Weird Indiana: Your Travel Guide to Indiana's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets

Weird Travel Guides

by Mark Marimen, Troy Taylor, James A. Willis

Weird Indiana is here to prove that the Crossroads of America, as our state motto claims, is also the Crossroads of the Weird! There’s such an abundance of weirdness here that it took three authors to showcase all the odd and offbeat wonders the Hoosier State has to offer. Our authors, Mark Marimen, Jim Willis, and Troy Taylor, set off with cameras and notepads in hand, in search of Indiana’s best kept secrets, local legends, bizarre beasts, and more, and they found it—in spades! Sit back and enjoy a relaxing picnic in Shades of Death Park; “see the light” if you’re lucky enough to witness those unexplained glowing spots known as Moody’s Light. Find out how a town named Santa Claus became involved in one of the fiercest rivalries in the state’s history. Slap on another layer of color to the world’s biggest ball of paint, and no, you’re not seeing things—that really is an enormous pink-spectacled elephant drinking a martini on the side of the road! Get the time from an enormous leg sundial, and listen for the whistle of terror on the White Lick Creek Bridge, but whatever you do, don’t answer an ad from La Porte’s Black Widow. Make a person-to-person call from inside a tomb, and meet Indiana’s most upright citizen, buried that way for almost two hundred years. Check out the ruins of Littleville, where 125 miniature buildings once stood—complete with a courthouse, and even a yacht club, all of eighteen inches tall. Yes, there certainly is more to Indiana than just cornfields! A brand-new entry in the best-selling Weird U.S. series, Weird Indiana is packed with all that great stuff your history teacher wouldn’t teach you. So join our authors on their great adventure. It’s a journey you’ll never forget.

Genres: Nonfiction, Travel, History, Paranormal, Humor

256 pages, Hardcover

First published May 6, 2008

Reviews

[Anthony Ventrello · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a lifelong Hoosier, I knew that I had to grab this book and find out about Indiana's best kept secret places. I thought that I knew just about all there is to know about Indiana but I hadn't heard that half of it. This book is a great guide to some of Indiana's least traveled roads and I think that it would be great for a fourth grade class that is learning Indiana history to use as a supplement. Besides that, every Hoosier should read it, know matter the age.

[Shay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love things like this. There were many stories that I had never heard before. Some of them happened pretty close to where I grew up. A couple gave me chills. Very enjoyable read.

[Richard Propes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received "Weird Indiana" as a gift and what a delightful gift it has been. I'm a lover of all things weird and wonderful and it was delightful to receive this book centered entirely around my home state of Indiana.

I tend to travel a lot around Indiana and "Weird Indiana" has opened up the doors to visiting Indiana's local legends, best kept secrets, haunted spots, historical locations and much more. While I knew about many of these locations, many others provided me new insights and detailed information about how best to experience the place.

The font/illustrations within "Weird Indiana" tend to have a sort of cartoonish vibe, an appropriate approach given the subject matter but a little uncomfortable at times when dealing with the darker locations (for example, those centered around Jim Jones).

There's nothing particularly brilliant about "Weird Indiana," but for those wishing to explore the hoosier state this is a fun place to start. It's fun, thorough, informative, and comprehensively compiled.

[Amy Christensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, but I didn’t love this book. It took me over a month to wade through it and that is not a good sign with me. Particularly because this book is divided into sections and then further chopped down into sound bite stories. This does make sense as the Weird U.S. series began first as a newsletter of pre-written news articles and then as a website. Very short clips about various things make for an eclectic website but in print, it makes for laborious reading. This book does not define a purpose or a target audience. It covers cryptozoology and ghost haunts, but also road oddities and abandoned site (many of which cannot be visited). The attempt at mass appeal just comes across as lackluster.

I didn’t hate it. I even found it useful. But it wasn’t enjoyable.

[Bill Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

As if Illinois wasn’t weird enough. This book continues with local lore, legends, and unexplained from across the stream with Vincennes as my way point. It is apparent how much effort was put into researching these stories. Not only paranormal and cryptids are featured but, history and unique locations of interest are exhumed. The photography and graphics are top notch and lure the reader further into the book. Weird Illinois and Indiana are both works of art and full of stories to interest the most skeptical reader.

