S-M Horror Dungeon Discovered in Kentucky

How would you like it if I hit you over the head with a hammer?

No? You wouldn’t like it at all?

That’s because it is our universal and instinctual human nature to prefer pleasure over pain and to seek pleasure but avoid pain, just as it is the universal and instinctual nature of all living things to prefer life over death.

Unlike other creatures, however, human beings can become alienated or perverted from our nature so that pain is preferred over pleasure or, in some cases, deriving a strange sort of pleasure from pain. Sadomasochism is an example of that perversion: the giving and/or receiving of pleasure—often sexual—from acts involving the infliction or reception of pain or humiliation.

The so-called sexual revolution in America began in the 1960s and never stopped. With sexual “liberation” came libertinism — the falling away or absence of all moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary, undesirable, and downright stodgy. But with libertinism also came boredom: ordinary standard sexual practices become less and less titillating. That’s called being jaded. And so, the never-satiated ravenous appetite searches for ever more exciting and more dangerous thrills.

It is in that context that the wild popularity — especially among middle-class women — of the 2011 book Fifty Shades of Grey is significant. The book is an explicit “erotic novel” by E. L. James about a relationship between a female college graduate and a male business magnate, characterized by sadomasochism, bondage/discipline, and dominance/submission.

I wonder if the middle-class matrons entranced with the novel know about the S-M horror dungeon that was recently unearthed in Louisville, Kentucky?

About four months ago, workers preparing Louisville’s historic Whiskey Row buildings for interior demolition discovered the remnants of an underground sado-masochistic swingers club from the 1970s which had been abandoned since the 1990s.

As reported by Joe Arnold of WHAS11, two floors below Main Street, a large black and white logo displays the word “LATEX,” presumably the name of the club.

Workers found sheets of plastic that they presume separated the sub-basement into different rooms. Also found in the underground dungeon were candles, a disintegrated couch, a mysterious piece of cloth draped over a table and chair, another chair covered in cobwebs, oil paintings on the walls, and a horrific torture bed.

Here are some still photos of the horror dungeon taken from the raw video shot by photojournalist Michael Driver for WHAS11:

Whiskey Row buildings being demolished
Club Latex, the underground S-M dungeon
A wooden rack large enough for one or two people — includes a headrest and a rusted chain that can be turned by a handle. A gear resembling a saw blade is connected to the handle. The bondage bed gives hints to what went on in Club Latex.
One of a series of oil paintings, inside the subterranean darkness, depicting sexual and violent images.
A close-up of the face of the woman in the first painting, suggestive of her being a black woman.
Another gruesome oil painting, of what?
Oil painting of a woman being tortured.
Reproduction of Edvard Munch’s famous 1893 painting “The Scream“
Oil painting above the torture bed makes it clear that Club Latex was a satanic club
Close-up of the satanic oil painting

The Daily Mail reports that an unidentified former Club Latex member, who was one of the 1,000 dues-paying patrons, claimed that “A group of about eight of us decided to form an organization to promote and teach people about safe ways to practice sadomasochism. ‘There were a few professional dominatrixes, a few that were in committed B-D-S-M relationships, some gay, some straight.” (BDSM = bondage, discipline, sadism, masochism)

One of the club’s founders, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that at one point they had over a dozen bondage and torture devices, but safety was always a priority. He said, “We employed safety personnel and guards to insure nothing dangerous, non-consensual, or untoward ever took place, and to my knowledge never did.”

Yeah right. This sure looks “safe” to me:

Close up of Club Latex’s torture bed

~Eowyn