Crabbie: World's Largest Horseshoe Crab
Hillsboro, Ohio
The beliefs of creationist and/or born-again Christians may stir debate, but their flair for titanic saviors, and monuments, and church-state stitch jobs has been unarguably good -- at least for those who like to look at big things by the side of the road.
Take, for example, Freedom Worship Baptist Church in Blanchester, Ohio. In 2006 it unveiled -- next to a former hardware store that had been turned into the church's meeting-and-dining hall -- the World's Largest Horseshoe Crab.
"We just call him 'Crabbie'," said Pastor Jim Rankin, who stepped out from a prayer group meeting to greet us, wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
A creationist church and a monster crab may have seemed like a blasphemous union, but not to Pastor Jim. "The fossils found of the horseshoe crab are the same as they appear in the waters today," he said. "The crab never evolved, so the creation account must be true!" In other words, Crabbie was a jumbo-sized way of saying, "Naturally select this, Mr. Darwin."
("Trilobites are the ancestor to the horseshoe crab," countered Laurie Risch, executive director of the Behringer-Crawford Museum, which we visited the next day. But despite her disagreement, she enjoyed the idea of Crabbie.)
According to Pastor Jim, the big crab was originally built in 1995 for a Baltimore nautical attraction -- The Columbus Center -- that went bankrupt (A multimedia presentation on sharks was shown inside its shell). Crabbie was then bought by the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Kentucky, but it proved to be too big even for their oversized sense of theater. By luck or mysterious-ways intervention, Pastor Jim was giving a talk at the museum, learned about the crab, and accepted it as a donation to his church.
"Five semis drove up and dropped it right here," Pastor Jim said, pointing to the parking lot. "It was nine huge pieces. We had no drawing, no nothing." Left without an instruction manual, Pastor Jim remembered that he had horseshoe crab shells at home, collected when he was a kid in Florida. He brought them to the church and successfully used them as blueprint for assembly.
Crabbie is 28 feet wide, 67 feet long, and 12 feet high -- not counting its elevated tail. The church called Crabbie a "community pavilion," and claimed that 60 people could sit within its shell. Pastor Jim said that weddings had been performed inside the crab. Movies were screened there as well. The foam core and fiberglass skin made Crabbie warm in winter and cool in summer. A wooden post propped up its long, spiky tail.
Crabbie was one of several attractions at Freedom Worship Baptist Church. Inside the hall, life-size replica dinosaurs were on loan from the Creation Museum, and the church had its own, small, Freedom Biblical Museum as well. "These are all real ancient artifacts," said Pastor Jim, pointing with pride to the Roman dice, Greek coins, and Sumerian tablet.
Our eyes were drawn to a replica of a scourging whip and Crown of Thorns, three "authentic crucifixion nails" that were reportedly unearthed near Jerusalem, and an Abraham Lincoln 1864 campaign torch that had somehow found its way into the collection.
The hall was also the place where visitors could purchase miniature plush versions of Crabbie.
The crab's biggest celebrity moment came in August 2008, when Gene Sullivan jumped over it on a motorcycle as part of his born-again "Jump For Jesus" ministry. With Christian crosses emblazoned on his helmet, fireproof suit, belt buckle, and motorcycle, Gene flew over the crab, smashed through the burning "Gates of Hell" (erected for the occasion), and slid to a safe stop without harming the church's biblical plant garden or its back yard replicas of Calvary and the Holy Tomb.
The stunt, like Crabbie, was designed to get people to come to church who otherwise wouldn't bother. But when the jump was over and Gene had moved on to other engagements, the big crab was still out there, on duty 24/7.
Its drawing power was warmly appreciated by Pastor Jim. "We're in the middle of nowhere," he said, and yet he reckoned that Crabbie had been visited by over 4000 people from 23 states. "That just floors me."
In early 2015 the crab was put up for sale, its Creationist ministry apparently complete. Crabbie was purchased by Ben and Darlene Sexton, who'd admired it for years and wanted to preserve it as a roadside attraction. Ben cut it apart with a chainsaw, moved it 25 miles east to Hillsboro, and reassembled it next to Highway 124. It has proved so popular in its new spot that Ben hopes to build a roadside pullout to accommodate all the parked cars.