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To my dismay, I found that no matter how much research I did, there just wasn’t enough information to fill an entire book. Then a thought permeated my concrete skull: why not write a book about a wide variety of strange and unusual Kentuckians, and include a chapter about Porter? Thus was Offbeat Kentuckians born, not unlike a baby with a dozen heads. The book spotlights the following illustrious personages and sports delightful illustrations by my twin brother Kyle:

       WILLIAM “KING” SOLOMON. The town drunkard of Lexington, who proved to be made of heroic stuff when he buried victims of the 1833 cholera epidemic.

       RICHARD M. JOHNSON. Vice-president under Martin Van Buren, noted for behavior that got crazier as he aged. Since publication, I have come to believe that stories about the more scandalous aspects of Johnson’s life, as related in the book, may owe more to scurrilous campaign propaganda than fact.

       JIM PORTER AND MARTIN VAN BUREN BATES. Two Kentucky giants, measuring 7’9” and 7’5” respectively. Bates married a woman even taller than he was.

       JOHN BANVARD: Louisville artist who created the largest painting in the world, a panorama of the Mississippi, Missouri and Ohio Rivers on a canvas 3,000 feet long. Not a trace of it is known to now exist.

       ALEXANDER McCLUNG. This grumpy native of Mason County loved dueling so much that before he committed suicide in 1855, he had participated in 14 duels and killed 10 men. But who’s counting?

       Chapter six concerns various strange burials in Kentucky history, including a man who attempted to be buried in a stone sarcophagus full of whisky, a man who was buried standing up, and two gypsies buried in Madison County with many earthly goods, not unlike the Egyptian kings.

       LEONARD “LIVE-FOREVER” JONES: I was very glad to accidentally uncover this forgotten story about a mid-nineteenth century Louisville lunatic who sincerely thought he was immortal.

       SIMON KRACHT: This custodian at the University of Louisville Medical School also served as the college’s official body snatcher. Nice.

       PHIL ARNOLD of Hardin County became legendary when he and a cousin went to California in the 1870s and swindled greedy investors by planting a few diamonds in an otherwise barren patch of land.

   “HONEST DICK” TATE: A Democratic career politician who served as the Kentucky State Treasurer between 1867 and 1888. Then he ran off with $100,000 and was never seen again.

   JOSEPH MULHATTAN: Traveling hardware salesman and journalistic hoaxer extraordinaire. Some of his wild tales were the great-grandfathers of modern urban legends and live on to this day. I spent three years writing a meticulously researched 600-page book about Mulhattan and his career, and then couldn’t get it published. Parts of it have turned up in a couple of my published books.

   HENRY WOOLDRIDGE: This Graves Countian crowded his family plot in Mayfield with so many statues of friends, family members and animals that his grave is now a tourist attraction and on the National Register of Historic Places.

   WILLIAM GOEBEL: In 1900 he attained the distinction, if you want to call it that, of being the only American governor ever to be assassinated while in office. The crime was never solved and remains a first-rate mystery.

   CARRY NATION: Everyone’s favorite hatchet-wielding, saloon-smashing, gimlet-eyed temperance advocate came from Garrard County.

   WILLIAM VAN DALSEN: This saga of a jealous Louisville lowlife who atrociously murdered his girlfriend in 1904 was my earliest attempt at writing in the true crime genre.

   NATHAN STUBBLEFIELD: An inventor from Calloway County who invented wireless radio before Marconi—or did he?

   JOHN SHELL: A mountaineer from Leslie County who was 134 years old when he died in 1922—or was he?

   EDGAR CAYCE: Judging from the mail I got, this is the most controversial thing I ever wrote. I would not be so rash as to say that there is certainly no such thing as psychic ability, but Cayce, benign and well-meaning as he was, was merely a good guesser with industrious press agents and a cult following.

   DEATH VALLEY SCOTTY: Until I started researching the book, I had no idea that the great California eccentric, moocher, treasure hunter and breathtaking liar was born in Cynthiana, KY.

   SPEEDY ATKINS: A black vagrant who drowned in Paducah in 1928, embalmed, and then left unburied until 1994. This chapter inspired The Legendary Shack*Shakers’ song “The Ballad of Speedy Atkins.” (Thanks, Col. J.D. Wilkes!)

   TOD BROWNING: Did you know that the director of Dracula and other classic horror films was from Louisville? Neither did I.

   GEORGE BARRETT: FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called this Depression-era slayer from Clay County “the meanest man I ever knew.”

   “WANDERING BEN” WILSON: This diminutive horse expert from Anderson County attained a measure of fame due to his insistence of roaming America in his bare feet.