Creepy Crawls: A Horror Fiend's Travel Guide, by Leon Marcelo


I don't even want to imagine what might have been spawned if Elvira and H. P. Lovecraft had gotten together, but this is the book the two might well have written. A guide to ghoulish locations in Europe and the United States, this is the work of Leon Marcelo, a scholar whose specialty is horror in literature and film and whose special talent is impressively purple prose. Composed to please all those "boils and ghouls" who can't resist the appeal of a "ghastly terror-touring travel guide to the most dreadfully Horror-ed of travel destinations," this book makes it easy to locate and visit the locations where revered horror tales took place, where notable scary movies were filmed, and the places where some of their creators lurked.

From London and Paris to New York, Pennsylvania, Washington, D.C., Texas, California, Maine, and New Jersey, Marcelo has - often quite painstakingly - sleuthed out sites connected with such memorable films as the original "Night of the Living Dead," "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," "The Exorcist," "The Amityville Horror," "Halloween," and "Friday the 13th." With this book in hand, it's easy to make pilgrimages to the graves of horror greats like Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney. Authors H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allen Poe, Washington Irving, and Stephen King are all featured in the section dedicated to literature. For every location, the author provides directions, telephone numbers, and helpful information to make it easy to follow in his footsteps. Black-and-white photographs are sprinkled generously throughout the book, and a bibliography containing "The Revoltingly Rotted Resources of Creepy Crawls' Rapacious Research" offers plenty of suggestions for further exploration.

For road trippers who are also horror fans, this book is a nightmare come true!

Megan Edwards
10/15/06