Cave Organ - Install one in YOUR cave today!

This is so unbelievably cool, I'm a little hurt that the world has somehow kept this knowledge from me for so long.

In 1957, Mechanix Illustrated ran this short article about The Stalacpipe Organ in Luray Caverns, VA. Physicist Leland Sprinkle honed the stalactites in the cave to perfect pitch and built this organ down there to basically play the cave. Cleverly, he called it a "Lithophone". The sound is kind of like a really huge vibraphone. I was kind of hoping for some amazingly low notes, but hey, Sprinkle had to work with what the cave offered.

Here's a YouTube video about the organ, taken from Ripley's Believe it or Not. True to form, the Ripley's program gives you only a tiny sliver of what you actually want - the actual sound of the organ - and lots of pointless cuts and annoying stock music. Production values are as lowbrow as it gets.

Amazon turned up zero CDs or MP3s of the lithophone. However, there is a DVD about Luray Caverns that, judging from the description, mentions nothing about the Lithophone. What the hell? It seems that, if you're looking to get some cave tunes for yourself, you'll have to visit the gift shop at the mouth of the cavern. Booo.