Introduction

Sometimes Pennsylvania can be a fascinating state. For over a decade, I have studied the history of the state in a professional capacity in one form or another. As an archivist, curator and professor, I worked with documents and artifacts from the cradle of liberty in the East to the workshop of the world in the West. I have spent countless hours reading books and articles dealing with everything from the French and Indian War to the Cold War in Pennsylvania. But those stories are familiar to many, and that is not what this book is about. This book is about the things that you stumble across when you are researching all of the big events. This book covers the strange stuff. It is about the bizarre anecdotes, trivia, legends and mostly forgotten stories that you do not normally see in a history book; the kind of stories I, and hopefully you, like best.

Writing this book reinforced for me just how interesting—and weird—Pennsylvania’s history is. For example, you probably did not know that there were werewolves and giant snakes in Pennsylvania (at least that’s what they tell me) or that there are several lost treasures hidden or buried here. You might be surprised to learn that a Pittsburgh dog once had an obituary in the New York Times, that a gypsy queen is buried in the Shenango Valley or that giant skeletons were excavated in some of the state’s ancient burial mounds. One day, the midafternoon sky even went black over much of the state.

The tales presented here cover a wide variety of topics, in addition to the ones already mentioned. They include witches, tornados, floods, bandits, explosions, strange animals, legends, unusual people, hoaxes, meteorites, cannibals and the end of the world. I cannot say that I had any strict criteria for a story to be included. It only had to be unusual, relatively unknown to your average person and to have happened in Pennsylvania. A few of these tales may be known in one part of the state and not others. The tales were compiled from a variety of sources, including old newspaper accounts, obscure books and journals, court documents, weather reports, interviews and oral histories. I hope that you enjoy reading these unusual stories because I certainly enjoyed writing about them.