Like the ABC Cemetery in Amherst County, where all the graves are in alphabetical order. Or the Dark Vortex of Windsor Hills, the Gilligan's Island Bed & Breakfast at Smith Mountain Lake and Maggs, the headless cat.

Every so often, I'll get a call or e-mail asking me about one of these Kippisms ("I can't seem to find a phone number for the Gilligan's Island Bed & Breakfast, and it really sounds like fun."). I try to let them down gently.

Teague even fooled me once. I was trying to find out more about a Campbell County man who supposedly had suffered from hiccups most of his life until I followed an Internet trail back to "Lynchburg's Little-Known Attractions."

Indeed, pursuing any lead on the Internet is often very much like following Alice's White Rabbit down into his hole.

For example, I received an e-mail this week about a supposed "Church of Spock" in Campbell County. It was posted on a Web site called "Purgatorio" -- "a panoply of evangelical eccentricities, unorthodox oddities and Christian cultural curiosities" -- and even featured a photograph. The picture showed a pleasant looking brick church with the trademark Spock hand-sign painted across one side.

"Founded in 1977," the Web site description read, '"The Spock,' as the church is called, is the world's only Church of Star Trek, a religion centered on the popular 1960s television series featuring the adventures of a crew of interstellar explorers.

"The ideology of the church is centered on the so-called Vulcan philosophy which includes the belief in pure 'logic' and which emphasizes a lifestyle devoid of emotion. A huge stained-glass likeness of the church's namesake is featured in the sanctuary, where churchgoers recite sequences of dialogue from the series and participate in what they call a 'Holy Mind Meld.'

"Many church members wear stick-on pointed ears (mimicking those of the TV character) during services and at other church functions."

I could almost believe in a Church of Spock -- after all, many devotees of the show do seem to regard it in almost a religious way -- but it just wasn't logical, as Spock would say, that there would be one in Campbell County. A friend of mine, Linda Smith, is the commander of the local Star Fleet, the U.S.S. Heimdahl, and she would have told me.

So on a hunch, I went back to "Lynchburg's Little-Known Attractions," and there it was. Blast you with a phaser, Kipp Teague.

...

Laurant writes a weekly column for the Lifestyle section of the News & Advance.