A Very Cool Book for Someone from Ohio Interested in Oddities I started reading this book at a friend's house (even though I'm pretty sure it's just a coffee table book), and when I got home I knew I had to buy it. It's so interesting! I love all that stuff, knowing about hauntings, histories of places, paranormal encounters, I find it so interesting. So if you have these interests, definitely get it, you will love it, it's a good book to just pick through. If you don't, I'm not sure how much you will like it, but you will most likely find something from your area in Ohio, which makes it all the more interesting.
Notable mysteries and intriguing items of the land called OHIO I happened upon "Weird Ohio" at an Amish store and naturally started leafing through it. It looked so interesting and professionally put together, there was no way I could walk out of the store without it (paying full price -- 20 bucks -- which you don't have to do here at Amazon).
Ohio is a land of lush, deep forests interspersed with great cities like Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinatti, as well as smaller cities like Toledo, Dayton and Akron. The Eastern side of the state is part of the Appalachian Plateau with nice rolling hills, whereas the Western side is part of the Till Plains and is relatively flat, a great place for farms. The Southern and Southeastern parts of the state are bordered by the mighty Ohio River, whereas the North is part of the Eastern Great Lakes Lowland with 310 miles of coastline on Lake Erie.
Unlike "Weird Pennsylvania," which unfortunately focuses mostly on the Eastern side of that great state, "Weird Ohio" provides a balanced overview of the weird elements of the Buckeye State.
Let me emphasize how attractive and professionally put together "Weird Ohio" is. The book features colored photos or illustrations on practically every page; and many pages have two or three such items. This, of course, makes it a great coffee table book. But a full 60% is text, written with an informative and entertaining flair. This naturally makes it a perfect bathroom book, which another reviewer rightly points out.
As to be expected, "Weird Ohio" addresses the weird elements of the state -- creatures on the loose (lions, panthers, Bigfoot, the Mothman, etc.), ghost stories, crime stories, heroes, urban and rural legends, unexplained phenomena, ancient mysteries (like the great Serpent Mound), oddities, etc. If these types of items trip your trigger "Weird Ohio" is a must.
I live in NE Ohio about ten miles from the border of Pennsylvania and I was happy to see a local mysterious site mentioned in the book -- "Five Points." This area is a mere ten minutes from my house and involves numerous ghostly stories. My wife took three girlfriends to Five Points on Halloween night during her senior year in High School; she told them a couple of the creepy stories, including one of a lunatic woman who had escaped the sanitarium and wanders around the woods in a white asylum gown. At that point a big leaf hit the windshield and all the girls started screaming in terror! Anyway, I visited Five Points recently with my wife and I can see why this rural area of dark forests and winding roads would give birth to such spooky myths; we went by the "insane asylum" and noticed it was, in actuality, a nursing home (then again, who knows what it was years ago?).
I was disappointed that the book doesn't mention Nelson-Kennedy Ledges State Park, known as Nelson Ledges or just "the Ledges" locally. It belongs in "Weird Ohio" simply because there's no place on earth like it. It's an amazing area of cliffs, ledges, crevices, waterfalls and caves hidden in the lush forestry of NE Ohio just south of Route 422. If you're interested, allow me to share with you a true tale that happened at the Ledges years ago when I was 15 years old:
On a nice summer day three friends and I decided to hitchhike up to the Ledges, which was about 25 miles away. Although we ended up walking at least 10 miles of the journey, some guy with long hair and a big old car stopped to pick us up when we were a mere two miles from the park. He had his girlfriend in the front seat with him and told us to just jump on the hood. This man was a lunatic! He was barreling down the road at 55-60 miles an hour with four young guys on the hood with almost nothing to hold on to (I held on to the edge of the hood by the windshield)! We made it to the Ledges and we all jumped off the hood. The guy got out of the car and went into the restroom, which was an outhouse made of big concrete blocks painted tan. The next thing we know we hear this blood-curdling scream and one of the large entrance walls of the outhouse came tumbling down in a mist of dust. There was the crazy driver, with no shirt on, crouched and flexing his notable muscles like the incredible Hulk. It was unbelievable, to say the least. One of my friends screamed, "He must be mad at us; maybe we broke something on his car" (like one of the windshield wipers). So we all bolted up into the Ledges to hide, while the other dozen people in the parking lot dispersed in fear as well. The crazy dude jumped in his car, did a couple donuts and sped off down the street. When the coast was clear we all came down from our hiding places and the people in the parking lot ran over to us to ask who that mighty lunatic was. We didn't know, of course; he just picked us up hitchhiking. Naturally, we were all left in a state of total astonishment.
