Weird U.S.: Your Travel Guide to America's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets by Mark Moran, Mark Sceurman

Product Details

Synopsis

For over a decade the Marks, publishers of Weird NJ magazine, have traveled the highways and back roads of their home state, camera and notebooks in hand, searching for the odd, the offbeat, and just plain weird places and people that make New Jersey the truly bizarre place that it is. They met some incredible people along the way, and all of them had a story they wanted to tell.

Their best-selling book, Weird NJ, was a publishing phenomenon, its appeal stretching far beyond the Garden State. So, camera and notebooks again in hand, Mark and Mark expanded their universe and found stories of weirdness in every state of the country. The result is a travel guide of sorts to America's local legends and best-kept secrets. It's chock-full of the crazy characters, cursed roads, abandoned sites, and bizarre roadside attractions that the authors feel reflect the shared modern folklore of our time.

So, come along with the Marks now. Visit places like the Coral Castle and Albino Village, explore abandoned insane asylums and forgotten tunnels—in one of them you just might run into the maniacal Bunnyman! Go off the beaten path and look for Melonheads, Frog People and the Melungeons. Take a ride down the Devil's Road and enter the Gates of Hell. Some of the people and places you'll see are disturbing, others are hilarious, but all are very very weird.

It's a journey you'll never forget.

Annotation

Have your own Weird story to tell? Go to www.weirdus.com and tell us about weird stuff in your own home state!

Library Journal

There's something deliciously demented about two young men who wander the country in search of the bizarre, unexplained, or just plain nutty. Having had success, and plenty of reader response, with their magazine, Weird NJ, in which they documented New Jersey's less celebrated tourist attractions, they felt compelled to expand their research to encompass this entire land of Melon Heads, Phantom Clowns, Foulke Monsters, Prairie Moon Gardens, and Slimy Slim. Chapters are divided into enticing sections-"Fabled People and Places," "Bizarre Beasts," "Gateways to Hell," and "Cemetery Safari," among others-and are remarkably detailed, listing confirmed accounts of the events that have colored the countryside. A more valuable resource than similar titles such as New Roadside America and America Bizarro, which touch only briefly on the freaky attractions, Weird U.S. is a marvelous work of entertainment and the basis for a truly unique vacation. It deserves a prominent place in all public libraries.-Joseph Carlson, Lompoc, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.