"Kentucky Legends and Lore" by Alan Brown

 I read through Alan Brown's "Kentucky Legends and Lore" recently.  If you are interested in strange things happening in Kentucky, this will be a great addition to your library.

Brown does cover the usual topics you might find in a "strange" or "haunted" book on the Bluegrass State (The Seelbach Hotel, Waverly, Edgar Cayce, Daniel Boone) which would be expected in a volume like this.  I felt that he gave a little more information on each than some volumes.  He also brought up some of the more obscure legends (Jailer's Inn, and a nice section on some Kentucky College ghosts).

Like I said, I felt like Brown gave a brief teaser on all of the legends, but his information wasn't the standard short rehash.

I usually take notes these days when I am reading a book, and I took a lot of notes with this one- Alan Brown clued me in to some Civil War sites and stories of which I was unaware (a Civil War field hospital was also the birth site of an NFL star).  Also, he notes that you can see some underwater remains of a former city in western Kentucky.

This is the kind of book that can send you down many different rabbit holes...  He even mentions a few books that were not on my radar that I am going to have to look up soon.

My only criticism of this book is that the author uses Wikimedia Commons a bit excessively for photos.  To his credit though, he does not use that as an exclusive source (I have books in my collection that do).  Also, a bit more editing would have been helpful- there are some dates given that don't add up..... on page 129 he mentioned a murder that remained unsolved, he says, until 2009.  He later says that the killer confessed in 1990.  You can probably figure out the timeline errors, if you even catch them.

Still, this is definitely a labor of love on the authors part, and, for a book just over 150 pages- it is pretty meaty.  You are getting a lot for your money.  Brown is giving you a lot of info on famous Kentuckians, monsters, UFO sightings, ghosts, deaths, etc.  My couple of criticisms are absolutely outweighed by the volume and quality of information contained in the book.  This is definitely one of my favorite mysterious/strange type books about Kentucky.