51 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Weirdness Better Found Elsewhere, January 5, 2005
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~]
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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Hooray for weird!, October 6, 2005
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.
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42 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A lot of fun to read but........., November 22, 2004
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.
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