[SusanwithaGoodBook · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked some of the stories and others were really stupid and boring. I should have researched this series a little more before I bought these books. The UFOs and Ghosts are just stupid. The roadside stuff and building histories were interesting. (Same review for all of the Weirds I've read so far.)

[David Kiesling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished "Weird Indiana: Your Travel Guide to Indiana's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets" by Mark Marimen, James A. Willis, and Troy Taylor. Definitely not like the stuff I usually read, but I learned some interesting things I wouldn't have without this book. 4/5

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it. If you're a Hoosier, this is a must-read, and greatly fun book.

[Valerie Sherman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stories and local lore. As always with these books, I wish more of them were accessible from a major city. I put a few spots down for us to visit on a potential road trip down south.

[Don Gubler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe if you are really invested in Indiana...

[Robin Pagley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting to read. You learn do much that you never heard about before when growing up in Indiana.

[Jenx Todd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Used this to learn a BUNCH for a podcast I'm writing, and honestly it's been a fun read overall! Definitely can't wait to get other books in the collection. :)

[Jade Ionesco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Entertaining for hours, and helped me learn quite a bit about my state.

[Meredith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Weird Indiana is heavy on local legends and folklore and light on location information. Fans of Haunted Indiana, Volume 1, Haunted Indiana 2, Haunted Indiana 3, Haunted Indiana 4, Hoosier Hauntings, Haunted Hoosier Trails: A Guide to Indiana's Famous Folklore Spooky Sites, More Haunted Hoosier Trails, et al, etc, ad nauseam . . . should enjoy this book along with the cheesy photos accompanying each entry.

But this travel guide is not particularly useful for those desiring to actually travel the state in search of weird local attractions. The name of the city or town with accompanying zip code if not street address beneath the title of each entry would have been helpful. As it is, readers must sometimes skim entire articles in order to dig out the location of the roadside oddities. And the authors forgot to mention the Smiley Face water tower in Ashley, Indiana!

For readers who want to take a roadtrip to experience local oddities, curiosities, unusual architecture, iconic statues, weird road signs, breathtaking displays of neon, and other advertising gimmicks, natural wonders, bizarre museums, fantastically painted water towers, and vestiges of America's past in the form of diners, movie theaters, and motels, some suggested books in this vein are: Oddball Indiana: A Guide to Some really Strange Places,Indiana Curiosities, 3rd: Quirky characters, roadside oddities & other offbeat stuff, and Indiana Off the Beaten Path, 9th.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

My dog ate the corner and I had to buy the library a new copy of this book. Now I have the dog bitten one for my personal collection. My dog has done maybe three *really bad* things in his entire 2 year long life. This one was one of them . . . but the question is, Why? Why this book out of hundreds? Why just one corner? Should I give him the ex-library copy? I am guessing not! Illustrations are pretty amazing and really this is a coffee table book maybe for stoners who can read? and not a travel guide, but I liked the section about the panther and the one about Sasquatch is fun to scare kids with. Did I just write that? Guess so! ;)

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned a lot of interesting things about my home state that I can't believe I had never heard of. (The body of one of John Brown's sons, killed in the raid at Harper's Ferry, was kept in a closet of a doctor's home in Martinsville???) There weren't as many strange things as Tennessee, where I live now, but it was still enlightening. These books are addictive! I just ordered Weird Texas and the first volume of Weird U.S. I can't wait! =)

[Glenn Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A coffee table book, not the kind of thing you read from cover-to-cover, but just fun to pick up & read bits of it here & there. This has become our official present to give to all members of our family! Lots of weird Indiana trivia, some stuff I had heard of before, other stuff I had not.

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

About odd,interesting, and/or haunted places to visit in this state. Not gender bias, but has a reading and comprehension level of atleast 4th or 5th grade.
-geography
-history
-fact or fiction/legend?

[Christa · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading this book, I went and found the stone head...

[ladywallingford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the tidbits were interesting, others not so much. I wish that the authors had tested out more of the stories behind the local legends. That would have made for more interesting reading.

[Edwina Book Anaconda · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a fun way to learn some Hoosier History.
I liked it.

[Cherie Musselman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt like this book was heavy on ghost stories and legend. I was looking for more unusual places to visit.

[Greg Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found out about the state I was born and raised in. The great state of Indiana.

[lacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fun read as an Indiana native.

[Mindy]

Easy to read. Lost of different and interesting stories that I was not aware of in our State!