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

Being the avid ghost hunter that I am, I absolutely love this book. There are so many interesting places in Pennsylvania I had no idea about! And not all are haunted, many are just interesting natural phenomena. This book not only gives you the history of weird places in PA, but personal accounts, and even some directions. I recommend this for any adventuresome person that likes to explore Pennsylvania.

I bought this book as a gift for my mother who can't just run into the bookstore without sitting and reading it. She's a tour enthusiast who likes to see new and different things. This book is filled with them, some tourist friendly and some not. I read a few pages about the places close to my home and was amazed to see how many places of interest there are nearby. There's actually a place in Chester County that I pass often that, although off-limits to the public, it's interesting to know that it exists. There's a story about the subway system in Philadelphia, midgetville, places where ufo sightings were reported, etc. I highly recommend this book as a coffee table staple.

Although the tag line to Local legneds and best kept secrets. There's a whole lot more.... or less depending on what you are looking for in Matt Lake's "Weird Pennsylvania". One should never dive into a book such as this expecting only Ghosts or only legends. Weird is.... Weird! As the title says, it covers the strange things you may or may not have heard about in the Keystone state proving to be one of the most fun reads I've had in a long time. Fans of Sideshows and Ripleys would love to read the little tidbits mixed in with the urban legends wondering or even seeking the truth yourself may be your next motivation. My only complaint is that Pennsylvania is a very large state and they seem to have covered Bucks county and South Eastern PA. I only heard a fews stories from Central, Northern and Northeastern. There seems to be a lack of material in those areas. Otherwise if you're into sideshows and strange "anythings" you have to pick this book up. I'm not sure how it compares with the others in their series but, this is a home run.

I'd just like to say that in the section "Bizarre Beasts", under the title "Alien Big Cats", the information referencing sightings at Holland Elementary in Northampton Township, Bucks County, Pa..is absolutely correct! I was the person who spotted this "whatever it was" and believe me it scared the living daylights out of me and another teacher who was with me. It was the ugliest creature! It never came near us but the sight of it was enough to make you wish you had never seen it. We could find no pictures within the cat family that remotely looked this ugly. While the other teacher and I made our way into the field to see what was lying out there, this "cat" who had apparently been sunning himself, sprang several feet into the air, then came down and took off running into a wooded area nearby the field. Previous to this day, we had seen an animal moving around in that same area but had never gotten this close until the day he sunned himself. We were so close to it this time that when he sprang into the air, the teacher that I was with actually fell trying to run away from it, because she was thinking it was going to run towards us, rather than away from us. It was an unforgettable experience to say the least...and our school was both shocked and pleasantly surprised to find that this was mentioned in the book "Weird Pennsylvania".

PA- the postal abbreviation could be mean other things, and still be fitting. PA- Paranormal activity? PA- Physics absent? PA- People abnormal? As a life-long resident of Pennsylvania (minus a three-year stint in Oklahoma), things like a ghostly handprint on the cell wall of an abandoned county jail, a hill that defies the laws of gravity, piles of rocks that have withstood thousands of years of winter winds and a serpent lurking the waters of Lake Erie all seem pretty darned normal to me. But they are some of the oddities that are nestled between the covers of Weird PA, a new release from Sterling Publishing who brought us Weird US and other weird state books. This book comes to the delight of the daughter of former traveling show-biz duo. During weekend trips to gigs across the state, we'd always sightsee the roadside attractions and museums. This book brought back fond memories of a childhood full of exploring the Keystone State but still, I learned a lot from this bright and fun title. The book itself is beautiful--certainly coffee table caliber. The 263 colorful pages are divided into 11 sections: Local Legends and Lore, Ancient Mysteries, Fabled People and Places, Unexplained Phenomena, Local Heroes and Villains, Personalized Properties, Roadside Oddities, Roads Less Traveled, Quaker State Ghosts, Cemetery Safari and Abandoned Places. Each of the sections reveals the oddities, tall tales and myths of Pennsylvania through colorful pictures and testimonies from actual eyewitnesses and personal accounts from the editors who visited most of the included sites. Most of the entries are short snippets, making this a good breeze-through book for those not interested in heavy reading. If this book does not urge people to gas up their wagons and plot out a Weird PA tour, I don't now what will. In fact, maybe I should get licensing rights to the book and start my own tour group. Hmmm. Anyway, some great sites worth visiting (or steering clear of, take your pick) are Gravity Hill in Bedford County, where a car put in neutral will roll up instead of the obvious; New Hope and historic Philadelphia which are filled with ghost stories of famed Pennsylvanians; Pennhurst, an abandoned mental asylum in Philly and yes, there is even an empty morgue (or is it?); a backyard zoo in Fayette county filled with larger-than-life animal sculptures and in York County, there really is an old woman who lives in a shoe(-shaped house). Okay, former shoe salesman. I was way too tempted to use the nursery rhyme. Two included places happen to be personal favorites: the burning-for-thirty years Columbia county ghost town, Centralia and Shartlesville's Roadside America. The latter impressed the authors so much they called it, "The most pleasant surprise we found." That makes me happy. This massive model train set spans a huge hangar and represents much of America through miniscule interpretations. A must see! One gripe: nothing from my county of residence for the last d