Book Review: Really Mysterious Pennsylvania by Stan Gordon

Really Mysterious Pennsylvania-UFOs, Bigfoot and Other Weird Encounters-Casebook One
By Stan Gordon
ISBN 978-0-9666108-2-6
(c) 2010


“Remember, you only an hour away from one of the most prominent researchers in Pennsylvania” – those were the words that a friend told me when I moved to Pittsburgh so many years ago. The name “Stan Gordon” was a constant in the UFO press of the 1970s and the research of his UFO/paranormal groups was covered everything from saucer sightings to some of the most spellbinding accounts of encounters with Bigfoot and other beings. All this, including the legendary “Kecksburg Crash” of 1965, made the great state of Pennsylvania a treasure-trove of forbidden lore.

Decades later, I would have of being among the first to set eyes on Really Mysterious Pennsylvania – the book that everyone had expected Stan to write for so long, unlocking the contents of his paranormal archives. And it does not disappoint!

In recent years, research into the “far out and far away” has taken a decidedly Western leaning, with researchers concentrated in the Southwest and California, hovering around Roswell. This new book is a reminder that we have mysteries – and then some – on this end of the lower 48.

In the 18th century, when William Penn became the owner of the kingdom-sized estate known as Pennsylvania, little did he realize that he had acquired a land of extraordinary paranormal activity, ranging from winged monsters in its forests, hairy bipeds in its lofty ridges, to unexplained lights in the sky. Really Mysterious Pennsylvania takes the reader through ten chapters devoted to UFO sightings of all descriptions – lights in the sky, cases involving ground traces and high-strangeness events, even truly dangerous encounters with the unknown. Act II of the book, so to speak, concerns the “Eastern Bigfoot” and its interaction with bewildered humans: of particular interest here is “Chapter 14 – Government Intervention” which describes the active role that the FBI has taken in some cases. The book’s final section is a delight to the seekers of high-strangeness cases, involving Thunderbirds, mysterious ice falls, and “The Mysterious Fowl Eater”

The best feature of Really Mysterious Pennsylvania is that it promises to be the first in a series of books on our state’s wonders and enigmas – and what better tour guide than Stan Gordon?