‘Any sane tourist would ignore signage for ‘People Pearls’ based on the name alone but, as though a double-dare will do the trick, the enterprise is fairly transparent in advertisements. “This is a collection of bodily stones,” they say, “Bladder stones. Kidney stones. Tonsil, prostate, pancreas.” More surprising, perhaps, is that ‘People Pearls’ offers no justification, no context, for such a collection. It makes no effort to entice travelers that may be on the fence. It does not meditate on the medical significance of the stones or offer its profits up to any sort of cause. It uses images that are difficult to decipher- grotesque close-ups that might be mistaken for alien landscapes or the warning labels on cigarettes. The only claim made by ‘People Pearls’ is that theirs is the largest collection of its kind and one can’t help but be thankful that this is the worst of it, that nobody else has manifested such a grotesque idea.’

A true mark of the side-of-the-road museum is that there is no real distinction between the collection and the gift shop. By throwing it all into one big room, everything becomes an artifact and everything sprouts a price tag. ‘People Pearls’ is no different. There are bins of jagged little stones set up with scoops and shovels, advertising mix and match prices by the bag. There are so-called precious stones, bought off of celebrity doctors and polished into jewelry. There is a foul smell in the air and, overtop it, something that’s meant to be maskingly pleasant. They combine into a sort of sweet bile potpourri and even the man behind the counter seems sickly for it. I tell him I’m only browsing and he reminds me it’s a museum, as though he’s offended I might mistake is for a store. Capitalist ventures have a way of making good people feel guilty. That or he relies on an educational grant to keep the lights on.

I nod.

For a quarter I’m able to purchase a stone at random from a repurposed gumball machine. It arrives in a clear plastic sphere.

“Lucky,” the man says, seeing what I pulled.

He doesn’t elaborate and I don’t ask for clarification. I will never open the sphere for fear that the stone will somehow work its way inside me. Irrational, maybe, but stranger things have happened.

There is a set of infant rattles near the exit, also for sale. I give one a shake and the man looks as though he’s waiting for me to ask what they could possibly have to do with ‘People Pearls.’

I don’t give him the satisfaction, thinking that the confirmation could work its way inside me the same way the stone might.

-traveler

The known end of ‘The Reflection Corridor’ is attached to a tree in western Wisconsin and it seems to have appeared there without state permission, given the on-again, off-again availability of the experience. It’s taken some research to finally see the thing and it’s initially something of a let down: a square mirror not more than an inch wide, held tightly to a cedar by two lengths of wire. I’m tempted, at first, to check it off the list and to try to get a few more miles in before sundown but a number of very specific conditions led to this success and it seems a shame to waste it. There is a website, for instance, that regularly updates the condition of ‘The Reflection Corridor’ every hour, stating with fair reliability whether it’s open or closed. This is an improvement on the old ways, which required an amount of digging through niche forums for posts about ‘The Reflection Corridor’ and deciding whether those posts were recent enough to warrant risk disappointment at the end of a three-hour hike.

The website relies upon visitor data and, in an effort to contribute, I snap a picture of the mirror and submit it as confirmation: ‘The Corridor’ is still available.

The reliability of the website is a double-edged sword, of course, because it means that any zealous forest ranger with a cellphone can just as easily determine whether or not ‘The Reflection Corridor’ has reappeared and can make the hike out to disassemble it. Early iterations were nailed into the tree which is, admittedly, a little more damage than I care to see done to a forest for the sake of Wayside intrigue. Ranger response has been fairly negative since then, even with the improved methods of attachment.

All this to say that I happened to be nearby in that murky calendar holiday period when rangers are less likely to be on duty while the website showed the green light and the hike out wasn’t complicated by weather, it being autumn, after all.

Hector looks sporting in a raggedy sweater and I’m sweating, myself, to carry him and everything else we own along the way. I check the weather again to make sure none of this unseasonal snow catches us by surprise and, seeing the forecast is clear, decide to set up camp. I keep it minimal, since I haven’t got a permit of any sort, but it’s enough to be cozy. Hector sleeps and I catch up on some reading, trying to decide where we’re off to next.

The sun begins to set an hour later and it’s only then that I notice movement in ‘The Corridor.’ It flashes white, then red, then white again. Could be the sunset itself, right? Against my better judgement, I evict Hector from my lap and stand to investigate.

