Weird U.S.: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets [Paperback]

Mark Moran (Author), Mark Sceurman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 5, 2009 | Series: Weird

What’s weird around here? That’s a question Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman have asked themselves for years. And it’s exactly their offbeat sense of curiosity that led the duo to create the phenomenal Weird N.J. and the successful series that followed. What’s NOT shockingly odd here: every Weird book has become a bestseller in its region.

Now the weirdness is finally in paperback for the first time! Six titles—including Weird U.S., which covers all 50 states—will reach a fresh audience eager to get these cool collections at a more popular price and smaller size. Plus, there’s an exciting brand-new volume, covering the wonderfully weird state of Louisiana.

 

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Sterling (May 5, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402766882
• ISBN-13: 978-1402766886
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,714 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Not since the Headless Horseman went charging through Sleepy Hollow has something come out of the Hudson Highlands of upstate New York as thrilling and chilling as author and paranormal researcher James A. Willis.

Fueled by a steady childhood diet of Boo Berry cereal, Creepy magazine, and late-night Vincent Price movies, Willis soon developed a taste for the unexplained and quickly began seeking out all things strange and spooky. When he wasn't trying to coax the boogeyman out from under his bed for a photo shoot, Willis pondered such eternal questions as what happens to us when we die, is there life on other planets, and what possesses someone to decorate their house with 1,001 milk jugs?

In 1999, after spending more than 15 years chasing after ghosts and visiting crybaby bridges, Willis moved to Ohio and founded The Ghosts of Ohio (ghostsofohio.org), a nationally recognized paranormal research organization. Willis has grown the organization to well over 35 members in three divisions throughout the state: Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.

In 2004, in what seemed to be destiny, Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman, the brainchilds of the Weird US series of books, approached Willis and asked him to contribute to their latest volume, Weird US. To date, Willis has been involved with 6 books in the Weird US series. He is the co-author of Weird Ohio (2005) and Weird Indiana (2008) and was also a contributing author to Weird US (2004), Weird Hauntings (2006), Weird US II: The ODDyssey Continues (2008), and Weird Encounters (2010). Willis' unique and offbeat writing style was officially recognized in 2006 with his induction into the Grand Order of Weird Writers. In addition, Willis has been a contributing author to several books in the Armchair Reader series, beginning with Weird, Scary & Unusual (2008) and continuing with Armchair Reader Goes Hollywood (2010), Armchair Reader's All About Ohio (2010), Armchair Reader: The Mammoth Reader (2010), and Armchair Reader: Haunted America (2011).

A sought-after public speaker, Willis has given presentations throughout the United States, during which he has educated and entertained tens of thousands of people of all ages in crowd sizes ranging from 10 to well over 600. He has also been featured in more than 50 media sources, including CNN, USA Today, Columbus Business First, Midwest Living, The Canadian Press, and even the Kuwait Times. He is also currently a contributing author to Mysteries Magazine.

Willis currently resides in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and daughter, a Queen-loving parrot, and three narcoleptic cats.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Hooray for weird! October 6, 2005

By Mike Smith VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Apparently, I must be somewhat weird, because this last Christmas, I was given four copies of this book by four different people. (And then, coincidentally, three of my friends got this book for their birthdays....)

This book is loaded with weird facts, legends, lore, people, photographs, ghost stories, haunted places, supernatural figures, terrifying ruins and tunnels and forests and abandoned buildings, tall tales, odd museums, and answerless mysteries.

I've travelled a lot around America, and I've come across a lot of strangeness that's not in this book--I always ask people, "What's the strangest thing you've ever seen?"--but what it is here is entertaining and unique, if occasionally doubtful. The book deals more with the East than with the West, and as a result of that a lot of cool stuff is never even mentioned that could be. There's only one or two items from New Mexico, and nothing at all on skinwalkers--the creepiest lore there is.

Some parts of the book are actually frightening though--like phantom clowns!--and would be even scarier if read during an actual visit to these places.

I recommend this book highly--it's very readable, though I wish it had maps or directions to the places it describes--and I will probably buy any sequels.

52 of 58 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Weirdness Better Found Elsewhere January 5, 2005

By doomsdayer520 HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

This is a reasonably enjoyable and fun book for those with roadtripping impulses. There are some real weaknesses to this book however, and some of them have to do with the meaning of the word "weird." The editors claim that the focus of the book, most of which is "written" by semi-anonymous club correspondents, deals with spooky and mysterious places around the country that give adventurous folks the impulse to explore the unknown and confront the darker areas of the American soul. This is true for a good chunk of the book, especially in creepy chapters dealing with weird cemeteries and abandoned mental asylums. However, large parts of the book drift into the funny definition of "weird," merely displaying cheeky roadside tourist attractions.

This unfocused nature of the book is badly exacerbated by the contributing "authors" who have sent submissions to Sceurman and Moran describing these weird places. Many of these are message board submissions of wildly inconsistent quality. Some are well written but most aren't, especially those that damage the credibility of the whole enterprise with indirect stories about how they heard about legends and locations from friends of friends of friends. The production values of the book are amateurish with the selection of weak contributions from correspondents, poor editing and writing, and illustrations and photographs that sometimes don't even illustrate the locations whose text they accompany. There is a much better place for this type of information for the adventurous American roadtripper and explorer of mysterious places - the better developed and much more established website and book series created by the great Roadside America organization. [~doomsdayer520~]

43 of 48 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A lot of fun to read but......... November 22, 2004

By Thomas Bonar

Format:Hardcover

This book will give you the creeps, but I LOVE it. It is American folklore at its best. I liked reading the local legends and learning about the strange characters from all over the country. It was also nice to see how the authors kept an open mind, just telling the stories as the locals tell them. It was like reading the stories we told as kids around a campfire. We wanted to scare the heck out of each other. This book will give me good stories for my next camping trip.