Creepy California: Strange and Gothic Tales from the Golden State

by Keven McQueen

This “fun primer on California’s macabre and eccentric history” explores true crimes, paranormal reports, and other curious tales from the Pacific Coast (Paul Koudounaris).   California has many famous wonders—the beaches, vineyards, and glamorous neighborhoods are all well documented in guidebooks. But there are darker wonders here as well—the kind seldom shared with outsiders. In Creepy California historian Kevin McQueen explores strange tales of unexplained deaths, intentional live burials, true crimes, and ghosts who haunt the Pacific Coast.   From the uncanny to the outright paranormal, this chronicle of oddities includes the story of a coroner who “borrowed” the stylish clothes of a dead man and then sold the corpse’s head to a doctor; a rare look inside Stanford University’s secret collection of occult memorabilia; the tale of a haunted, two-story house in San Francisco that was painstakingly moved across town in an effort to dislodge its ghostly tenants; a profile of a lonesome Fort Bragg resident who carved a family for himself out of wood; and many others.   An intriguing look at the Golden State’s bounty of unsettling curiosities, Creepy California promises to keep you guessing what other mysteries lurk in the fog.

Genres: Nonfiction, True Crime, Horror

139 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 16, 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?