‘More a passage than a corridor and not really much of either, ‘The Reflection Corridor’ is a complicated and mysterious series of mirrors placed carefully across the continental U.S. so that the landscape on one side will appear clearly reflected on the opposite. Some of these mirrors are straight, others are bent or curved or otherwise out of focus- whatever it takes to keep the image clear on either end. It’s a telescope, really, and not a very useful one.

Nobody can quite agree about what it’s pointed at and the system is long enough, runs through enough private property, that it has never been traced in full. The longest stretch was discovered when a lengthy fogbank sat above the states for three days. Volunteers used high-powered flashlights to illuminate otherwise invisible lengths of ‘The Reflection Corridor’ until it was lost over the eastern seaboard. It could very well be that ‘The Reflection Corridor’ is among the few international Wayside attractions, bouncing between stations far out to sea.’

The flashing continues for a full hour, long after the sun has gone down. It is patterned and purposeful. Blinding when I try to look directly in the mirror. I brush up on my morse code. When that fails me, I use my slim bar of internet to look into more esoteric cyphers. None provide any insight into the flashing.

Around one in the morning I happen to look into ‘The Reflection Corridor’ and I see a forest, much like the one in which I stand but bathed in daylight and upside down as though by some quirk in the mirrors. It’s a strain on the eyes to see but I watch for a long time until a man appears in the forest and stares back at me.

He stares and stares until I am convinced to pack my camp and leave. He has been in the mirrors ever since, those on the bike and those in the bathrooms of cheap motels. As long as ‘The Reflection Corridor’ is unbroken, the man is there.

-traveler

‘Another of a handful of government-run Wayside attractions, ‘The OSHA Violation Grounds’ are about the closest we’ll get to a modern wild-west. To say ‘The OVG’ is lawless is to do it something of an injustice. It is a place designed to break workplace safety laws in the most flagrant ways possible, to film them being broken, and to upload the footage to a free database the audience for which, at the moment, seems to be creators of safety videos and snuff enthusiasts. Visitors are required to sign a novel-length consent form before entry, a process that is completed outside of the property (where safety laws still apply). Those who sign are considered employees of ‘The OVG’ and are, therefore, provided the federal minimum wage. No specific duties are specified, visitors are compensated for whatever time they spend on the grounds. It goes without saying that this has created an isolated society of people willing to endure ‘The OVG’s’ hazards for cumulative overtime, a powder-keg of violence and tyranny.’

The woman at the front desk smiles as I finish up the paperwork.

“No problem at all,” she says, looking down at Hector, “All animals are allowed on the premises. We encourage them.”

-traveler

There is no greater measure of the American zeitgeist than the current rumors surrounding ‘The Fifty Year Ball Drop.’ Advertised as any other New Year celebration, though with vague enough wording to hide its true intentions, ‘The Fifty Year Ball Drop’ began on December 31^st, 1964 and continues to this day, counting down to some unknown future event. The ball, flashing lights and blasting the top hits of the early 1960’s, creeps down its post at a rate that can’t be detected by the human eye. It’s movement has been verified by chalk lines and sped-up camera footage. Both suggest that the ball will not land on the New Year at all, but sometime in the afternoon of January 18^th, 2064.

People tend to be of two opinions regarding that date: that it will mark a great new era for humanity, or that it will be a doomsday. Visitors are polled for this- are given those two choices specifically, in fact- and the wording of the poll is vague. Vague enough that the results, posted annually on January 1^st, might be interpreted as a choice as well as a prediction.

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

With all the time I spend on the road, I usually find myself a year or two behind popular culture which means that I’m often out of my element at those Wayside destinations that hold celebrities at their core. Prop museums tend to display a few things from movies I watched as a child, so that’s something, and I appreciate wax museums for their eerie, liminal atmospheres, even if I only recognize a handful of the personas on exhibit.

‘The Divot Gallery’ is something else entirely. The museums tend to split their focus between the curios and the celebrities but ‘The Divot Gallery’ leans hard into the element of worship that is, admittedly, inherent in all of them. I show up unprepared for a rapid-fire series of questions and karaoke-style catalogs of celebrity names, ranked by fame. I go straight to the B-listers, knowing that anyone of historical significance and anyone currently trending will be well above my budget. The cashier must see me react- she hands me the C-listers.

This, I can afford.

