True Ghost Stories: Real Haunted Ouija Boards


Zachery Knowles - 2016
     With such a long and diverse history, it’s unsurprising that Ouija has thrown up some interesting experiences. To some, it’s just a bit of fun; a spooky parlor game to pass the time with friends. For others, however, the terrifying encounter haunts them for a lifetime; an experience never to be forgotten. These people would instantly erase their experience, if only they could… Haunted Ouija Boards dives into some of the scariest encounters, giving us a spooky glimpse into the paranormal world—the book is filled with true stories from non-believers, believers, and Spiritualism fanatics, giving you a wide range of sources. Disturbing tales of lingering ghosts, ominous warnings, and implausibly correct predictions for the future are contained within. As we dig deeper, though, the stories become darker—demonic encounters, spirits physically attacking houseguests, and even the Ouija board becoming the motivation for murder. Never underestimate the powerful entities that the Ouija board can connect you with. As well as the compilation of terrifying true tales, Haunted Ouija Boards highlights just how dangerous this “simple board game” can be, and how to enjoy it safely—if that’s even possible. Haunted Ouija Boards will challenge skeptics to become believers. All of this, made possible by one board, with 26 letters, ten numbers, and a few simple words. And a little help from the spirit world, of course. Ready to scare yourself senseless? Scroll to the top of the page and hit buy!

Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality


Paul Barber - 1988
    From the tale of a sixteenth-century shoemaker from Breslau whose ghost terrorized everyone in the city, to the testimony of a doctor who presided over the exhumation and dissection of a graveyard full of Serbian vampires, his book is fascinating reading.

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things


Lafcadio Hearn - 1904
    Faceless creatures haunt an unwary traveler. A beautiful woman — the personification of winter at its cruelest — ruthlessly kills unsuspecting mortals. These and 17 other chilling supernatural tales — based on legends, myths, and beliefs of ancient Japan — represent the very best of Lafcadio Hearn's literary style. They are also a culmination of his lifelong interest in the endlessly fascinating customs and tales of the country where he spent the last fourteen years of his life, translating into English the atmospheric stories he so avidly collected.Teeming with undead samurais, man-eating goblins, and other terrifying demons, these 20 classic ghost stories inspired the Oscar®-nominated 1964 film of the same name.

Weird Massachusetts: Your Travel Guide to Massachusetts' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets


Jeff Belanger - 2008
    But we dug a little deeper and found all kinds of local legends, bizarre beasts, surprising cemeteries, and uncovered the best kept secrets from all over the Bay State. Our state certainly celebrates more than just tea parties, the Red Sox and Patriots; folks from Massachusetts cherish their weird history too. Our brave and valiant author, Jeff Belanger, toured the state with camera and notepad in hand as he waded through cranberry bogs and trudged up the Berkshires to uncover the state's odd and offbeat. If it's unusual or unexplainable or fantastic, and in the Bay State, you'll find it all here in Weird Massachusetts. See how the world's biggest elephant now fits into a peanut butter jar and why it brings good luck to students, listen for those unexplained booms in Nashoba, discover the hidden secrets at Wizard's Glen and Altar Rock, escape from the Sea Witch and the Cape Cod Mermaid, check out the Museum of Burnt Food, or eat an apple from one of Isaac Newton's famous apple trees';but whatever you do, don't pick up a red-headed hitchhiker on Route 44. With so many places named after the devil, it's a wonder we're not called the Devil State or the Witch State, but see for yourself at the Witch Museum, dedicated to educating the public on what witchcraft was, and is today; for the really daring, unlock some of the spooky secrets at the Houghton Mansion or stay a night at the Concord's Colonial Inn. Look out for the Pukwudgees, circle around haunted trees in cemeteries, and enjoy one of the longest-named lakes in the world, or try climbing Dighton Rock and unravel the messages in its centuries-old carvings. It's all here. It's all weird and it's all in Massachusetts. A brand-new entry in the best-selling Weird U.S. series, Weird Massachusetts is packed with all that great stuff your history teacher wouldn't teach you. So get ready to join our author on his great adventure. It's a journey you'll never forget!