Only about 12-15 people were there to witness these events, but it's a true story and obviously belongs in a book like "Weird Ohio." Maybe if the authors catch wind of it they can include it in the revised edition.
BOTTOM LINE: "Weird Ohio" is a must for Ohioans and former residents who have a taste for the out-of-the-ordinary. It makes a perfect coffee table or bathroom book. Its professional presentation and entertaining text make it worthwhile even for folks who rarely (if ever) visit the Buckeye State.
Another reviewer complained that the book offers no detailed maps or instructions for finding the various areas. This is not a negative point IMHO as the authors obviously didn't want to burden the book with such details. "Weird Ohio" reveals the counties, towns and roads for each item and leaves it up to the reader to gather more detailed information to locate these places; that's what the Internet's for.
There are weird things about Ohio, believe it or not Despite having hack writer and former Decaturian Troy Taylor at the helm, Weird Illinois--a companion to this volume--makes for great bathroom reading. The production values and colorful images more than compensate for Taylor's leaden prose and inane editorializing. I love this book so much that every time I visit my best friend's Chicago apartment, I make time to secrete myself away in the john and hunch over it. I got to wondering what I would think of the book if the writing were as good as the production, and so I decided to check out another book in the series and see.
Luckily, I picked an absolute winner with *Haunted Ohio.* The writing is great, and not just because I'm comparing it with Taylor's ham-fisted oeuvre. The three co-authors balance a love of a good scare story with a desire to know the available facts about any site they describe; it constantly amazed me how they could debunk a particular legend with one or two salient, documented facts without ever abandoning the joy of repeating the original legend."Who cares if it isn't exactly true?" they seem to suggest, "If you're reading a book of weird stories, you're probably into it more for the chill it send down your spine than for any empirically verifiable facts it may reveal." As mentioned before in the context of *Haunted Illinois,* the production values are superb, and the addition of stories supplied by readers and locals really capture something uniquely Midwestern about these weird people and places.
The sections of the book deal with various weird topics like local legends, ancient mysteries (e.g., the Serpent Mound), fabled people and places, unexplained phenomena (e.g., UFO sightings, Hangar 18, and the ever-popular pancakes from space!), bizarre beasts (including the Mothman), local heroes and villains, personalized properties, roadside distractions (like the Longaberger Basket HQ featured on the cover---it's the building shaped like the giant basket, complete with handles), haunted places, cemeteries, and abandoned buildings and roller coasters.
A very fun, entertaining, and even (gasp) informative book.
Love this book! This is a must have for any Ohioian. Very interesting facts. I bought one for myself and went back to buy more for christmas gifts and you can't beat the price!!!
Gave me the creeps..in a good way! I was riveted to this book from the first page. Very visually appealing and written in a light-hearted way, it is a great guide for "ghost-chasers" and those who just love to see weird places. I also love how the authors never judge someone based on their personal testimony about places and events in the book and believe me, there are some wacked-out stories that you think just can't be true! I have only owned the book for a week and already have visited about 1/2 dozen of the places mentioned. I have even planned future weekend trips around some of the creepier areas in the book. Great fun! It is hard to tell where some of the things mentioned are at...specific directions are few and far between and that would be my only problem with the book. You won't be sorry you bought this book...it has something for everyone.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