‘There is no greater experience of entropy than that which can be purchased at ‘The Divot Gallery.’ It’s a motel, on the surface, consisting of just six rooms rented by the hour and a massive warehouse to store the largest collection of pre-owned couches and beds in the country. This furniture once belonged to the rich and famous, was thrown out bearing the imprints specific to its once-owners. The people at ‘The Divot Gallery’ saw an opportunity in that and, like a witch digging about for spare fingernails, they have built up their inventory from dumpsters, thrift shops, and bribed garbagemen with such efficiency that celebrities have gone on record claiming to obsessively destroy everything they now throw away.

This has not stopped ‘The Divot Gallery’ which has proven time and again that they buy their goods legally and stop just short of libel in their proposed explanations of otherwise mysterious stains.

Visitors might choose to spend the afternoon in the hollow embrace of their celebrity crush, might conceive a child on the bed of a rock star or get high in the recliner of a famous stoner-comedian. There are death beds, of course, but testimonials suggest that ‘The Divot Gallery’ as experienced on any furniture leans depressing. At it’s least existential, most people will find that the celebrities they once held on a pedestal are not much better than they are at keeping crumbs out of the nooks and crannies of a couch- are not so special at all.

At its most existential, customers sometimes recognize themselves in the massive, hierarchal network of modern America. They may realize they exist on a rung far, far lower than they suspected, that there are ways of living beyond their imagining and that lying prone on a used mattress is the closest they will ever get to bridging the truth of their existence with that of even a minor celebrity.”

Hector and I nap on a sort of rounded pad that once belonged to a famous dog. I sleep well enough, but I get the sense that Hector has some difficulty getting comfortable. Maybe it’s the smell of another animal. Maybe he’s just realizing he was never meant for the silver screen.

-traveler

“Well, this is it. Feel free to have a look around. We only ask that you don’t touch any of the exhibits.”

By the look on the man’s face I understand that he’s implying I’ve already touched one of the exhibits- may still be touching it. I step to the right and the man’s face grows pained. I take two steps to the left and he seems to relax. When I squat down, I see a small tag poking out from under the rug I’ve trampled. It was apparently used in several episodes of Dr. Malarkey (1957).

There’s more on the tag but the man behind me clears his throat when I try to pull it out a little more. A small note nearby indicates the tag was added to the rug in 1998 when it appeared in The Museum Maze as an authentic prop prop.

“How long is a self-guided tour supposed to take?” I ask.

“The pamphlet says three hours.” The man cocks his head. “But I recommend five to be on the safe side.”

‘Formerly ‘Maxmillian’s House of Props,’ the institution known as ‘Mad Props’ is a casual traveler’s nightmare. Imagine, for a moment, that you are not traveling alone and are, instead, a part of some version of the American nuclear family and that your squealing children spy a sign in the distance that advertises the largest and most diverse collection of movie props in the nation. Imagine subsequent signs that list all the recent blockbusters for the kiddies and include a handful of titles from your own preferred genre. Seems like a crowd-pleaser. Seems like an easy stop to make.

‘Mad Props’ lives up to all its hype only via technicality. Its curators dig through Hollywood’s dumpsters and have filled a single family home with such a mundane collection of background items that even the most avid film connoisseurs will find themselves yawning. Worse, ‘Mad Props’ refuses to institute any sort of proper signage, relying on a system they call ‘unintrusive’ but which is, frankly, hidden.

This proved to be important in a 2020 lawsuit in which the defense (representing a man whose child engaged with a prop toilet) subpoenaed ‘Mad Props’s’ income documents and found that their profitability is entirely dependent upon their tendency to sue costumers for damages. The 2020 rebranding also added a very specific clause to the customer agreement, indicating in complex legalese what constitutes reasonable damage and what is in store for a traveler that unsuspectingly causes it. ‘Mad Props’ remains a tedious maze of an attraction. To make it more interesting to the traveler is to make it less fruitful for the owner and that sort of split only ever breaks one way.’

-traveler

‘Locals would have you believe that the concept of paisley itself came from ‘The Paisley Prickles’ but that’s the sort of re-writing of history that Americans sometimes try to slip under the radar for the sake of tourism. The reality is that paisley prickles thrived under other names in several parts of the world before the pattern was utilized in South Asia, eventually popularized in the west, and that the link between said pattern and the North American paisley prickle fields was a connection made entirely in retrospect.

