Announcing The Face in the Window: Haunting Ohio Tales
Announcing The Face in the Window: Haunting Ohio Tales Chris Woodyard’s newest collection: The Face in the Window: Haunting Ohio Tales
OHIO GHOST WRITER COLLECTS A SCRAPBOOK OF VICTORIAN HAUNTINGS AND HORRORS
CONTACT: Louise Cantrell or Chris Woodyard, 937 426-5110 invisiblei AT aol.com
Kestrel Publications, 1811 Stonewood Drive, Dayton, OH 45432-4002
Kestrel Publications is terrified to announce publication of The Face in the Window: Haunting Ohio Tales, a new collection from Ohio ghostwriter Chris Woodyard.
Have you ever heard of the spectral faces in the windows of Sandusky and Milan? The skeletal ghost photographed at Bucyrus? The clothes-shredding Wooster Poltergeist? A cat named Death at a Cincinnati hospital? The deadly Woman in Black of Dayton?
If not, that’s because these strange tales have been long buried in the archives of Ohio’s newspapers.
“These stories were written by the Dead,” says Chris Woodyard, author of the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. “Many of these accounts haven’t seen the light of day since they were first published. They’ve been resurrected from the aptly named newspaper morgues.”
Drawing on newspaper archives, antique books and journals, and county histories, Woodyard has unearthed a treasure trove of all-new tales that should find favor with fans of ghost stories, Ohio history buffs, and steampunk aficionados alike.
“Although I’ve done some editing and added notes, these are presented as the original newspapers printed them, often with a striking lack of political correctness,” says Woodyard. “Some of the reporting is quite heartless and gory, particularly in coverage of murders and suicides.
“One thing that struck me is how modern some of the stories are: ghost hunters stake out a house and one photographs a ghost. Poltergeists throw things and bang on walls, just as they are said to do today. A young woman goes ghost hunting in a cemetery, then drops dead. Faces appear mysteriously on window panes—just like people in Florida saw the image of the Virgin in a window several years ago. There is even a fire-starter whose story is very similar to recent news reports from the UAE about children mysteriously starting fires.”
The book contains over 120 true stories of ghosts, haunted graveyards, spirit photographs, vampires, spook lights, and poltergeists from 59 of Ohio’s 88 counties.
“I was able to uncover some fascinating tales, like the father and son who are said to haunt a Toledo Bridge and who hung themselves with the same rope. Or Minnie, the Fire-Spook of Springfield. And the Coshocton woman who was tormented by the spirit of her dead husband because she had promised him at his death-bed that she would not marry her lover. When she quickly broke that promise, her dead husband began to appear to her and their children.”
The Face in the Window is the first in Woodyard’s new “Ghosts of the Past” series. The next volume, out before Christmas, is titled The Headless Horror: Strange and Ghostly Ohio Tales.
“The Face in the Window is a Victorian scrapbook of hauntings and horrors,” said Woodyard. “It’s a time-machine that takes you back, not to some Disney version of the 19th century, but to the bad old days of a very haunted Ohio.”
The Face in the Window: Haunting Ohio Tales, Chris Woodyard, 2012, 6 x9” 256 pp $16.95.
FACT SHEET
THE FACE IN THE WINDOW: Haunting Ohio Tales
Selected and edited by Chris Woodyard
Publisher: Kestrel Publications, 1811 Stonewood Dr, Dayton, OH 45432-4002 (937) 426-5110 invisiblei At aol.com
Publication Date: October 2012
ISBN: 0-9628472-9-1 trade PB
Pages and format: 256 pages (xiv + 242) 6 x 9”
Price: $16.95 trade pb
Features: bibliography, sources, general index, index of stories by county. ALL NEW stories. First in The Ghosts of the Past series.
How to Order: 1) visit www.hauntedohiobooks.com. 2) find trade paperbacks or e-books at Amazon and Barnes & Noble online.
Blurb: Chris Woodyard, author of the popular Haunted Ohio series, brings you a scrapbook of Victorian hauntings and horrors. These chilling tales include sightings of spook lights, hell-bound trains, cemetery wraiths, headless ghosts, and stone-throwing spooks, all unearthed from 19th-century sources.
The Face in the Window includes:
*a snapshot of a ghostly skeleton
*the strange saga of a Wooster family plagued by a clothes-slashing spirit
*the mystery of the ghostly faces seen in windows all over Ohio
*the deadly Woman in Black of Dayton
*the snake who swallowed the peddler
*a cat named “Death” who spelled doom for Cincinnati hospital patients
*true stories of “cry-baby bridge” ghosts
*terrifying fire-starter poltergeists
*and many more, all-new tales of Ohio ghosts and hauntings.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword – Joseph A. Citro, author of Lake Monsters, Passing Strange, etc.
Introduction – A Scrapbook of Victorian Horrors
1. Snapshot of a Ghost: Spirit Photos, Women in White, and Haunted Bridges
2. The Face in the Window: Strange Images in the Glass
3. That Hellbound Train: Headless Conductors and Train Wreck Horrors
4. Rock, Fire, and Scissors: The Mysterious Poltergeist
5. The Death-Bed Promise: Revenge Beyond the Grave in Coshocton
6. Great Balls of Fire: Spook Lights and Mystery Lights
7. The Awful Fate of a Mercer County Blasphemer: The Pinnacle of Prevaricating Perfection
8. A Cat Named Death: Cemetery Spirits, Omens of Death, and Curious Cadavers
9. A Family Bewitched: The Hoffman Poltergeist of Wooster
10. Death in Black Silk: Ohio’s Women in Black
11. The Horrors: Vampires, Madness, and a Haunted Morgue
12. The Babe in the River: The Ghosts of Murder
13. Haunted by Fire: A Fire-Spook in Springfield
Appendix: Spook Squibs: Shavings from the Coffin of News
Bibliography
General Index
Index by County
Counties covered: Adams, Allen, Belmont, Butler, Champaign, Clark, Clermont, Columbiana, Coshocton, Crawford, Cuyahoga, Darke, Defiance, Erie, Fayette, Franklin, Greene, Guernsey, Hamilton, Hancock, Hardin, Henry, Highland, Holmes, Huron, Knox, Lake, Lawrence, Licking, Logan, Lorain, Lucas, Madison, Mahoning, Medina, Meigs, Mercer, Miami, Montgomery, Morrow, Ottawa, Paulding, Pickaway, Portage, Preble, Ross, Sandusky, Scioto, Seneca, Shelby, Stark, Summit, Tuscarawas, Van Wert, Warren, Washington, Wayne, Wood
Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com.