shudder to think.

Listen to their radio ad on mp3 here.

Cobb's Haunt welcomes you each Friday and Saturday throughout the month of October. It opens at dusk each night, and the last group goes through at Midnight - and that's just the perfect hour to be there, isn't it?

You'll find the Cobb's Haunt corn maze at 6516 Echo Trail in Jeffersontown.

Inflatable Duck

This giant inflatable duck on Electron Drive in Jeffersontown's Bluegrass Industrial Park may not be as scary as the Inflatable Ape or as surreal as the Inflatable Cone, but it sure is yellow.

New Rule!

This is an old sign affixed beside the employees-only rear entrance to a long-defunct factory in Jeffersontown's Bluegrass Industrial Park. I'd love to know the backstory that caused some manager to have this sign made proclaiming this highly specific ban.

No "distribution of any written or printed material"? Were they serious?

Technically, this would mean sharing a newspaper on your lunch break, passing a note, or even lending a dollar bill to a buddy at the vending machines (Assuming snacks weren't also verboten at this happy workplace). My guess is that this sign, which sounds like it came straight outta the office of Dilbert's boss, had something to do with some sort of disgruntled-worker hand-typed newsletter, or labor-union materials.

Hostage Standoff in Bluegrass Industrial Park

Yesterday, a crazed gunman took over Lyndon Millworks, a woodworking factory in Jeffersontown's Bluegrass Industrial Park, and held one man hostage at gunpoint.

WLKY was reporting rumors that it had something to do with the gunman's spouse or significant other, but details were sketchy. Cherchez la femme.

According to the Courier-Journal:

At 3:36 a.m. Tuesday, the gunman inside Lyndon Millworks in the Bluegrass Industrial Park ended contact with Louisville Metro Police who had been in communication with him since the incident began around 3:30 p.m. Monday, according to Maj. Chris McIntire of the Jeffersontown Police Department.

A short time later, SWAT team members who had been stationed outside the business heard at least one shot, then saw the hostage come out unharmed, McIntire said. McIntire said he had no reason to believe that officers fired their weapons during the incident.

The gunman, who was not an employee and had no relationship to the hostage, was taken to University Hospital with life-threatening injuries. The names of the the hostage, who is the owner of the business, and the gunman have not been released.

"The hostage just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," McIntire said.

Watching WLKY's live coverage, I was surprised to see a police van clearly labeled "Hostage Negotiating Team". How often does that vehicle get hauled out in Louisville??

Tomato Farm Redux

Back in the Spring, I wrote about an abandoned tomato farm that had some cool old remnants of its glory days hidden amongst the foliage, near the border of Jeffersontown and Middletown.

Well, recently these signs have appeared in front. Looks like somebody's got big plans to build a strip-mall here, including a new bank. (Oddly, another new bank is currently being built - and is almost finished - a block down the street, about 10 seconds away.)

This comes not long after a similar sign popped up not too far away, for a similar planned retail cluster which will demolish a quaint corner of older homes.

Don't we already have enough empty and unwanted shopping centers?

"Prepare for Death"

An inscription from a gravestone in Jeffersontown Cemetery:

Weep not for me, oh kindred dear
I am not dead but sleeping here
My grave is silent as you see
Prepare for Death and follow me...

Tree Bursts From Crypt

Another find from the German Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Jeffersontown. That cemetery has some lovely Revolutionary War above-ground graves, such as the ones pictured in the bottom image below. One, however, has been completely destroyed by a tree that somehow managed to grow inside the crypt and eventually burst it apart.

"O Death, O Grave"

This uprooted gravestone laying on the ground at the German Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery has the inscription "O Death, O Grave". This inscription was completely buried under the soil for who knows how many years, but is now revealed to be viewed again.



It's apparently a quote from the poem Su ruhest du, o meine Ruh by Salomo Franck, circa 1711:

To me the darksome tomb
Is but a narrow room,
Where I may rest in peace from sorrow free;

Thy death shall give me power
To cry in that dark hour,
O Death, O Grave, where is your victory?

The grave can nought destroy,
Only the flesh can die,
And e'en the body triumphs o'er decay:

Clothed by Thy wondrous might
In robes of dazzling light,
This flesh shall burst the grave at that last Day.

German Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery

It had been awhile since I'd been by one of my favorite cemeteries, the German Reformed Presbyterian Church Cemetery (which apparently also somehow doubles as the Jeffersontown Lutheran Cemetery). This past weekend I dropped in and was surprised to find an enormous amount of damage to the graves.

This place has always been in some state of disrepair, but this is more extreme than the last time I was here.




The cemetery had previously undergone restoration in 1967, but I do believe it's time for another.

Abandoned Tomato Farm

Yesterday was another unseasonably nice day, so I went for a walk to a place I know on the edge of Jeffersontown to check out this abandoned piece of farm equipment I'd found last summer. It was nearly obscured by foliage then but was quite easily inspected this time, at winter's end.



I've been told by a reliable source that this area used to be a thriving tomato farm back in the day, and that the soil here is still optimal for tomatoes if one wanted to sneak out here and plant some. Maybe I will.

There's plenty of other remnants of the farm to be found here, including the collapsed debris of the farmhouse. Might be a good place to come back with a metal detector and poke around.

Watterson Trail

Something that never fails to fascinate me is that many of our existing paved roads today began as ancient traditional trails and pathways, blazed by animals as they stomped the same path into the forests year after year. These natural pathways were already etched into the wilderness by the buffalo long before humans set foot on this soil.

Watterson Trail is one such ancient animal-created road. When people drive on it, they don't stop to consider that this road was meant to be a road, long before even the tribes we call Native Americans were here. (Well, I think about it all the time, of course, but I'm a freak.)

It stretches from the Middletown district of Louisville to Jeffersontown, and isn't much to look at, but for some inexplicable sppoky reason I find it one of my favorite roads, one I'm often drawn to against my will. I was surprised to find that Google Maps has it available in their "street view" mode!

Haunted (Waffle) House

I'm tellin' ya, Kentucky is one spooky place, all across the board, and I maintain that we are all, at any given moment, swimming in a sea of unseen ghosts and otherworldly critters and we just don't know it.

Case in point: just an hour ago, I was having lunch at the Waffle House in Jeffersontown, KY (1620 Kentucky Mills Drive) and the jukebox was silent for most of the meal. Then, one song came on by itself without anyone having put any quarters in it. Then it went back to silence. I thought it rather odd, since every other jukebox I've seen that has an automatic-play feature runs continuously, not just playing one random song and then stopping.

I mentioned it to the waitress, who informed me in no uncertain terms that the Waffle House is haunted and that strange things like that happen so regularly that they're all used to it. Another waitress standing nearby nodded in affirmation, and mentioned that towels have flown by themselves, and so have these plastic containers they use in the kitchen.

The first waitress speculated that the spirits may have followed her to work from her own home, because she once lived in a very haunted house in Louisville with the exact same kind of poltergeist activity. She told of large art-glass bottles falling by themselves from atop a fishtank, not breaking when hitting the floor, and spinning to point all in one direction. She also told of rumors that a child was killed in her home, and that she discovered a creepy room in her basement, where someone had once lived, but was boarded up and hidden behind paneling. She's since moved from this house, but reports the ghostly phenomena still follows her, both to her new home and to her job at Waffle House.

She seemed extremely sincere and somewhat frazzled about having to endure the haunted weirdness. There was no sense of spinning a grand yarn to shock or impress; she was very blase and matter-of-fact about the ghosts in her life, which seem to have taken root in her workplace as well.

Needless to say, I will be making repeat visits to this Waffle House and having further chats with said waitress.

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.