diff --git a/docs/rh-log.txt b/docs/rh-log.txt
index 5f79917b94..9dc48c875d 100644
--- a/docs/rh-log.txt
+++ b/docs/rh-log.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,11 @@
-August 31, 2009
+September 1, 2009
+- Fixed: Some dmadds wads used zero-length sprites as placeholders. When you
+  ran dmadds to combine it with the IWAD's sprites, they would be replaced by
+  the IWAD's sprites, so when loading such wads, we should ignore those as
+  valid sprites. (Thanks to entryway for finding this.) See 22ventry's
+  22sprite.wad for an example.
+
+August 31, 2009
 - Basic Mac support: Everything compiles but does not yet link.
 - Replaced the use of autoconf's WORDS_BIGENDIAN with __BIG_ENDIAN__, since
   latter comes predefined by GCC.
diff --git a/src/resourcefiles/file_wad.cpp b/src/resourcefiles/file_wad.cpp
index 1df3ef2acb..ffa9c85e86 100644
--- a/src/resourcefiles/file_wad.cpp
+++ b/src/resourcefiles/file_wad.cpp
@@ -250,10 +250,18 @@ void FWadFile::SetNamespace(const char *startmarker, const char *endmarker, name
 			{
 				if (!warned)
 				{
-					Printf(TEXTCOLOR_YELLOW"WARNING: Overlapping namespaces found (lump %d.)\n", j);
+					Printf(TEXTCOLOR_YELLOW"WARNING: Overlapping namespaces found (lump %d)\n", j);
 				}
 				warned = true;
 			}
+			else if (space == ns_sprites && Lumps[j].LumpSize < 8)
+			{
+				// sf 26/10/99:
+				// ignore sprite lumps smaller than 8 bytes (the smallest possible)
+				// in size -- this was used by some dmadds wads
+				// as an 'empty' graphics resource
+				DPrintf(" Skipped empty sprite %s (lump %d)\n", Lumps[j].Name, j);
+			}
 			else
 			{
 				Lumps[j].Namespace = space;