Your Humble Narrator had the honor to be a classmate, back at dear old Harbor Creek High, of a pleasant fellow named Robin Swope. Though he was an unusual & interesting guy even back then, nothing would have prepared me for the course his life took: he became a Christian minister & missionary, & also a paranormal investigator.
Robin writes a blog called
The Paranormal Pastor, contributes to publications like
Fate magazine, & is the author of such works as
An Exorcist’s Field Guide. He recently sent me an early Halloween gift: a copy of his latest tome,
Eerie Erie: Tales of the Unexplained from Northwest Pennsylvania (The History Press, $14.99), a fun review of uncanny folklore from my beloved gloomy hometown of Erie & its gloomy environs.
The book covers subjects ranging from UFOs over Presque Isle to “Phantom Panthers” in Summit Township & Edinboro to Bigfoot sightings in Wintergreen Gorge, from Gudgeonville Bridge & Axe Murder Hollow to sightings of the ghosts of Perry’s sailors from Misery Bay, to…
Monster-of-the-Week: …this week’s honoree, the Lake Erie Storm Hag…
…our own Great Lakes version of a perennial sailors legend, sometimes known as Jennie Greenteeth. Fetchingly equipped with green skin, green fangs & cat-like yellow eyes, the Storm Hag is fond of preying upon sailors when their vessels are caught in bad weather. According to Swope, she’s also a gifted singer who, just before she attacks, likes to serenade her victims thusly:
Come into the water, love,
Dance beneath the waves,
Where dwell the bones of sailor lads
Inside my saffron caves.
