It Was a Dark and Creepy Night: Real-Life Encounters with the Strange, Mysterious, and Downright Terrifying

by Joshua P. Warren, Brendan L. Verville

There were only three rules when Joshua P. Warren began collecting these stories from around the world: they had to be true, they had to be short, and they had to send a shiver down your spine.
It Was a Dark and Creepy Night presents a wide variety of weird and spooky tales about ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, angels, demons, ESP, interdimensional contact and more. Because each tale is short, this eerie little tome is perfect for a subway ride, a plane flight, or a night entertaining guests.

An internationally respected investigator of the unknown, Joshua adds his insight to these strange experiences. Some tales are too odd to easily categorize, but each one simple or complex transformed an ordinary person's life, revealing a facet of those uncanny phenomena that still leave us wondering…what if?

Imagine if:

Genres: Nonfiction, Paranormal, Monsters

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 25, 2014

About the author

Born in Asheville, North Carolina, Joshua P. Warren has lived in the Blue Ridge Mountains his entire life, but traveled widely. At the age of 13, he wrote his first published book. Since then, he has had ten more books published, including the regional best-seller, Haunted Asheville, and How to Hunt Ghosts, and is the president of his multimedia productions company, Shadowbox Enterprises, LLC. His articles have been published internationally, and he has been covered by such mainstream media as CNN, Fox News, Southern Living, Delta Sky, FATE, New Woman, The New York Times, FHM and Something About the Author; and made the cover of the science journal, Electric Space Craft. A winner of the University of North Carolina Thomas Wolfe Award for Fiction, he wrote columns for the Asheville Citizen-Times from 1992 to 1995. His first novel, The Evil in Asheville, was released in 2000.

An internationally-recognized expert on paranormal research, Warren was hired by the famous Grove Park Inn Resort to be the first person to officially investigate the Pink Lady apparition in 1995 (the same year he founded L.E.M.U.R. paranormal investigations, of which he is president). Warren also led the expedition that captured the first known footage of the elusive Brown Mountain Lights, eventually resulting in scientific breakthroughs, via experiments Warren led in the lab, that help explain most of the lights and many mysterious, natural plasmas (such as ball lightning) that occur around the world. His work has been praised by the Rhine Research Center, The North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching (or NCCAT, for which he gives annual presentations) and numerous scholars such as New York Times best-selling author Dr. William R. Forstchen, Dr. William Roll, Dr. Andrew Nichols, and legendary researchers such as NASA engineer Charles A. Yost, Oak Ridge National Laboratory engineer David Hackett, and authors/researchers Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe.

Warren has appeared on the National Geographic Channel, History Channel, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, Sci-Fi, Animal Planet, and numerous networks affiliates of NPR, ABC, NBC, and CBS. He is frequently asked to be a guest on radio shows around the world, especially Coast to Coast AM with George Noory/Art Bell. Warren is also an international award-winning filmmaker (including Hollywood.com's Top Underground Filmmaker of 1998), having worked on many sets, such as Warner Brother's My Fellow Americans, Universal's Patch Adams, Paradise Falls, Inbred Rednecks, Songcatcher, and Sinkhole.

Warren works as a radio host for Clear Channel, the largest radio corporation in the world, hosting a weekly paranormal program, Speaking of Strange, airing Saturday nights on News Radio 570 WWNC. It's rated no. 1 in the region Saturday nights, reaching up to four states and streaming live worldwide on the internet.

Reviews

[Norma · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was good and creepy. It was a bunch of true short stories so of course some where way better than others. Over all really great.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read many types of books that are based on hauntings, etc. and this was the most difficult book for me to read. It contained various stories from different types of people in their own words, which was unique. However, this made it somewhat difficult to read. Most of the stories were not what I would consider creepy or scary in the least. A couple were strange, but nothing I would get excited over. I understand that the author wanted to give the tales an authentic twist by allowing the experienced person to 'submit their story'. I just had a hard time following the various types of writing patterns that often turned into speaking terms for me. Half of the stories were dull and were obviously bull. I am not a huge fan of alien stories, but I will give them a go. I actually had to skip the last two UFO tales, they were just too long for me.

If you are looking for a book that covers paranormal subjects in general that this book might be for you. If you are a person that covets the ghostly side of things than you will more than likely dislike this body of work. I cannot recommend this book at all. In fact I would just check it out at the library.

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of them I found possible...some I found to be maybe possible...but a great majority of them I found to be possibly the product of an over active imagination or as Scrooge thought...an undigested slice of under-cooked roast beef. The best I can say was that most had entertaining value and I believe that is what the author was going for. Too bad that as an investigator that he didn't give any opinion of his thoughts about the possibilities.

[Bookfan53 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the book. Strange tales, some of them a bit unbelievable but others seemed real enough. I liked the way the stories were told by the people who experienced them. A good book if you like short stories or fancy a quick holiday read that is a bit different.

[Dara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was just okay. I liked most of the stories, but they weren’t very scary. Some of them were obviously made up or could’ve been a misinterpretation of normal, “logical” events. I think the author himself says it best in the epilogue: “If even one of these stories is true, it is profound.” I draw the line at reptilians though.

[Chandler Ghesquiere · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked that it was short stories so I felt that I was reading at a faster pace and that it was all over the world with multiple time periods but it didn’t give me as many scares as I was thinking it would.

[Kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was interesting enough to finish, but some of the stories were hard to get through or just plain laughable given the way they were presented, in the words of those that experienced them.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun collection of real life experiences.

[Alexis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alcune storie davvero creepy, una in particolare mi ha spaventato tanto da dormire con la lucina notturna per una notte, alcune più calme e una davvero da ridere.
Il problema è che è una raccolta di storie di altre persone, scritte dai diretti interessati e non dall'autore stesso, quindi alcune sono scritte bene, altre un po' meno.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Entertaining but mostly silly collection of anecdotes of people's "paranormal" experiences.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating collection of interesting stories. I even wrote the author with one of my own. A fun and interesting read.

[Ionia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book offers what it promises in the regard that there are a wide variety of stories here that the reader can enjoy. There are some that are far more believable than others. As far as the promise of the author in the beginning that he would edit the stories from people--there's a typo in the very first story.

If you have a dedicated interest in the paranormal, then this book will likely thrill you. I perhaps would have liked to have seen the book organised into sections rather than being just tossed into random order, but that is a personal preference. Overall it wasn't a bad read. Good fodder for campfire tales if nothing else.

It is interesting to note that there are so many people who have had such experiences all around the world and are willing to come forth with their stories.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A fun collection, but because the stories were narrated by the individuals who experienced the events, the voice of the book was obviously inconsistent, the style and skill of the writing varied wildly, and you sometimes encountered stories that didn't interest you - even as a believer, many times you wanted to scoff at some of the "true" stories. Would have liked it better if the author had compiled the stories and then put it in his own words, to give a more even feel to the book.

[Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a quick read consisting of anonymous true stories ranging from a few paragraphs to a few pages each. Some of them were truly creepy! It was perfect for my 6-hour wait in the ER. I was engaged (and distracted!) without having to keep track of a storyline and characters.

[Vicki Edkin · Rating 4 out of 5]

creepy book around Halloween.... Classic

[Michael Kott · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought it was very boring. Someone should have edited these little tales. Most of them were not dark or creepy, I doubt they were even true.