Joseph A. Citro is a Vermont

Vermont

Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...

 author and folklorist. Occasionally referred as the "Bard of the Bizarre" or "the Ghost-Master General", he has extensively researched and documented the folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

, hauntings, ghost stories

Ghost story

A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially, the term can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has...

, paranormal activity

Paranormal

Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure...

 and occult happenings

Occult

The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus , referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g...

 of New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

.

Interested in horror

Horror fiction

Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...

 since he was a child, especially the works of Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

 and H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....

, Citro began his writing career by authoring several horror novels, including The Gore, Shadow Child

Shadow Child

Shadow Child is a novel by Vermont horror and paranormal activity author Joseph A. Citro. It was not the first book he wrote , although it was his first published one....

, and Guardian Angels. These novels blended the gothic elements of Poe and the eldritch terror of Lovecraft with actual Vermont folklore and contemporary New England settings. Later, