It Came from Ohio...


Book Description

Turn on a night light, lock your door, and close the window blinds . . . Join investigative reporter James Renner as he looks into 13 tales of mysterious, creepy, and unexplained events in the Buckeye State, including: - The giant, spark-emitting Loveland Frog - The bloodthirsty Melon Heads of Kirtland - The lumber-wielding Werewolf of Defiance - The Mothman of the Ohio River - The UFO that inspired "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" - and more!




The Big Book of Ohio Ghost Stories


Book Description

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.




Unnatural Ohio


Book Description

Strange things are afoot in the Buckeye State Across city and country, Ohio echoes with tales of creatures, ghosts, and other unexplained phenomena. A monster that appeared to be half man and half dog and wielding a 2-by-4 terrorized a small Northwest Ohio town during the summer of 1972. Over the years, visitors to a quiet Cincinnati suburb claim to have been accosted by a human-size, leathery frogman lurking near the riverbank. For generations, hikers and hunters have reported seeing Bigfoot throughout forests across Ohio, and some of the most notorious and well-documented UFO encounters on record have taken place here. Authors M. Kristina Smith and Kevin Moore parse urban legends from history as they explore the unnatural side of Ohio's heritage.




Spooky Ohio


Book Description

Pull up a chair or gather round the campfire and get ready for twenty-five creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences in this all-new addition to the best-selling Spooky series. Set in the Buckeye State’s big cities and rural communities, along the shores of Lake Erie in the north to the Appalachian Mountains in the south, the stories in this entertaining and compelling collection will have readers looking over their shoulders again and again. Ohio’s folklore is kept alive in these expert retellings by master storyteller S. E. Schlosser and in artist Paul Hoffman’s evocative illustrations. Readers will see the mystery of the missing postmaster’s cousin solved, relive the long night a ghost captain saved a sinking ship, laugh along with a prankster who capitalizes on a barber’s ghost, and feel an icy wind on the back of their necks on a warm Ohio evening. Whether read around the campfire on a dark and stormy night or from the backseat of the family van on the way to Grandma’s, this is a collection to treasure.




Ohio


Book Description

“Extraordinary...beautifully precise...[an] earnestly ambitious debut.” —The New York Times Book Review “A wild, angry, and devastating masterpiece of a book.” —NPR “[A] descendent of the Dickensian ‘social novel’ by way of Jonathan Franzen: epic fiction that lays bare contemporary culture clashes, showing us who we are and how we got here.” —O, The Oprah Magazine “A book that has stayed with me ever since I put it down.” —Seth Meyers, host of Late Night with Seth Meyers One sweltering night in 2013, four former high school classmates converge on their hometown in northeastern Ohio. There’s Bill Ashcraft, a passionate, drug-abusing young activist whose flailing ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park to post-BP New Orleans, and now back home with a mysterious package strapped to the undercarriage of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting her family and the mother of her best friend and first love, whose disappearance spurs the mystery at the heart of the novel; Dan Eaton, a shy veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a dinner date with the high school sweetheart he’s tried desperately to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the washed-up captain of the football team triggers the novel’s shocking climax. Set over the course of a single evening, Ohio toggles between the perspectives of these unforgettable characters as they unearth dark secrets, revisit old regrets and uncover—and compound—bitter betrayals. Before the evening is through, these narratives converge masterfully to reveal a mystery so dark and shocking it will take your breath away.




The Serial Killer's Apprentice


Book Description

An investigative journalist confronts 13 of Northeast Ohio’s most intriguing unsolved crimes and attempts to crack open dark secrets that have baffled Clevelanders for years, including: • Abduction—In 2003, sixteen-year-old Georgina DeJesus disappeared on a West Side street corner, almost exactly one year after teenager Amanda Berry vanished just blocks away. • Stolen Identity—Joseph Newton Chandler of Eastlake was not who he claimed to be. Some think he was the Zodiac killer; others say he was D.B. Cooper, or even Jim Morrison. • Suicide or murder?—Joseph Kupchik hid gambling problems from friends and family until he was found at the bottom of a nine-story parking deck in downtown Cleveland—with multiple stab wounds. • Heist—In 1969, Lakewood bank employee Ted Conrad nabbed $215,000 from the vault one day after his twentieth birthday. The FBI still shows up at his high school reunions. • Controversy—Jeffrey Krotine was thrice tried for the grisly 2003 murder of his wife and ultimately acquitted, to the frustration of Cuyahoga County prosecutors, detectives, and even jurors. These stories venture into dark alleys and seedy strip clubs, as well as comfortable suburbs and cozy small towns, where some of the region’s most horrendous crimes have occurred. Renner’s unblinking eye for detail and unwavering search for the truth make this book a gripping read.




