I
Point Pleasant, WV1966
Mothman
A grey figure taller than a man, with folded wings and two red eyes that threw back the headlights. Twenty-six sightings in a single year, and then almost none.
Book III · Monsters · Hauntings · Curses
Dark Legends of America
A field guide to the American dark
Every state keeps one story it tells only after dark. This book collects them: the creatures, hauntings and curses that ordinary people reported to sheriffs, preachers and the morning paper, each with its date, its place and its first recorded source.
- 81 legends from all 50 states, in ten regional chapters
- A full-page photographic illustration for every major legend
- The date, place and first source of every sighting
- Hoaxes labeled as hoaxes. The rest is up to you.
- Hardcover · 8.5 × 11 in. · 240 pages
€45,00
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Read it with the lights on
In January 1909, hoofprints crossed the rooftops of South Jersey and stopped dead in the open snow. In 1966, something with red eyes followed two young couples toward Point Pleasant. In 1817, a voice in a Tennessee farmhouse learned to speak. No invented witnesses. Only what people swore was true.
Dark Legends of America
The Bestiary
They have names. And addresses.
I
Point Pleasant, WV1966
II
Pine Barrens, NJ1735 / 1909
The Jersey Devil
The thirteenth child of Mother Leeds, the story says, went up the chimney and into the pines. In January 1909 its hoofprints crossed the rooftops of South Jersey, then stopped dead in open snow.
III
Adams, TN1817
The Bell Witch
It began with scratching in the dark and bedcovers sliding to the floor. Then it found a voice. It prayed, it sang, it mocked the neighbors, and it promised to come back.
IV
Sleepy Hollow, NY1820
The Headless Horseman
The one legend here that a single man made up: Washington Irving's Hessian trooper, riding the road by the Old Dutch Church. In 1996, North Tarrytown renamed itself Sleepy Hollow.
V
Dover, MA1977
The Dover Demon
Three teenagers, two nights, one small pale creature with a head like a watermelon and eyes that glowed. Plotted on a map, the sightings fall on a straight line just over two miles long.
VI
Bayou Country, LAFrench colonial era
The Rougarou
A man by day and a beast by night, carried to Louisiana in the old French tales of the loup-garou. Learn who it is, and you must keep the secret for a year and a day, or the curse becomes yours.
VII
Bishopville, SC1988
The Lizard Man
Two in the morning, a flat tire beside Scape Ore Swamp, and something seven feet tall running out of the trees. The car came home with a damaged mirror and scratches across the roof.
VIII
Frederick County, MD1909
The Snallygaster
Half reptile, half bird, with a screech like a locomotive whistle. It began as a newspaper hoax. Folklore says the seven-pointed stars on Frederick County barns were painted to keep it away.
IX
Elkhorn, WI1991
The Beast of Bray Road
A wolf that crouched like a man on the gravel shoulder of a country road. Local journalist Linda Godfrey first put it in print in December 1991.
And seventy-two more.
Eighty-one legends from all fifty states, from the Pine Barrens to the flanks of Mount St. Helens.
Get the book
Turn off the lights
She is still standing there.
Move your light. Hold to see more.
Where they walk
A haunted map of America.
Every legend is pinned to the town or county where it was first reported. Hover a light to read its name.
Point Pleasant · 1966Mothman
Pine Barrens · 1909The Jersey Devil
Adams · 1817The Bell Witch
Sleepy Hollow · 1820The Headless Horseman
Dover · 1977The Dover Demon
Lafourche & TerrebonneThe Rougarou
Bishopville · 1988The Lizard Man
Frederick County · 1909The Snallygaster
Elkhorn · 1991The Beast of Bray Road
Mount St. Helens · 1924The Apemen of Ape Canyon
San Jose · 1886The Winchester House
Fort Worth · 1969The Lake Worth Monster
Mattoon · 1944The Mad Gasser of Mattoon
Louisiana, Missouri · 1972Momo
Fouke · 1971The Fouke Monster
Big Cypress · 1970sThe Skunk Ape
Lake ChamplainChamp
Roanoke Island · 1590The Lost Colony
Look inside
Read the first pages by candlelight.
1 / 3
The Appalachians
The Bell Witch
It begins as almost nothing. A scratching at the logs after the candles are out. Something gnawing at the bedpost, though nothing in the room gnaws. You tell yourself it is the house settling, the river wind, the rats.
Then the covers start to slide off the bed, slowly, as if someone at the foot of it is pulling.
By the second year, the thing in John Bell's house has a voice. It prays. It argues Scripture. It speaks in the voices of the neighbors. It is tender with Lucy, the mother. It slaps the daughter, Betsy, until her cheeks burn, and it will not let her marry the boy she loves.
And it hates John Bell.
His tongue swells until he can barely eat. On the twentieth of December, 1820, he does not wake. In the cabinet the family finds a small vial of dark liquid that nobody remembers buying, and the voice tells them, pleased, that it gave him a dose. They put a drop on the tongue of the cat. The cat dies.
In the spring it leaves. It promises to return in seven years.
Adams, Tennessee
The Appalachians
Mothman
North of town, the war left its bunkers in the woods: rows of concrete igloos, grassed over, where explosives were once packed and stored. By 1966 the place is a lovers' lane. Headlights, a radio, and nobody else for miles.
