"Weird Ohio"

[cincygreg]

Found this on the enquirer site this morning.
Oddly enough, none of us were mentioned [img]graemlins/hmmm.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/sure.gif[/img] [img]wink.gif[/img]

We're definitely weird
The latest book in the 'Weird' series looks into Ohio's strangest people, places and things. The Cincinnati area gets 17 mentions.

By Lauren Bishop
Enquirer staff writer

Ohio is one strange place. Need proof? Check out the new 285-page tome "Weird Ohio" by James A. Willis, Andrew Henderson and Loren Coleman (Sterling Publishing Co., $19.95), which celebrates the Buckeye State's bizarre beasts, local legends and roadside distractions.

The 10th and latest book in the "Weird" series contains 17 Cincinnati-area entries, making the Queen City about equal with Cleveland in terms of weirdness, Willis says. Columbus falls a bit behind both.

"The waterways seemed to allow a little bit more of the weirdness to slip into Ohio," he says.

Maybe you've heard some of them:

Roadside distractions

It's been covered by local, national and even international media. Now, the Solid Rock Church's "King of Kings" sculpture - a 62-foot-tall wood and Styrofoam rendering of Jesus's head and torso that reigns over a stretch of Interstate 75 in Monroe - has earned an entry in "Weird Ohio."

"I don't know how weird that is that a church would display Jesus," co-pastor Darlene Bishop says. "But you know, any advertising is good advertising."

Last April, the country's first museum dedicated entirely to signs, the appropriately named American Sign Museum, opened in Walnut Hills.

Tod Swormstedt operates the museum filled with more than 120 signs - painted, neon, electric, blinking and spinning ones dating to the 1890s. Swormstedt didn't know the museum made the book until a friend saw a copy.

" 'Weird,' I guess, to me doesn't have a bad connotation. It never has," Swormstedt says. "It just means unusual, a little off-the-wall. In that context, we're proud to be in there."

"Lots of the things make Jungle Jim's International Market weird, including its 618-pound block of cheese, the automated fortune teller known as "The Brain," and the eight aisles of food from England graced by the Robin Hood figurine standing under a giant English oak tree.

"We're proud to be weird," market spokeswoman Sarah Kaufmann says, pointing out the latest arrival at the market: A 5?-foot-tall Campbell's Soup can that swings, talks and sings.

Personalized properties

In 1929, Harry Andrews began building a full-scale replica of a 10th-century Norman-style castle that he named Chateau Laroche - French for "stone castle" - for a Boy Scouts-esque group he founded called the Knights of the Golden Trail.

Almost single-handedly, Andrews carried an estimated 56,000 buckets of stones to the site. Many were pulled out of the Little Miami River. Andrews died in 1981.

Today, Historic Loveland Castle - complete with a watchtower and dungeon - is available for tours, parties and weddings. But in true medieval-castle style, there's no indoor plumbing.

James Batchelor's garden in Walnut Hills once was referred to in a newspaper article as "yard-art mosaic that's a little bit Mardi Gras, a little bit Looney Toons (and) a little bit roadside Americana," according to "Weird Ohio."

A colorful array of stuffed animals, signs and statues sprout alongside flowers and vegetables, plus a Batchelor family "Walk of Fame" with star-studded squares for Batchelor's late wife and each of the couple's nine children.

Abandoned in Ohio

The Cincinnati subway never really got off the ground, or under it. In 1917, voters approved to a 16-mile, $6.1 million rapid transit system above and below ground, but World War I delayed the project. By the time construction began in 1920, inflation had doubled the cost.

By 1927, 10 miles of the loop, including two miles of tunnels under Central Parkway, downtown, had been completed, but the money had run out. Because of two world wars, Depression and political wrangling, the tracks were never laid, and subway cars never were purchased.

Local legends

Supposedly, Satanists once met in a subterranean maze of drainage tunnels beneath Blue Ash known as Satan's Hollow. Willis and a friend spent weeks trying to find the hollow, with no luck.

"To be honest, I'm not really sure that it exists," he says. "(It could be) just a variation on the story of the Cincinnati subway."

There are several versions of the Oxford motorcycle ghost story, but the most popular dates to the 1940s, when a Miami University student's parents disapproved of her motorcycle-riding boyfriend. The boyfriend would wait on his motorcycle near the girl's house on Oxford-Milford Road, and she'd flash the porch light three times to signal him after her parents went to sleep.

One night, after drinking some wine to kill time, the boyfriend crashed into a barbed-wire fence on his way to pick up his girlfriend and was decapitated. Today, the story goes, the young man's ghost is trying to reach his girlfriend, and he'll appear if you flash your headlights three times.

A related story is the Phantom Bicyclist, who was struck by a car and killed while riding on either Ohio 732 or Buckley Road in Oxford. Supposedly, if you park on Buckley Road and face Ohio 732 and flash your headlights three times, you'll see a white light come toward your car.

For years, rumors have abounded about a town inhabited by little people in Colerain Township. It does exist, but it's not inhabited by little people, as "Weird Ohio" explains, with the help of a reprinted 1999 Cincinnati Post article.

The "town" is a miniature frontier village built by Percy Ritter on his farm near Buffalo Ridge, behind Mount Rumpke, in the early 1960s; he and his wife offered hayrides there. Unfortunately, the buildings have been vandalized repeatedly over the years.

Unexplained phenomena

In late August 2004, a Miami Township police officer spotted a pattern of interlocking crop circles in a cornfield off Linden Avenue, just east of Miamisburg, according to "Weird Ohio."