All this to say that ‘The Paisley Prickles’ field in Arizona is just one of many global sites but the only known to exist in the states. Beyond their little white lie, locals are frank about the plant’s disconcerting properties. A light touch induces a painful paisley rash that lasts for a week, at least. ‘The Paisley Prickles’ are hyper-resilient but the field is self-contained. An eighties-era attempt to destroy the patch was met with failure and several contemporary attempts to grow it in a lab or derive some mystery cure from its essence have resulted in poisonings. A single groundskeeper remains on staff for the field and his job consists entirely of clearing weeds from the visitor path. ‘The Paisley Prickles’ have not, in his thirty years, attempted to cross the fence he installed in 1992.

The meta leaf-on-leaf pattern suggests, to some, that ‘The Paisley Prickles’ are a product of intelligent design. The going theory is that the patches indicate, in the style of ray cats and atomic priesthood, something dangerous at their epicenters- that they represent a message left behind by something that preceded humanity and overestimated humanity’s ability to perceive cryptic warnings.’

I’ve been wary of plant-specific destinations since the trouble with fairy ferns all those years ago, but for all that ‘The Paisley Prickles’ seem dangerous, it would take cross the fence and walking several more minutes before contact with one would be possible.

This is exactly what Hector does the first chance he gets, slipping from my hands as I attempt to harness him and jettisoning himself into the patch at its thickest. I clamber over the fence but can’t bring myself to get any closer than that myself and soon enough I see Hector hoofing it back in my direction, already showing signs of the rash on his bare skin.

Hector spends a week looking like a high-end purse, his thick hide raised in paisley. It doesn’t seem to bother him much.

-traveler

Hector and I camp at ‘The Memphis Goatee’ despite warnings about the sickly, disoriented birds that nest there. It doesn’t seem like a mistake until the mistake is obvious. The birds return to roost around sunset and, because the forest has warped their sense of direction, they aren’t at all prepared for our tent being in the way.

Most of them zip by, well above us, but the flock arrives so thickly that the low-flyers whip into the tent fabric and bounce back onto the ground, chirping angrily. It happens a couple times before I grab Hector and huddle down against the opposite side of the tent, which works until the fallen birds realize we’re there and attack us, taking little pin-prick bites of our clothes and skin as retribution. The tent goes down but, by then, we’ve ducked and dodged our way behind a tree- far enough away that the birds aren’t willing to chase us. It’s over in five minutes but it feels like much longer and then it’s dark and the tent is torn to shreds.

There are no clouds but the world never passes up a chance to rain on an unprotected camper.

‘Looking for a frivolous use of money and land? Already seen Mt. Rushmore? Try, then, ‘The Memphis Goatee,’ a massive swirl of transplanted woodland an hour east of the city itself. It’s a Seussian forest, by design, made up by trees that have been taken far from their lands of origin and twisted by inbreeding and, some say, genetic or chemical interference. The altered trees grow taller and thinner the nearer they are to the center and, in order to maintain form, they’ve begun to curl and spiral and entwine, each relying on another for support.

A goatee was the literal intended result of this project- a goatee that could be seen from space. Archives suggest a rogue committee at the county level reached out to equally deranged politicians in Australia and South Africa (antipodes to either side) and came to some sort of clandestine agreement that each would create a forest to simulate the hairstyle of a balding man with a goatee on the earth itself. The pieces of the project that made it onto paper are heavy with phrases like ‘global unity’ and ‘shared sense of human delight’ and ‘breaking down borders (figurative only).’ Needless to say, only Memphis kept up their end of this deal.

The author hesitates to argue against any project that promotes or preserves nature, but ‘The World’s Goatee’ is not a healthy place. It is bloated on water that is needed elsewhere and crawling with invasive species. Its brittle trees break unpredictably and those animals that choose to live there behave just as erratically, torn between what evolutionary instinct tells them should be true, and what Memphis has made the truth.’

Trees have collapsed over the road we came in on. Signs suggest this happens all the time and encourage visitors to enter the woods with several days of food. Luckily, the forest floor is so starved for light that little grows there and I’m able to maneuver the bike around the blockage. Night is darker inside ‘The Memphis Goatee.’ Leaving it early is a relief.

-traveler

‘Say you were passing a car on a dark stretch of highway and, noticing the driver neglected to turn their brights down, you flashed a polite message with your own. Say the passing car has whipped across the lanes in a dramatic U-turn and now pursues you close behind, flashing their own headlights and swerving side to side.

What is that car trying to convey?