The Rochdale Poltergeist: A True Story


Jenny Ashford - 2015
    Until I did. And then I was thinking, ‘Oh God, do I really want to continue with this?’” - Steve Mera BSc., Director of the Scientific Establishment of Parapsychology Steve Mera had been investigating paranormal phenomena for many years, and had never seen anything that shook him to his very foundations. All that changed in 1996, when he was called in with his team to look into the bizarre occurrences taking place at a small bungalow in Rochdale, Manchester, England. Flying objects, disembodied voices, phantom smells and sounds, and strangest of all, copious falls of water seemingly coming from nowhere plagued the Gardner family for nearly a year. What Steve experienced during the investigation was enough to make him question his entire career path, and remains one of only a handful of cases that he is completely unable to rationally explain. This account, written by horror author Jenny Ashford from interviews conducted with Steve about the case, is a bone-chilling foray into the paranormal that will make even the most ardent skeptic sleep with the lights on.

Toshiden: Exploring Japanese Urban Legends Vol. 1


Tara A. Devlin - 2018
    From supernatural creatures to medical mishaps, horrific crimes to secrets of the entertainment industry, nobody does horror quite like Japan. Find out the hidden secrets behind these legends and how they came to be. After all, the truth is often stranger than fiction.

Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth


Carol Rose - 2000
    In these pages you will meet extraordinary beings from Hindu and Navajo religions, Scandinavian tales, Russian folklore, Lithuanian stories, Irish oral history, American tall tales, and Aztec myth. Just some of the monstrous entourage:• Baku, a benevolent Japanese monster with the body of a horse, the head of a lion, and the legs of a tiger, who helps people by devouring their nightmares.• Kurma, the giant tortoise of Hindu myth, whose upper shell forms the heavens and lower part the earth.• Missipissy, the feared fish serpent of North America's Great Lakes region.This illustrated encyclopedia not only identifies and describes individual beasts in their cultural context but also groups them together across cultures and discusses common mythological strands and conceits.

The Book of the Damned


Charles Fort - 1919
    Through painstaking research and a witty, sarcastic style, Fort captures the imagination while exposing the flaws of popular scientific explanations. Virtually all of his material was compiled and documented from reports published in reputable journals, newspapers and periodicals because he was an avid collector. Charles Fort was somewhat of a recluse who spent most of his spare time researching these strange events and collected these reports from publications sent to him from around the globe. This was the first of a series of books he created on unusual and unexplained events and to this day it remains the most popular. If you agree that truth is often stranger than fiction, then this book is for you.

Weird Encounters: True Tales of Haunted Places


Joanne Austin - 2010
    Compiled by Joanne M. Austin, editor of the hugely successful Weird Hauntings, this chilling anthology tells of “Historic Haunts,” and “Hostel Environments” and conjures up a host of phantasms, paranormal pranksters, and devilishly destructive spirits-like the deceased owner of an Illinois inn whose ghost gets fresh with his female patrons and the bridge in Mississippi that's haunted by a serial murderer and his victims.

Beast: Werewolves, Serial Killers, and Man-Eaters: The Mystery of the Monsters of the Gévaudan


S.R. Schwalb - 2015
    For three years, a real-life monster, or monsters, ravaged the region, slaughtering by some accounts more than 100 people, mostly women and children, and inflicting severe injuries upon many others. Alarmed rural communities—and their economies—were virtually held hostage by the marauder, and local officials and Louis XV deployed dragoons and crack wolf hunters from far-off Normandy and the King’s own court to destroy the menace. And with the creature’s reign of terror occurring at the advent of the modern newspaper, it can be said the ferocious attacks in the Gévaudan region were one of the world's first media sensations.Despite extensive historical documentation about this awesome predator, no one seemed to know exactly what it was. Theories abounded: Was it an exotic animal, such as a hyena, that had escaped from a menagerie? A werewolf? A wolf-dog hybrid? A new species? Some kind of conspiracy? Or, as was proposed by the local bishop, was it a scourge of God? To this day, debates on the true nature of La Bête, “The Beast,” continue.With historical illustrations, composite sketches by the author, on-the-scene modern-day photographs, autopsy analysis, and fictionalized accounts, Beast takes a fascinating look at all the evidence, using a mix of history and modern biology to advance a theory that could solve one of the most bizarre and unexplained killing sprees of all time: France’s infamous Beast of the Gévaudan.