On the night of November 15th, two young couples come past the old power plant, and their headlights find something standing in the dark. It is taller than a man. It is grey. Wings are folded against its back, and it has two eyes, red, round and enormous, that catch the light and send it back.
They drive, fast. Afterward they tell a deputy that it followed them.
The next day the Point Pleasant Register prints the story, and the sightings begin to drift in like snow: on back roads, in fields, over the river. Twenty-six of them in a year. Lights cross the sky that nobody can name.
Then, on December 15, 1967, at the evening rush, the Silver Bridge drops into the Ohio River. Forty-six people die in the winter water.
After that, the sightings thin out and stop. People in Point Pleasant still argue about what it was.
Point Pleasant, West Virginia
The Mid-Atlantic
The Jersey Devil
The story always starts in a storm, in a house in the pines near Leeds Point, with a woman giving birth for the thirteenth time. She is tired, and she says the wrong thing. Let this one be the devil.
The child is born like any other. Then it changes. The face stretches into something like a horse's. The shoulders split into wings. The feet harden into hooves. It screams once, goes up the chimney, and is gone into a million acres of pitch pine and cedar water.
For a long time it is only a name the pines people use, the Leeds Devil: a reason for dead chickens and a scream across the bog at night.
Then comes the week of January 16, 1909. Snow falls across South Jersey and the Delaware Valley, and in the morning there are tracks. Hoofprints, the newspapers say, in town after town. They run along fences and across rooftops, and then they stop dead in open snow, as if whatever made them simply rose.
A Philadelphia showman displays a "devil" that turns out to be a kangaroo with painted stripes and glued-on wings. The tracks are never explained.
Leeds Point, New Jersey
Inside the book
Ten regions. Eighty-one legends. One long night.
The book travels the country region by region, from the stone walls of New England to the edge of the map in the Pacific. Every one of the fifty states keeps at least one.
- I New England: Stone Walls & Cold GravesThe Dover Demon, Mercy Brown, Champ, the Bennington Triangle 9 legends
- II The Mid-Atlantic: Pine Barrens & Hollow RoadsThe Headless Horseman, the Jersey Devil, the Snallygaster, Black Aggie 9 legends
- III Tidewater & the Carolinas: What the Tide LeavesThe Lost Colony of Roanoke, the Lizard Man, the Brown Mountain Lights 7 legends
- IV The Appalachians: The Hills RememberMothman, the Flatwoods Monster, the Bell Witch, the Hopkinsville Goblins 7 legends
- V The Deep South & Bayou: Black WaterThe Rougarou, the Fouke Monster, the Skunk Ape, the Honey Island Swamp Monster 9 legends
- VI The Great Lakes: Small Towns, Long NightsThe Hodag, the Mad Gasser of Mattoon, Resurrection Mary, the Beast of Bray Road 11 legends
- VII The Plains: Wind, Wheat & SilenceThe Bloody Benders, Momo, Stull Cemetery, the Van Meter Visitor 8 legends
- VIII Texas & the Southwest: Rivers That Weep, Lights That WanderLa Llorona, the Marfa Lights, the Lake Worth Monster, the Phoenix Lights 6 legends
- IX The Mountain West: Lake, Mine & GallowsThe Bear Lake Monster, the Tommyknockers, Big Nose George 7 legends
- X The Pacific: The Edge of the MapThe Winchester House, the Whaley House, the Apemen of Ape Canyon, the Alaska Triangle 8 legends
The edition
Made to be kept.
- Format
- Hardcover, 8.5 × 11 in.
- Pages
- 240
- Legends
- 81, from all 50 states
- Illustrations
- Full color, photographic
- Chapters
- 10 regions, coast to coast
- Sources
- The first record of every legend
- Edition
- First Edition, first printing
- Ships from
- Our US warehouse
The complete collection
All three legends. One shelf.
The history, the wonder and the dark, together. The Collector's Edition arrives in a black linen slipcase stamped in gold.
- AMERICA: Land of the BraveHardcover · 280 pages
- The Lost Legends of AmericaHardcover
- Dark Legends of AmericaHardcover
- Free US shippingIncluded
€99,00€135,00You save €36,00
Add-ons
Hang the map. If you dare.
The Dark Legends Map of America · Art Print
Where they are said to walk. A dark vintage-style map of the United States in bone-white ink on black, with the legends...
€34,00
Legend Bookmarks · Set of Three
Three engraved metal bookmarks with silk tassels, one for each book: the Eagle, the Watcher and the Rider. Made to live between...
€24,00
Questions
Before you turn out the lights.
Anything else? Write to us through the contact page. A real person reads every message.
Is it too scary for kids?
There's no gore, but it is a book about things that go bump in the night, written for adults and older teens. We'd say 12 and up, with the lights on.
Are these stories true?
Every legend is dated and sourced to its first record: a newspaper, a sheriff's report, a book. Whether the creature was real is another matter. Where a legend began as a hoax, we tell you so.
How fast do you ship?
Every order ships from our US warehouse with tracking, and your tracking number arrives by email as soon as your books are on their way.
How much is shipping?
Free within the United States on orders over $75, and a flat $6.95 below that. Details are on our Shipping & Returns page.
What if I change my mind?
You can cancel any time before your order ships. After delivery, contact us within 30 days for a replacement or a full refund.