The Mississippi River has been one of America's great passages for centuries. A primary artery of exploration and commerce, its history is rich in the human stories that have transpired along its banks through generations of natives and pioneers, farmers and explorers, entrepreneurs and soldiers. So it's no surprise that many of its tales are of the spirits of those who made that history and haunt it to this day.Ghost stories are common on the Mississippi, and James M. Longo spent four years seeking them out from the people who live along its banks. Haunted Odyssey collects the tales he was told and the ones he unearthed in his travels up and down the river: -The phantom light on a deadly Cape Girardeau road-Kaskaskia's Indian curse-A home in a quiet St. Louis suburb where a grandfather regularly stops by to check in and watch TV-years after he passed away-The infamous Lemp Mansion in St. Louis and the sordid history of madness and death that haunts it still today-An Indian guide's spirit who helps children lost in the woods in St. Charles-Edwardsville's Three Mile House, where alarm clocks are unnecessary thanks to a ghostly child-Footsteps that stalk through a Hannibal home with no one in sightBorn and raised in St. Louis, James M. Longo's lifelong interest in ghost stories culminated in his Mississippi Valley odyssey, gathering the best stories local residents sincerely believe to be true.Stories that will haunt you.
About the Author: James McMurtry Longo is a master storyteller, whether showcasing his talents at the International Storytelling Festival beneath the Gateway Arch in his hometown of St. Louis, at the schools and universities on three continents where he has taught, around the campfires of the summer camps he has directed, or in the eight books he has written. Jim began his writing career as the sports editor of his school newspaper. Today, he is chair of the Education Department at Washington & Jefferson College. His latest book, From Classroom to White House: Presidents and First Ladies as Students and Teachers, published by McFarland in 2011, won rave reviews from coast to coast. His trilogy of ghost story collections-Haunted Odyssey, Ghosts Along the Mississippi and Favorite Haunts-solidified his national reputation as a "storyteller extraordinaire," as heralded by WPST Philadelphia. Jim's 2008 book, Isabel Orleans-Bragança: The Brazilian Princess Who Freed the Slaves, published by McFarland, was nominated for Yale University's Frederick Douglass Book Prize as the "most outstanding non-fiction book in English on the subject of slavery and abolition." It was also nominated for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights Book Award. When Jim was serving as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair of the Gender and Women's Study Program at Austria's Alpen-Adria University of Klagenfurt, that biography caught the attention of the great-granddaughter of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination sparked World War I. The mysterious circumstances of that murder and its connections to Adolf Hitler is the focus of Jim's forthcoming book VENDETTA: Hitler's War Against a Vanished Empire, a Dead Archduke, and his Royal Orphans. His research and teaching have taken him to Austria, Brazil, Costa Rica, Portugal, England, Scotland, Wales, Germany, the Czech Republic, and Canada. He holds an Ed.D. in Teaching, Curriculum, and Learning from Harvard University, an M.A.T. in Curriculum Writing and Design from Webster University, and a B.S. in Education and History from University of Missouri-St. Louis. Jim believes all he ever needed to know he learned at summer camp. When not teaching or writing, he would rather be in a canoe than any other place on earth. He lives in Washington, Pa., with his wife.