4/17/2016 The Ghosts of Ohio with James Willis

This week on the show Eric and Marie welcome Author, Investigator and Ohioan Jim Willis as talk about his dozen plus books, some of the haunted locations in Ohio and his research into the paranormal

Not since the Headless Horseman went charging through Sleepy Hollow has something come out of the Hudson Highlands of upstate New York as thrilling and chilling as author and paranormal researcher James A. Willis.

Fueled by a steady childhood diet of Boo Berry cereal,

Creepy magazine, and late-night Vincent Price movies, Willis soon developed a taste for the unexplained and quickly began

seeking out all things strange and spooky. When he wasn’t trying to coax the boogeyman out from under his bed for a photo shoot, Willis pondered such eternal questions as what

happens to us when we die, is there life on other planets, and what possesses someone to decorate their house with 1,001 milk jugs?

In 1999, after spending more than 15 years chasing after ghosts and visiting crybaby bridges, Willis moved to Ohio and founded The Ghosts of Ohio (ghostsofohio.org),

a nationally recognized paranormal research organization. Willis has grown the organization to well over 35 members in three divisions throughout the state: Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati. In 2004, in what seemed to be destiny, Mark Moran and Mark Sceurman, the brainchilds

of the Weird US series of books, approached Willis and asked him to contribute to their latest volume,

Weird US

. To date, Willis has been involved with 6 books in the

Weird US series. He is the co-author of Weird Ohio

(2005) and Weird Indiana (2008) and was

also a contributing author to Weird US (2004),

Weird Hauntings (2006), Weird US II: The

ODDyssey Continues (2008), and Weird Encounters

(2010). Willis’ unique and offbeat writing style was officially recognized in 2006 with his induction into the Grand Order of

Weird Writers. In addition, Willis has been a contributing author to several books in the Armchair Reader series, including Weird, Scary & Unusual (2008),

Armchair Reader Goes Hollywood

(2010), and Haunted America (2011). In 2012, Willis struck out on his own with the publication of Haunted Indiana.

For 2013’s The Big Book Of Ohio Ghost Stories

, Willis crisscrossed Ohio to bring readers over 75 of the Buckeye state’s most famous (and infamous) ghosts. Willis’ latest project, Ohio’s Historic Haunts: Investigating the Paranormal in the Buckeye State , was a joint

effort with Kent State University Press. Released in late 2015, the book approached hauntings and ghost stories from a historical perspective and chronicled Willis’ personal

experiences when locked inside of some of Ohio’s most haunted locations. A sought-after public speaker, Willis has given presentations throughout the United States,

during which he has educated and entertained tens of thousands of people of all ages in crowd sizes ranging from 10 to well over 600. He has also been featured in more than

75 media sources, including CNN, USA Today, Columbus Business First, Midwest Living, The Canadian Press

, and even the Kuwait Times

.

Willis currently resides in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and daughter, a Queen-loving parrot, and three narcoleptic cats.

To learn more about Jim, visit his websites or on twitter at

[email protected] • Strangeandspookyworld.com • twitter.com/jamesawillis