Weird U.S.: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets

Perfect for the traver in the family! My husband LOVED getting this as a gift as he is big on traveling via RV the US over and finding fun things! This book is packed with interesting stories that even the homebody can appreciate by the way!

This is the kind of going down a deserted road and then-AHHH!! reading, not Hollywood, this is what we have all experienced at one time or another.It will keep you up reading it all night,but maybe not on Halloween? Must have all the other books in this series, a must read!!

Mark and Mark's book on the weird places of the United States sets out to accomplish something very special: to open our minds as a culture to some of the stranger places, people and history of the various states. Their fascination began with local sites in their native New Jersey (I recommend a subscription to Weird NJ magazine, published semi-annually to any fan of this stuff) and eventually spread to the surrounding environs and the entire country. This book is a populist book in the most grass-roots sense of the word: the authors' love of the dark corners of our nation as a country and as a people is an anthropologist's and folklorist's dream come true, something that very few would even care to do in our commercialized society. Reading the people's accounts of things and places that made them close their curtains as children cannot but give the mystery and horror fan a pleasant chill. Another great tactic of the authors, carried over from the Weird NJ mag, is the use of the practically unadulterated original accounts printed exactly as they are submitted. Whether the writers of the passages and letters are Ph.Ds or young kids whose accounts are riddled with spelling and grammar errors, Mark and Mark print them as they are, so that the book has the feel of really being by and for the people. I agree with some reviewers that perhaps the book should have been organized by state instead of by type of account (ghosts, UFOs, local heroes, etc.), as that would have probably made it more accessible to those interested in their local area, though this didn't occur to me as an issue until I saw it voiced below. The debate over whether bringing these places to light encourages vandalism or not is also big, but I will not speculate on it. Weird US is a gem of a book, the kind of collection that you'd love to have when you're all sitting around the fire at a campout or driving in the dark country at night...in Anywhere, USA. Don't forget to check out my own submissions to the book, one of Oxford House (under ghosts) and one on an Alien Enclosure (UFOs).

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.