by Marlin Bressi

Murder, mystery and mayhem! From an eccentric Clinton County puppetmaster whose marionettes were so lifelike that some believed they were made of flesh and blood, to a haunted lumber camp in McKean County, to an unfortunate Northumberland County veteran who risked death at every turn because of his uncanny resemblance to John Wilkes Booth, Pennsylvania has always been home of some of the world’s most intriguing people and places.

Volume 3 of Pennsylvania Oddities features thirty remarkably strange, but true, stories. There’s the unidentified suicide victim who died in Perry County, perhaps taking to her unmarked grave the secret behind one of the greatest scandals in Hollywood history. There’s the one-legged fugitive from Cambria County who made a fantastic escape from a supposedly inescapable prison. And let’s not forget about the Dauphin County carpenter who attempted to fly over Blue Mountain in a homemade airplane-- 75 years before the Wright Brothers flew into the history books.

These and many more bizarre tales from every corner of the Keystone State are included in Pennsylvania Oddities, Volume 3.

CONTENTS:  

1. The Great Japanese Embassy Hoax (Montour County)
2. The Ghost of Reverend Nowak (Luzerne County)
3. Peter Hauntz: Pennsylvania’s Mysterious Puppetmaster (Clinton County)
4. The Lost Confederate Grave of Wildcat Falls (York County)
5. Lorena Tawser’s Strange Confession (York County)
6. The Garrett Family Curse: Murder or Accident? (York County)
7. George Pletz: The First Casualty of American Aviation (Dauphin County)
8. The Lost Runaway Slaves Graves of Blue Mountain (Dauphin County)
9. The Lykens Triple Axe Murder of 1932 (Dauphin County)
10. John Wilkes Booth’s Coal Region Doppelganger (Northumberland County)
11. The Burnside Skeletons (Northumberland County)
12. The Fantastic Disappearance of Captain Rehrer (Schuylkill County)
13. the Strange History of Peddler’s Grave (Schuylkill County)
14. The Mysterious Death of Helen Hepler (Schuylkill County)
15. Suicide by Printing Press: The Bizarre Death of David Shilling (Franklin County)
16. Did Daniel Mellott Burn His Children Alive? (Fulton County)
17. The Legendary Life (and Afterlife) of Captain Jack Armstrong (Huntingdon County)
18. Marie Doro, Fatty Arbuckle, and Duncannon’s Mystery Suicide (Perry County)
19. The Legend of Leather Cracker and the Ghost Dog of Woodbury (Bedford County)
20. Death at the Five-and-Dime: The Connellsville Explosion of 1911 (Fayette County)
21. What Happened to Jefferson Walters? (Fayette County)
22. The Legend of Tom Skelton (Indiana County)
23. The Peg-Legged Fugitive (Cambria County)
24. The Lost Grave of Mary Wallace (Washington County)
25. The Haunted Lumber Camp (McKean County)
26. Colonel Parker and Blackbeard’s Treasure (McKean County)
27. The Clearfield UFO Sightings of 1950 (Clearfield County)
28. Centralia’s Forgotten Neighbor: The Ghost Town of Logan (Columbia County)
29. The Kidnapping of Warren McCarrick (Montgomery County)
30. The Water Gap Mystery: Who Murdered Fred and Maude Demund? (Monroe County)

Page Count: 216
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Publish Date: June 27, 2020
Imprint: Sunbury Press
Genre: History

History / US History / Mid-Atlantic
TRUE CRIME / Historical