Native Vermonter, novelist, and public radio commentator, Joseph A. Citro has done a lot to keep New England’s history and folklore alive in the popular culture. His twelve books include five novels of suspense, three volumes of historical oddities, a collection of regional humor, two travel guides, and a co-edited book of essays.
A "monstrous" tale by Vermont’s master of the macabre. Downsized from his job and dumped by his girlfriend, Harrison Allen longs for a fresh start. Alone, with no prospects or plans, he relocates to a borrowed house on Friars Island in Lake Champlain to relax, contemplate, and begin redefining his life. Then he hears about the monsters... Creatures - perhaps similar to those of Loch Ness - are said to inhabit the murky waters and fogbound marshes of his new island home. His interest piqued, Harrison becomes preoccupied with finding them. But his innocent questions provoke a surprising response: the islanders won't discuss monsters. After Harrison meets the lovely local schoolteacher, Nancy Wells, events inexplicably turn menacing. He suspects he is being watched; he is warned away from an abandoned monastery; and somehow he wins the wrath of a murderous local bully. Then people begin to disappear… and die. Harrison's harmless monster hunt discloses something dark and disturbing beating in the heart of this tiny Vermont town. Malevolent forces, powerful and primitive, propel the unwary couple into a maelstrom of escalating terror. Suddenly they’re targeted by an unstoppable evil never before contemplated and impossible to comprehend. Harrison's "new beginning" is like nothing he'd ever planned. And Lake Monsters ends with a surprise that's shocking, unexpected, and unforgettable.
Aimed at adults, teenagers, and tourists, this is the most comprehensive collection of tales, legends, folklore, ghost stories and strange-but-true facts ever assembled about Vermont and the surrounding areas of New York, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Quebec--one that can be used to find these haunted sites.
Points the way to all the tantalizing treats and terrifying treasures that remain tucked away in overlooked museums, private collections, and forgotten recesses of this very special region.
To escape the tensions of his past, ex-newspaperman Roger Newton retreats to Vermont's fabled Northeast Kingdom, the wildest, most remote portion of the state. But there he discovers a terrifying secret that turns his life upside-down. Newton's adventure begins when Claude Lavigne, a power company employee, sees something monumentally strange in the forests of "the gore" -- a tiny swatch of unclaimed land created by a surveyor's mistake. The uncanny sight so upsets him, so rattles his sense of what's real, that it leads to his suicide. Lavigne's son, his best friend, and an ancient black man risk an expedition into the gore to discover what Mr. Lavigne saw. In his attempt to stop them, Newton upsets a centuries-old balance that threatens to loose a long-buried nightmare upon the peaceful people of Vermont.
