Next Year’s Book Will Include an Occult Section

One of the best parts about traveling alone is chatting up bartenders. These guys usually open around seven or eight in the evening, but more often than not, people won’t start showing up for several hours, which leaves plenty of time to stop by for a quiet drink and some good conversation. Bartenders are some of the best repositories for local lore and outlandish rumors around. A few days ago I was in Lawrence, Kansas at a dive bar tucked back behind the town's main drag when I picked up this little gem:

I walk into the place and sit down. The bartender comes out; he’s a young guy, with long dark hair and a huge bushy beard. His has wide eyes and a big, friendly grin. He wears only a T-shirt and old jeans. If he were on the other side of the bar, I would have taken him for someone who got lost on their way to Bonaroo. So we start up a conversation, and I ask him if the town has any bizarre or interesting history. He goes through the stories about the town’s Civil War days, and about the local hotel that may or may not be haunted by the ghosts of Confederate marauders (I’d been there, the only things haunting it were old women with too much makeup). He says this is all the sort of thing you can hear at the tourist information center. I tell him I’m not interested in the regular tourist stuff.

So he leans in close and in a hushed tone tells me about a place a few miles north of town he only called Stout’s. There, he said, was a church built by Mormons back during their exodus west. It had been abandoned for as long as anyone could remember, until some local Satanists (I love the phrase "local Satanists") occupied it in the early 80s and began performing rituals there, including animal sacrifices and a black mass. He said the walls were covered with pentagrams and animal skulls and that the altar itself had been desecrated. I was sold, and took down directions.

The next morning, I left promptly for the spot the bartender had mentioned. When I got there, I found only a set of train tracks that had fallen into disuse and the burnt foundations of an old house. Confused and disappointed, I walked over to the convenience store across the street, where I asked the attendant if she’d ever heard of a nearby church overrun by Satanists. She looked at me for a moment, somewhat puzzled, and said, “You mean Stout’s? The place the kids broke into and wrote graffiti all over? His son burned that place down years ago to collect on the insurance.” I nodded, paid for my strawberry granola bar (the roadtripper’s comfort food of choice), and then left without another word.