burning castle (updated w/ pic link)

There's a castle in Versailles, Kentucky (photos at link). It swirls in legend, mostly. People drive by who hear made up stories about it, or who make one up, because it's so improbable, sitting back off a heavily traveled stretch of highway. It belongs to a sheik. To a madman who never lets anyone see it. It's haunted.

The real story, I've heard, is that this guy built it for his wife, after they came back from touring Europe together. Inside the turrets and the wall, it's just a castle-like house, never completed, because they broke up. He, the builder, kept working on it off and on through much of his life. He had no formal training as an architect, but he somehow managed to do enough research and learn enough to design the thing and to make it work. He ran a construction company and in their downtimes, he'd put his guys on building the castle. He died last year, in a nursing home, with Altzheimer's. His kids were going to try and turn it into a bed and breakfast or sell it to be turned into one, the last I heard.

And now, lightning has struck it, and it's burning. The flames are reaching as high as the turrets and the news helicopters are en route. It's burning and burning and it will keep burning until it's done. I hazard no one will ever build it back.

Castles may be fated to burn or bleed or crumble, but they shouldn't. They seem like they should last, no matter how incomplete or ill-constructed. No matter if the reason they exist burned, or bled, or crumbled a long time ago. Castles should be immune to bad luck.

Updated: Picture and story here.

(p.s. Go vote for Rupert to win the million.)