Bigfoot to Mothman


Book Description

This one-volume encyclopedia introduces readers to the world's cryptids-those hidden or secret animals believed to exist at the margins of human society-including Bigfoot, Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, and the Mothman. Comprehensive in its scope, this book is a valuable resource for anyone who wants to know more about well-known creatures of myth and legend, such as the Chupacabra and the Jersey Devil, and discover lesser-known animals, such as the Bunyip of Australia and the Mamlambo of South Africa. Rather than purport to prove or deny the existence of these creatures, however, this volume classifies them within their respective cultural, historical, and social contexts, allowing readers to appreciate cryptids as cultural artifacts important to societies around the globe. Finally, this book goes beyond the study of the unknown to investigate who believes in cryptids, why they do, and why the study of cryptozoology is as much about understanding cryptids as it is about understanding ourselves.




Spooky Great Lakes


Book Description

Pull up a chair or gather 'round the campfire and get ready for creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences from times past! Great Lakes folklore traditions are kept alive in these expert retellings by master storyteller S.E. Schlosser and through artist Paul G. Hoffman's evocative illustrations. You'll meet ghosts and witches, hear things that go bump in the night, and feel an icy wind on the back of your neck on a warm summer evening. The stories in this entertaining and compelling collection will have you looking over your shoulder again and again.




Little, Crazy Children


Book Description

A new true-crime book from the acclaimed author of TRUE CRIME ADDICT and creator/host of the podcasts True Crime This Week and The Philosophy of Crime! James Renner explores the unsolved murder of 16-year-old Lisa Pruett in the real-life town of the bestselling novel Little Fires Everywhere in a painstakingly researched account of a senseless and heartbreaking tragedy and the people who were pulled into its aftermath. In September of 1990, in the Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights, sixteen-year-old Lisa Pruett, a poetry lover and member of a church youth group, was on her way to a midnight tryst with her boyfriend, when she was viciously stabbed to death only thirty feet from the boy’s home. The murder cast a palpable gloom over the upscale community and sparked accusations, theories, and rumors among Lisa’s friends and peers. Together they wove a damning narrative that circled back to a likely suspect: “weird” high school outcast Kevin Young. Without a shred of evidence the teen was arrested, charged, and tried for the crime. His eventual acquittal didn’t squelch the anger and outrage among those who believed that Kevin got away with murder. With a fresh perspective and painstaking research culled from police files, court records, transcripts, uncollected evidence, and new interviews, James Renner reconstructs the events leading up to and following that heartbreaking night. What emerges is a portrait of a community seething with dark undercurrents—its single-minded authorities, protective status-conscious parents, and the deeply peer-pressured teens within Lisa’s circle. Who had the capacity for such unchecked violence? What monsters still lurk in the dark? After more than thirty years, questions like these continue to fester among the community of Shaker Heights, Ohio, still deeply scarred by wounds that remain hidden, unspoken, and unhealed.




Monsters of Ohio


Book Description

A large, black, prehistoric serpent that makes its home in Lake Erie. A titanic hairy humanoid with glowing orange eyes who spies on any teenagers brave enough to park near its lovers' lane home. A giant owl the size of a tree so adept at camouflage it can practically disappear. A nocturnal race of tiny, melon-headed feral humans who roam the woods looking for victims to feast on. These are but some of the creatures of cryptozoology, folklore and urban legend that readers will meet in the pages of Monsters of Ohio, the first book of its kind to completely chronicle the state's population of mystery animals and the stories told about them. In addition to thirteen Buckeye State monsters-from infamous ones like The Lake Erie Monster, The Loveland Frogs and The Grassman, to lesser-known local legends like The Crosswick Monster, Bighoot and The Defiance Wolfman-the book also includes a parade of mysterious creatures that were only sighted once before disappearing...if, of course, they were ever really there at all. J.C. Raphael was born in Ashtabula, Ohio. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from Gannon University in Erie, Pennsylvania. He began freelance writing at age 17 with a film review of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for The Plain Dealer, and has continued writing reviews of stuff ever since. He worked as a staff writer for a small suburban newspaper and as a writer and editor for a small, independent altweekly in Columbus, Ohio. He now works as a public library clerk and freelance writer. He lives in Mentor, Ohio.