Joseph A Citro

About the AuthorNovelist, folklorist, and public radio commentator, Joseph A. Citro is considered an expert on New England's historical oddities and unexplained phenomena. A resident of Vermont, he has authored numerous novels and nonfiction books, lectured widely, and appeared on regional and national radio and television.On Writing The GoreThis was a fun book to write. It's as close to a "boy's adventure" novel as I've ever been able to concoct. The moment I stumbled upon Vermont "gores" this story took root and almost wrote itself.At that time, I was researching a historical script for public television. That's when I stumbled upon gores. They are unorganized parcels of land that lie outside the borders of all official townships. Since they are in no town, they are quite literally "no-man's-lands."Gores do not exist by design. They are blunders made by colonial surveyors who first measured unexplored land. Many Vermont gores remained uninhabited because they are in some of the state's most inhospitable terrain. My guess is that a few of those early surveyors deliberately overlooked such godforsaken acresTo me all this was a revelation What a perfect place to set a scary book: an uninhabited no-man's-land created by mistake So, the book's wonderfully ambiguous title was essentially handed to me: The Gore. What else could I have called it? This is one of those rare instances when the title came before the book. More precisely, the title inspired the novel Alas, when Warner Books originally published it in 1990, they - for some unfathomable reason - renamed it The Unseen.I was upset, fearing that flaccid title would predict the book's fate.I was right.Rescue came in 2000 when the University Press of New England (UPNE) resurrected it as part of their prestigious Hardscrabble line. They graced the printed edition with an elegant cover by nationally renowned artist Wendell Minor. And they restored its proper name.Later, in 2012, Crossroad Press published the ebook and an audio book, beautifully voiced by the talented Chet Williamson. At this point its birth title was permanently in place.But Fate had other plans for The Gore. In 2018 UPNE went out of business, making the printed edition unavailable.Luckily, in July of 2024, I was delighted to cross paths with Redhawk Publications. Their Publisher, Robert Canipe, introduced me to Acquisitions Editor Patricia Thompson and the rest is history. Or better yet, the future. It is my hope that Redhawk will keep The Gore in print for many years, once again making it available to its old fans and to a new generation of readers.

Five spooky stories by Vermont's leading authority on all things supernatural, Joseph A Citro, illustrated by Robert Waldo Brunelle JR.

New Englanders are always cursing. But a colorful profanity uttered by some stero-typically taciturn old Yankee is usually more humorous than menacing. Yet, true maledictions (the opposite of benedictions) have frequently been spoken on New England soil, curses intended to invoke evil, injury, or total destruction against other people. Stories about preternatural revenge are numerous in Yankee lore, with each New England state providing its favorites. You’ll read about curses that were followed by the strange disappearance of a father and daughter in Rhode Island, mysterious afflictions in Massachusetts, a river of death in Maine, an unaccountable blight in New Hampshire, unexplained madness in Connecticut, and other eerie happenings from New England’s colorful history. Some are well known, at least regionally. Others are nearly forgotten. Within these pages, storyteller Joseph A. Citro vividly brings these tales to life, letting us decide if these tales of woe were bad luck or . . . something else.

A collection of bizarre incidents occuring in recent New England history includes tales of monsters, ghosts, vampires, resurrections, and haunted houses

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.