In Kentucky in March of 1876, chunks of raw meat began to fall from the sky. A farmer’s wife who had pieces of meat lying around her yard, enough to “fill a horse wagon full,” witnessed this bizarre event.
Around her, beef-looking meat began to fall from the sky in large chunks. She claimed it dropped from the night sky like big snowflakes. At the time the sky was crystal clear.
The Kentucky Meat Shower was a unexplained meteorological event that occurred on March 3rd 1876 at Olympia Springs, Kentucky. For several minutes chunks of red meat measuring up to 4 inches square rained down from the sky. pic.twitter.com/jTKuGcJoJp
— Folk Horror Magpie 🌷 (@folkhorrormagpi) August 1, 2020
After learning about the strange incident, Harrison Gill, a resident of Crouch, went to the property the following day. When he arrived, he saw pieces of meat clinging to fence posts and dispersed around the farm’s grounds. Even the farmhouse and the barn had meat on the roof. It was believed that the majority of the meat pieces were about 2 inches by 2 inches. He observed that although the meat had likely been fresh when it fell from the sky, it had spoiled and dried overnight.
Two unnamed males arrived to sample the meat later in the day, and they claimed it tasted like either venison or mutton.
Duration: Several minutes
Type: Phenomenon pic.twitter.com/gLAgjHoyqi— Peter🌲Brannen (@PeterBrannen1) April 13, 2021
Three months later, a man by the name of Leopold Brandeis acquired some of the specimens that had been preserved in glycerin and examined them. This led to the initial explanation. He declared that the purported meat was in fact not met at all. He stated that “It has been comparatively easy to identify the substance and to fix its status. Kentucky ‘wonder’ is no more or less than nostoc.”
Nostoc is a kind of cyanobacteria that grows in colonies that are encased in a gelatinous envelope for protection. When it rains, nostoc is known to swell up into a translucent jelly-like mass. Nostoc is so undetectable while it’s dry that for many years people thought it floated on the breeze until it rained, at which point it fell from the sky like hail. Star-slubber, “witch’s butter,” and other colorful epithets were bandied about.
Most bizarre happenings can be explained away while others remain a complete mystery. There was a day where chunks of meat rained in Bath county, Kentucky. People to this day are still wondering what caused the Kentucky Meat Shower in 1876?https://t.co/JBy9apcg8Q pic.twitter.com/UxhzoqNpBb
— Curly Conspiracies (@Curlyconspira_c) July 15, 2021
He classified the Kentucky nostoc as a member of the Nostoc cranium species, which he referred to as “flesh-colored.” He claimed that it had inflated and fell on the Crouch home when it rained and that it tastes like frog or spring chicken legs.
However, his explanation didn’t stand up because it had not rained that day or for several days prior to the “meat shower.” The farm woman had described the day as clear.
reading about the Kentucky Meat Shower https://t.co/yYh33nxlxP pic.twitter.com/RinZXFpkBJ
— Liz Crash (@AsFarce) January 14, 2022
Brandeis wasn’t entirely worthless in the investigation because he had handed some samples of the mystery meat to Dr. A. Mead Edwards, a renowned histologist, and president of the Newark Scientific Association, who determined that the tissue was most likely from a horse or a human infant’s lung. Dr. J.W.S. Arnold, another histologist, examined the samples and came to the same conclusion, writing in The American Journal of Microscopy and Popular Science that they were made of lung tissue and some sort of animal cartilage.
Samples were eventually evaluated by multiple scientists, who determined that three of them were formed of muscle tissue, two of them were cartilage, and two were lung tissue. How did they end up taking part in the notorious Kentucky Shower of Meat, then?
In March of 1876 in Bath County, Kentucky, Mrs. Crouch was outside her home making soap when it started raining chunks of red meat. The Kentucky Meat Shower has been studied & debated by scientists, with one theory being that flying vultures vomited up the meat. #WyrdWednesday pic.twitter.com/MeW8gWdpjl
— 🇵🇸 Sarah Nour 🇱🇧 (@SaCha1689) December 15, 2021
Enter Dr. L. D. Kastenbine, who wrote in an 1876 issue of the Louisville Medical News that it was, quite literally, a synchronized bout of projectile vulture vomit.
After obtaining a sample of his own, Kastenbine lit it on fire and discovered that it had a strong and putrid odor. The disgorgement of some vultures that were sailing above the site, from their vast height, the particles were spread by the prevailing wind over the ground, according to the elderly Ohio farmer. Explaining this aberrant precipitation, he wrote. The variety of tissue discovered – muscular, connective, fatty, structureless, etc – can be explained only by this theory.”
#Episode 50 is up!!
Can you believe we made it to 50!?
We had to #celebrate such a big #milestone with a really freaking #weird story!
Be sure to listen to the tale of the Kentucky Meat Shower and let us know what you think! #podcast #pod #kentucky #mystery #listen pic.twitter.com/WvxMMgtga7— Anxious and Afraid: The Pod (@aathepod) November 24, 2020
The black vulture and the turkey vulture are two of the vulture species that may be found in Kentucky. Both of these vultures are known to projectile vomit their stomach contents away, either as a form of self-defense or to make themselves lighter so they can fly.
Although Kastenbine’s argument appears to be the most plausible, many people disagree with it because vultures rarely fly or hunt at night, which is when the “meat shower” occurred. With the amount of meat that landed, it would have taken numerous vomiting vultures, thus decreasing the likelihood of them flying at night.
For many, the 1876 “meat shower” remains one of Kentucky’s strangest mysteries.