The answer may surprise you and, assuming you survive the encounter, the answer can be found at ‘Headlight History,’ a museum of sorts that deals with headlight-related trivia. Though much of ‘Headlight History’ is devoted to wall-space for the many code-like light configurations that supposedly have significance to the asphalt underground, its central attraction is a series of interactive exhibits that allow a visitor to drive a simulated car along the same highway several times over. There, they are presented with various coded headlight signals and asked to respond by indicating with their own lights or swerving to escape.

Having been open to the public for five years as of this edition, it’s more or less common knowledge that, no matter what decisions the driver makes, all of ‘Headlight History’s’ simulations end gruesomely. Those that don’t finish with some sort of quick collision introduce a colorful variety of serial killers that press the driver from the road, pop-up from the backseat, or leap dramatically through the windshield to stab the driver to death.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘Officially called ‘The Afterlife: A Spiritual Retirement Center,’ the facility off the I-70 and just outside Baltimore is more commonly referred to as ‘The Ghost Hotel-’ a misnomer for many reasons. Residents of ‘The Ghost Hotel’ are permanent, for instance, and it’s currently impossible to pay for a room. It is a strictly non-profit enterprise, held together by sparse government funds and sizable, if less reliable, private donations. Most of these donations come from families who are able to recognize a resident within ‘The Ghost Hotel’ and feel the facility is doing good work.

‘The Ghost Hotel’ is a place for the dead rather than the living. Occasionally the source of a haunting can be isolated to a single object or a room and, when this happens, those totems can be shifted to ‘The Ghost Hotel’ for the benefit of the haunted party and the haunter alike.

There are rooms for the relatively self-reliant ghosts, say, your translucent rocking-chair grandma or your window-waver. There are rooms for poltergeists, filled to the brim with small, tidy objects for thrashing about or intricate stacking. Employees take turns stepping into said rooms to act surprised and to ultimately put everything back where it’s supposed to go. For the outright murderous ghosts? Well, that’s how a traveler gets a cheap room for the night.’

There’s a long waitlist for volunteering at ‘The Ghost Hotel.’ Hector and I are halfway across the country when we get the call but we turn around anyway and make it just in time. I sign a whole sheaf of papers at the desk, most of which attest to my cardiac and metal health history. The woman hands me the keys without any real ceremony and points me to the sort of sliding-gate elevator a person expects at an establishment called ‘The Ghost Hotel.’

I hesitate. “Anything I should know about room, uh, 14?”

“You much of an actor?”

“Not really.”

“Then the less details you get, the better. They know when you’re faking it. Best advice is to pretend to die early.”

There is a small guide to being haunted on the bedside table that says much the same.

A resident is assigned a weapon tailored to their historical preference. These items are harmless. Theatrical deaths among volunteers are discouraged. Most residents resorting to would-be fatal attacks are signaling exhaustion. It is best to let them finish.

Room 14 is a taxidermy room. None of the decorations have horns or teeth of significant size but there are several stuffed rabbits on display. I think about calling downstairs to complain, to see if we can switch, maybe, but Hector doesn’t seem to mind so much. I put the rabbits up on a high shelf just in case.

When I come out of the bathroom a few minutes later, the rabbits have been placed on the bed. All of the taxidermied heads have turned to glare at the toilet. The lights flicker.

This won’t be a restful night.

Hector and I are plagued by animal noises well into the evening. Shadows crawl in and out of our peripheries. The rabbits won’t stay still- the resident ghost honed in on that discomfort right away. They’re never where I leave them. They move stop-motion when I blink. It’s admittedly pretty creepy. I wonder what makes this ghost so mean. Was it a murderer or something? Does it hate animals? I try to write messages in fog on the mirror but it just shows up as a dark shadow behind me before blinking away. The guide suggests this is pretty normal. Ghosts get set in their ways. They don’t want to talk.

I wake up in the middle of the night when one of the stuffed rabbits clatters to the floor. It’s pretty clearly baiting me. I take the blanket off and step across the creaking floor. I bend over and hear the taxidermied animals all creaking, each moving a leg or a jaw or a neck. The shadow flicks across the glass as my fingers graze the rabbit’s fur and I look over in time to watch it coalesce into the figure of a man. It drives a knife down into my back and I feel the blade click into the handle.

I hesitate, probably too long for any real sort of believability, and then slump over on the floor. The stage knife drops near my face and I see, reflected in the rabbit’s glass eye, the shadow receding into the darkness. After a moment I stand up and brush myself off. I set the knife and the rabbit back up on the shelf and sleep the rest of the night, undisturbed.

-traveler