Discover the haunting history—and supernatural mysteries—of this Midwestern city and its resident ghosts. Includes photos! From the clamor of bygone parades to the phantom scent of burned rubber on Route 66, ghoulish and supernatural visions flourish in Bloomington-Normal . . . Claimed by a devastating fire in 1859, the spirit of a young girl haunts Kelly’s Bakery. Visitors to Kemp Hall report seeing the specter of a lady in red. Cantankerous pitcher Charles “Old Hoss” Radhourn trolls Evergreen Memorial Cemetery. In this spooky book, Deborah Carr Senger embarks on a tour of Bloomington-Normal’s haunted heritage.

For many, the most terrifying sight in Bloomington is the bathroom in a freshman dorm, but even more disturbing things lurk in the dark corners of this college town. Two haunted portraits hang in the Indiana Memorial Union Building, and the ghosts from suicides roam the stairwell at Ballantine Hall. At the end of every night, bartenders at a downtown pub pour a shot of whiskey for a not-so-dearly-departed spirit. At a nearby old manor, two ghost children stir up trouble. Farther out of town, in the Morgan-Monroe State Forest, lies Stepp Cemetery, a remote and desolate graveyard that is one of the most haunted locations in Indiana. Join Bloomington native Klara Lee Sweet on a spine-tingling tour of the city's spectral history.

Sumter County's serene beauty is cloaked by mystery--a Seminole sage's timeless spell, a lurking swamp monster, a family's spirited legacy and the ghostly cries of brokenhearted souls. Floridian bad boys, mobsters and bank robbers line the pages of Sumter County's criminal past. Murder, mayhem and mystery are embedded in our cultural timeline, from the indigenous eradication to the present-day retirement utopia. Step into the paranormal possibilities swirling inside the historic Baker House in Wildwood. Sense the residual energy that sways from Sumter County's courthouse front steps. Feel the county's macabre history come alive as Deborah Carr Hollingsworth churns up chilling tales from our mysterious past.

Welcome to the first volume of an exciting new series, Grave Deeds and Dead Plots. These collections feature spine-tingling tales of true crime ... with added ghosts. Each story is a tale of murder, passion, or cold-blooded killing—and each case has resulted in an eerie haunting. Do the victims of true crime remain to tell the tales of their untimely demise? Are the dead still crying out for justice? Do the departed have stories to share? Find out in the first installment of Grave Deeds and Dead Plots, a new series by award-winning* author Sylvia Shults." *First Place in the Spring 2022 BookFest Awards, for Days of the Dead: A Year of True Ghost Stories

Ghosts and other supernatural phenomena are widely represented throughout modern culture. They can be found in any number of entertainment, commercial, and other contexts, but popular media or commodified representations of ghosts can be quite different from the beliefs people hold about them, based on tradition or direct experience. Personal belief and cultural tradition on the one hand, and popular and commercial representation on the other, nevertheless continually feed each other. They frequently share space in how people think about the supernatural. In Haunting Experiences, three well-known folklorists seek to broaden the discussion of ghost lore by examining it from a variety of angles in various modern contexts. Diane E. Goldstein, Sylvia Ann Grider, and Jeannie Banks Thomas take ghosts seriously, as they draw on contemporary scholarship that emphasizes both the basis of belief in experience (rather than mere fantasy) and the usefulness of ghost stories. They look closely at the narrative role of such lore in matters such as socialization and gender. And they unravel the complex mix of mass media, commodification, and popular culture that today puts old spirits into new contexts.

"The writers of From Shaman to Scientist take the approach that there is no such thing as the supernatural, only things we don't yet understand. The ghost experience is examined through case studies; forms and functions ghost hunters have taken throughout history; key historical figures and their influence on the research of ghostly phenomena: ghost hunting in the twenty-first century, including the exploding trend of Internet ghost-hunting organizations; and the advances in the theory and technology of the parapsychology field. For those who are skeptical about the reality of ghosts but want to understand how so many individuals claim to have anomalous experiences, this collection reviews the data, offers insight into logical explanations, and discusses why this is - and has been for centuries - such an important and intriguing issue."--BOOK JACKET.

Hauntings are believed to be created from violence and bloodshed. And from the beginning, the Prairie State was a place where death thrived, and mysteries became commonplace. Illinois was the home of ancient peoples know as Moundbuilders whose only legacy is silent graves and many unsolved mysteries. The French left behind their own ghostly stories after their displacement by the Americans in the 1700s and countless slaughters such as the Dearborn Massacre gave birth to tales of horror that live on in the history of Illinois. Eerie occurrences, spooky events, unsolved mysteries, and terrifying specters haunt Illinois. Tales of headless horsemen, haunted castles and a penitentiary occupied by ghosts chill the spines of visitors. Haunted Illinois explores the Prairie State’s paranormal side and serves as a guide to its haunted places.