Abominable Science!: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids


Daniel Loxton - 2012
    Tales of Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness monster are part of our collective experience. Now comes a book from two dedicated investigators that explores and elucidates the fascinating world of cryptozoology.Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero have written an entertaining, educational, and definitive text on cryptids, presenting the arguments both for and against their existence and systematically challenging the pseudoscience that perpetuates their myths. After examining the nature of science and pseudoscience and their relation to cryptozoology, Loxton and Prothero take on Bigfoot; the Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, and its cross-cultural incarnations; the Loch Ness monster and its highly publicized sightings; the evolution of the Great Sea Serpent; and Mokele Mbembe, or the Congo dinosaur. They conclude with an analysis of the psychology behind the persistent belief in paranormal phenomena, identifying the major players in cryptozoology, discussing the character of its subculture, and considering the challenge it poses to clear and critical thinking in our increasingly complex world.

Monsters in America: Our Historical Obsession with the Hideous and the Haunting


W. Scott Poole - 2011
    From our colonial past to the present, the monster in all its various forms has been a staple of American culture. A masterful survey of our grim and often disturbing past, Monsters in America uniquely brings together history and culture studies to expose the dark obsessions that have helped create our national identity.Monsters are not just fears of the individual psyche, historian Scott Poole explains, but are concoctions of the public imagination, reactions to cultural influences, social change, and historical events. Conflicting anxieties about race, class, gender, sexuality, religious beliefs, science, and politics manifest as haunting beings among the populace. From Victorian-era mad scientists to modern-day serial killers, new monsters appear as American society evolves, paralleling fluctuating challenges to the cultural status quo. Consulting newspaper accounts, archival materials, personal papers, comic books, films, and oral histories, Poole adroitly illustrates how the creation of the monstrous "other" not only reflects society's fears but shapes actual historical behavior and becomes a cultural reminder of inhuman acts.

Sharing the Mountain with Bigfoot: The Third Year (Bigfoot series Book 3)


Jada L. Roberts - 2017
    The things that were happening around their property and farmhouse with an unknown creature were getting out of control. So much so, that Jada was scared to be left alone at the house with their two children when Jake had to go to work in the city. If you haven't read the first and second books "Sharing the Mountain with Bigfoot" The First Year, and The Second Year please do so for this book is a continuation of those two books. This book starts with the third year living on the farm that Jake and Jada purchased to raise their children and to have a little piece of their own little paradise. But their paradise is not so peaceful as they would like. Can Jada and her family brave the terrorizing experiences that the creature has caused and live on the property in the mountains that they call paradise? Included at the end of this book are pictures of the property where the terrorizing encounters took place. Sharing the Mountain with Bigfoot series is a true story of one family's terrorizing encounter with an unknown creature lurking in the woods of the Appalachian Mountains. ABOUT THE AUTHOR; Jada L. Roberts grew up in a big city in Florida. She moved to a small town near the Appalachian Mountains when she was seventeen years old, where she met and married the man of her dreams. Nowadays, the author enjoys spending time with her first grandchild and is living far away from the Appalachian Mountains. Check out Jada L. Roberts author page for a book trailer video of this book series. reach out and message the author on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jadalroberts07

Spooky Pennsylvania: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore


S.E. Schlosser - 2006
    A collection of thirty folktales highlighting famous and not-so-famous Pennsylvania ghosts, mysterious happenings, powers of darkness, and wonders of the invisible world.

Urban Legends: Bizarre Tales You Won't Believe


James Proud - 2016
    Whether you believe these urban myths or not, they have the power to unnerve and enthral us all.