Creepy California: Strange and Gothic Tales from the Golden State

by Keven McQueen

Beneath California's scenic landscape lies a strange and dark side, full of spine-tingling tales and frightful imagery. Creepy Strange and Gothic Tales from the Golden State explores the disturbing and macabre stories of unexplained deaths, intentional live burials, true crimes, and ghosts who haunt the Pacific Coast. This spooky collection includes the extraordinarily odd, like the account of a coroner, who "borrowed" the stylish clothes of one dead man and even sold the corpse's head to a doctor for scientific research, and the paranormal, like the tale of a haunted, two-story house in San Francisco that was moved across town in an effort to dislodge its ghostly tenants. The attempt failed, and the San Francisco Chronicle commented that "the neighborhood has been kept in a constant dread and torment by unearthly groans, mysterious lights, and agonized shrieks emanating from their dread habitation."

An intriguing and frightful look at the disturbing side of the state, Creepy California promises to send chills down your spine and keep you looking over your shoulder.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, Horror

146 pages, Paperback

Published August 7, 2017

About the author

More information about Keven McQueen is available at his official website, http://www.kevenmcqueenstories.com/

Reviews

[Pam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wouldn’t call this book creepy. The author was going for alliteration in the title so Peculiar California just wouldn’t have worked. Odd and Darwin-Award-worthy maybe. McQueen has dug up a slew of peculiar deaths and happenings, many from old newspaper articles i.e. The San Francisco Chronicle. That’s a perfectly respectable type of research but the cases are soooo obscure. I’d only heard of one case, that of the Gordon Northcott murder farm which played a part in the 2008 Clint Eastwood/Angelina Jolie film Changeling.

My choice for best oddity was the man who killed himself by cacti. He dug a grave for himself with his bare bloodied hands, put his clothing in the grave and then threw himself multiple times into the cacti and bashed his head on the ground until dead. If that isn’t a Darwin Award winner I don’t know what would be.

This book is not really Halloween worthy and gets pretty old after a while. Definitely odd! 1890s to early 1940s.

[Undine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a morbidly entertaining selection of brief news items from the past dealing with such joys as bizarre deaths, crooked funeral home workers gruesome murders, and ghosts. However, be aware that it is simply paraphrases of newspaper clippings, without the depth of interest of McQueen's previous books about Weird History. I also found it off-putting that McQueen does not give the full names of anyone in these stories. They are all just first names, or first names with initials, or simply initials. It was like reading one of those Victorian tales about Miss L. V. J.'s adventures at C---- House, the manor of Lord R---- in the county of W-----. Very odd and inexplicable.

Still, the book makes for witty light reading if, like me, you like your books on the mordant side.

[Jeanine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining stories.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little different from what I expected, but this author wrote with an exquisite sense of humor . . . describing how someone shot himself in his countenance and parted with his lower jaw. mmm

[Lisa Kizer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Creepy? More like vicious gossip. Writer tells all about murder, weird happenings from 1800s to the 1930s, leaving out the persons involved last names (funny if you think about it, are these people going to come back and sue for slander). He also tends to put in personal comments dissing liberal politicians - letting you know where he would stands in the politics of nowadays .

[Lesley Looper · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't what I expected, but it was pretty interesting, but sometimes coming across like a cross between Ripley's Believe It or Not and the National Enquirer. Truth can be stranger than fiction, for sure.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

it was fine.

[michael Gutierrez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cali

It's not what I thought it was going to be. I was looking for horror action and all I got was true crime,which I will admit was interesting. But still not what I was craving and all the crime happened in northern California, what happened in southern California?