Scary, mysterious & just plain weird stories from Southern Ohio The southern portion of the Buckeye State has long attracted its fair share of colorful characters and odd occurrences. Infamous bootlegger George Remus rose to power shortly after moving to Cincinnati. Roy Rogers, King of the Cowboys, was born and raised in southern Ohio. Some even say creatures not of this planet are drawn to the area, which has had numerous UFO sightings. In the same region, an unassuming university professor got away with murder, an eccentric built his version of a European castle using nearby river rocks, and a headless motorcycle ghost roams a rural roadway. Ride along with author James A. Willis as he ventures into Southern Ohio in search of all things strange and spooky.
Hauntings lurk and spirits linger in the heart of America Reader, beware! Turn these pages and enter the world of the paranormal, where ghosts and ghouls alike creep just out of sight. Author James A. Willis shines a light in the dark corners of Ohio and scares those spirits out of hiding in this thrilling collection. From ghostly soldiers that still haunt Fort Meigs to the eerie Franklin Castle, there’s no shortage of bone-chilling tales to keep you up at night. There’s even a carved tombstone of an infant at Cedar Hill cemetery, whose ghostly eyes keep watch over those wander too close. Around the campfire or tucked away on a dark and stormy night, this big book of ghost stories is a hauntingly good read.
Ah, Ohio, so nice and normal. We have apple pie heroes like Hopalong Cassidy, Neil Armstrong, Thomas Edison, and Doris Day. Our state bird is the jaunty and ever popular cardinal, and our state flower is the carnation, found in the buttonholes of politicians and bridegrooms everywhere. We started America rolling by opening the country's first gas station, and we have a museum dedicated to America's music, rock and roll. Why, we're just so all-American normal, it can bring a tear to the eye. But there's something else we have a whole lot of, and that's...weirdness. Yes, the Buckeye State has lots and lots of strange people and unusual sites, and they burst forth from every page of this, the biggest, most bizarre collection of Ohio stories ever assembled: Weird Ohio.
This is the tenth book of the urban legends series of the United States. This book is full of locations, directions, pictures, folklore, legends and personal accounts of those who have come in contact with these legends themselves. Travel to the Ohio valley and visit haunted roads, bridges and homes. Head to Oklahoma and check out portals, cryptids and cemeteries. In Oregon you will find haunted lighthouses and witches. Over in Pennsylvania you can go to Asylums, Goblins and Werewolves. This collection of legends is not just the well known legends but the lore only known by the locals. Find new places to adventure to or just enjoy visiting from the comfort of home.
In the 1950s and ‘60s, John W. Allen told the people of southern Illinois about themselves—about their region, its history, and its folkways—in his series of newspaper articles, “It Happened in Southern Illinois.” Each installment of the series depicted a single item of interest—a town, a building, an enterprise, a person, an event, a custom. Originally published in 1963, Legends & Lore of Southern Illinois brings together a selection of these articles preserving a valuable body of significant local history and cultural lore. During territorial times and early statehood, southern Illinois was the most populous and most influential part of the state. But the advent of the steamboat and the building of the National Road made the lands to the west and north more easily accessible, and the later settlers struck out for the more expansive and fertile prairies. The effect of this movement was to isolate that section of the state known as Egypt and halt its development, creating what Allen termed “an historical eddy.” Bypassed as it was by the main current of westward expansion and economic growth, its culture changed very slowly. Methods, practices, and the tools of the pioneer continued in use for a long time. The improved highways and better means of communication of the twentieth century brought a marked change upon the region, and daily life no longer differed materially from that of other areas. Against such a cultural and historical backdrop, Mr. Allen wrote these sketches of the people of southern Illinois—of their folkways and beliefs, their endeavors, successes, failures, and tragedies, and of the land to which they came. There are stories here of slaves and their masters, criminals, wandering peddlers, politicians, law courts and vigilantes, and of boat races on the rivers. Allen also looks at the region’s earlier history, describing American Indian ruins, monuments, and artifacts as well as the native population’s encounters with European settlers. Many of the vestiges of the region’s past culture have all but disappeared, surviving only in museums and in the written record. This new paperback edition of Legends & Lore of Southern Illinois brings that past culture to life again in Allen’s descriptive, engaging style.
The legendary tales of Central Ohio reach far beyond the region. Bigfoot-like creatures have been sighted in the state since the 1800s. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was the headquarters for the military's investigations into UFO sightings in the mid-twentieth century. Some of Johnny Appleseed's earliest orchards were planted near present-day Steubenville, Mansfield and Lima, and a farm in Nova boasts the last tree planted by Appleseed. Join James A. Willis as he travels across Central Ohio and delves into the Buckeye State's stories of murderous villains, courageous heroes and even a few ghosts and monsters.
A dark and bloody past lurks beneath the folklore of the Little Beaver Creek watershed in Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania. The first American frontiersmen hesitantly settled this region in the late 1700s following more than forty years of warfare. Fables like Barbara Davidson, the Pig Lady of Cannelton, sprang from this long, horrific conflict. The legends of Esther Hale, the White Lady of Sprucevale, and Gretchen's Lock rose shortly thereafter, whereas the age of the Indian Rock petroglyph remains hotly debated. Today, most locals know these stories. But few know the purpose of Indian Rock or why Barbara's restless spirit sometimes appears with a pig's head. Using methods honed over twenty years of service as a Department of Defense intelligence analyst, author Michael Kishbucher uncovers the history and potential origins of these and other tales.
A History of Moonville, Ohio and a Collection of its Haunting Tales is a rich and detailed account of a haunted bygone mining town that once flourished in the backwoods of Ohios southeastern region. Mooville flourished during Ohios golden age of railroad expansion in the years before the start of the Civil War,founded by a man with a dream. Then, as Moonville began drifting into Ohios collective history its paranormal activity picked up, adding to Ohios already rich and colorful collection of haunting tales.
A collection of stories about Ohio including "The Zanesville earthquakes," "Rattlesnake mound," "The Corpse that wouldn't bleed," and "The headless horseman of Cherry Hill.".
America. Enterprise. Metropolis. Cairo. Rome. These are a few of the grandly named villages and towns along the lower Ohio River. The optimism with which early settlers named these towns reveals much about the history of American expansion. Though none became the next great American city, it was not for lack of ambition or entrepreneurial spirit. Why didn't a major city develop on the lower Ohio? What geographic, economic, and cultural factors caused one place to prosper and another to wither? How did Evansville become the largest and most influential city in the region? How did smaller cities such as Owensboro and Paducah succeed? Regardless of how appealing a locale looked on the map, luck, fate, culture, and leadership all helped determine success or failure. The fate of Cairo, Illinois—on paper an ideal site for a metropolis—emphasizes the extent to which human decisions, rather than physical landscape, affected a town's prosperity. The location of a canal or railroad terminus, the construction of a factory, or the activities of local boosters all mattered greatly. Darrel Bigham examines these towns and villages from the 1790s, when the first settlements appeared, to the 1920s, when the modern pattern of life associated with automobiles, economic upheaval, and mass culture emerged. Bigham's intimate knowledge of the area offers a true sense of the towns and villages and discloses fundamental truths about the workings of the American dream.
