World of the Bizarre

Kentucky county celebrates 150th anniversary of 'meat falling from sky'

By T.K. Randall
March 9, 2026 ·  7 comments

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) Across the United States, there's no shortage of bizarre celebrations - and the peculiarly named Kentucky Meat Shower Festival is definitely one of the strangest.

The event celebrates a little-known case of Fortean phenomena (a name given to mysterious and paranormal events based on the work of Charles Forte) that occurred on March 3rd, 1876.

The story goes that a woman in Olympia Springs, Bath County had been outside on that particular day when pieces of meat started to rain down from the sky - seemingly without any natural cause.

Some even say she may have been hit in the face by one piece, but that tale remains unconfirmed.Somehow, this obscure event ended up inspiring a modern-day festival which this year has marked 150 years to the day since the mystery meat fell from the heavens.

To celebrate, festivalgoers were treated to their own meat shower - though in this case it was re-enacted by dropping hundreds of meat sticks from a plane flying overhead.

There were also plenty of food trucks offering various types of meats to buy and consume.

Bizarrely, the event even featured a presentation by Transylvania University professor Kurt Gohde who brought with him what is thought to be the last surviving (and preserved) piece of the original meat that fell from the sky all those years ago.

Whether or not it really is the original meat - we certainly wouldn't recommend sampling it...


Source: Lexington Herald-Leader | Comments (7)

Tags: Kentucky, Meat