Crop circle investigator Jeffrey Wilson of Williamsburg called the design "the most impressive corn crop formation" he'd ever seen and one of the largest, and that there were no signs of mechanical damage sometimes seen in fakes.

In March 1972, on two occasions, two policemen spotted what has become known as the Loveland Frogman. The first officer said he saw what he first thought was a dog, but what then appeared to be a 60-pound, 3- or 4-foot-tall creature with textured, leathery skin and a frog- or lizard-like face.

Two weeks later, a second officer had a similar sighting. But after the officers took flak for the story, one of them later claimed that he had seen an iguana.

"A lot of times when you hear the stories of these monsters, it's a lot of teenagers that actually report seeing it," Willis says. "It was interesting that you had authority figures, if you will, reporting this."

Heroes and villains

Nineteenth-century philosopher Capt. John Cleves Symmes of Hamilton came up with the Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres and Polar Voids, which claimed that the world was hollow and inhabitable inside.

Symmes claimed he could gain entry into the Earth via the North and South Poles. Hamilton's Ludlow Park boasts a stone monument - complete with a hollow model of the Earth - dedicated to Symmes.

Hamilton also is home to the worst mass killing in Ohio history, which took place on Easter 1975. In what became known as James Ruppert's Easter Sunday Massacre, Ruppert shot and killed his mother, brother, sister-in-law, and eight nieces and nephews in his mother's Minor Avenue home.

A jury found Ruppert guilty of first-degree murder in the cases of his mother and brother and not guilty by reason of insanity on the other nine counts. He received dual life sentences and was denied parole in June at age 71. Ruppert won't receive another hearing until 2015.

Roads less traveled

The Screaming Bridge, on Maud Hughes Road outside Fairfield, is so named because a girl allegedly jumped from a moving car and off the bridge during an argument and fell screaming to her death. Legend has it that if you sit still on the bridge, you can hear the dialogue from her last discussion, according to the book.

"I've been back there about two months ago and now there are No Trespassing signs around the area, so I don't know whether or not people have caught on to where the bridge is," Willis says.

There's a Dead Man's Curve in probably every county in the country, including Clermont County. This road was part of the Ohio Turnpike built in 1831, according to "Weird Ohio." The state rebuilt the road into a straight four-lane highway in September 1969, and a month later, five teenagers died there when their Impala was hit at more than 100 mph by a 1969 Roadrunner.

Someone named Rick survived, the book says, and he's supposedly seen a faceless hitchhiker five times since then. A driverless Impala and a green Roadrunner have been seen in the area as well. The actual location of Dead Man's Curve is in dispute because of the rerouting, but many believe that it's the place where Ohio 222 and Bantam Road cross Ohio 125, near Amelia.

Cemetery sights

Legends and stories surrounding Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum, one of the largest cemeteries in the United States, abound, but one of the strangest is the story of the statue with human eyes. The legend goes that the bust on the grave of Charles C. Breuercontains his own eyes, in accordance with his will.

Spring Grove historian and tour coordinator Phil Nuxhall says the bust of German-born Breuer, who died in 1908 at age 63, contains glass eyes.

"The stories that have been told about Mr. Breuer and his eyes are purely fictional," Nuxhall says, "and I know of no interesting anecdotes about him or his family."

Want to see for yourself? He's buried in Section 100, Lot 9.

Anyone like to add anything?

[Raven Soul]

It's been covered by local, national and even international media. Now, the Solid Rock Church's "King of Kings" sculpture - a 62-foot-tall wood and Styrofoam rendering of Jesus's head and torso that reigns over a stretch of Interstate 75 in Monroe - has earned an entry in "Weird Ohio."

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">First I would like to say that Touchdown Jesus is a great work of art, however, it has no business being next to the highway. It is a distraction that is going to get someone killed. Then I doubt the beloved pastor will be saying is good advertising when a little child gets killed because their parents were to stupid to keep their eyes on the road.

"Lots of the things make Jungle Jim's International Market weird, including its 618-pound block of cheese, the automated fortune teller known as "The Brain," and the eight aisles of food from England graced by the Robin Hood figurine standing under a giant English oak tree.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I know everyone here loves this market, but you know what, deeply and truly from the bottom of my heart, fuck Jungle Jim. Underpay your employees, benefits are lousy and quite frankly he is as about the biggest asshole on this earth. Granted, I worked for him when I was in high school, but my opinion hasn’t changed, and I am sure he hasn’t either.

Today, Historic Loveland Castle - complete with a watchtower and dungeon - is available for tours, parties and weddings. But in true medieval-castle style, there's no indoor plumbing.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">You have to visit at least once in your life. Awesome place.

Supposedly, Satanists once met in a subterranean maze of drainage tunnels beneath Blue Ash known as Satan's Hollow. Willis and a friend spent weeks trying to find the hollow, with no luck.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Satan's Hollow is and old sewer system that used to house the infamous "alter room" in a mysteriously dry tunnel. This is where a group of Satanists made animal sacrifices and opened a door into hell. Female screams can be heard at night and there have been many sightings of various apparitions, including floating skulls and the demon YG, commonly known as the Shadow Man. The place is very real, and quite frankly very, very scary.

[cincygreg]

Intertesting!

Unfortunately, I know waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy too many weird people in Ohio (and a few in KY LOL!) [img]eek.gif[/img] [img]confused.gif[/img]