WeirdBlog.com

Archive for the ‘United States’ Category

Do you like stories about strange phenomena, ghost stories, or stories that simply tingle your spine? How about stories about strange places that exist? Perhaps you are the type of person who is interested in UFO’s. What about stories about interesting persons who have their own stories to share? What if I could tell you that this book is all of that and more?

Who would think of a fairly quiet place like Wisconsin as being a state full of weirdness!? Everything from UFO’s and ghosts to the world’s largest, well, urinal, this book covers it all.

New York is one of the world biggest metropolises. It is also one of the weirdest. That probably comes as no surprise to anybody. But wait until you get your hands on “Weird New York”, and read about Long Island’s Big Duck, Moan and Groan Road in, of all places, a town called Hope, and the Jell-O Museum in Le Roy. This is a great alternative travel guide to New York – both City and State – to find out what the other books won’t tell you, like what to do in Spook Rock Road, how to find the world’s largest pet cemetery, or what to do if you bump into the Lady of Lake Ronkonkoma. This is your chance to find out why New York is the city that never sleeps…

The book itself is beautiful–certainly coffee table caliber. The 263 colorful pages are divided into 11 sections: Local Legends and Lore, Ancient Mysteries, Fabled People and Places, Unexplained Phenomena, Local Heroes and Villains, Personalized Properties, Roadside Oddities, Roads Less Traveled, Quaker State Ghosts, Cemetery Safari and Abandoned Places. Each of the sections reveals the oddities, tall tales and myths of Pennsylvania through colorful pictures and testimonies from actual eyewitnesses and personal accounts from the editors who visited most of the included sites. Most of the entries are short snippets, making this a good breeze-through book for those not interested in heavy reading.

If this book does not urge people to gas up their wagons and plot out a Weird PA tour, I don’t now what will. In fact, maybe I should get licensing rights to the book and start my own tour group. Hmmm. Anyway, some great sites worth visiting (or steering clear of, take your pick) are Gravity Hill in Bedford County, where a car put in neutral will roll up instead of the obvious; New Hope and historic Philadelphia which are filled with ghost stories of famed Pennsylvanians; Pennhurst, an abandoned mental asylum in Philly and yes, there is even an empty morgue (or is it?); a backyard zoo in Fayette county filled with larger-than-life animal sculptures and in York County, there really is an old woman who lives in a shoe(-shaped house). Okay, former shoe salesman. I was way too tempted to use the nursery rhyme.

Two included places happen to be personal favorites: the burning-for-thirty years Columbia county ghost town, Centralia and Shartlesville’s Roadside America. The latter impressed the authors so much they called it, “The most pleasant surprise we found.” That makes me happy. This massive model train set spans a huge hangar and represents much of America through miniscule interpretations. A must see!

This is an excellent edition in the Weird series, mainly due to the author’s enthusiasm for the subject. He tackles a sprawling amount of New England history and folklore, and will definitely give you a ton of travel ideas for your next road trip.

Mr. Citro is to be commended on finding so many new curiosities (The Elusive Vermont Hum, The Girl Who Stopped Time) as well as uncovering long-lost tales rarely told (Hibernating Hill Folk, Gentlemen of the Highway). As always, Mr. Citro writes with his usual tounge-in-cheek, witty humor we have grown to love and expect from him. He doesn’t disappoint here.

You’ll see giant frogs atop spools of thread, hillside whale tails, and Boston’s skinniest house. Spend some time at America’s Stonehenge in Salem, New Hampshire (an enjoyable and educational place to spend an afternoon), and go see The Weird Windmill in Newport, Rhode Island (a fun and historic place to wander around for the day). There are colorful photos of these and more! This book is stuffed full of photos of almost every strange site, as well as illustrations for the legends.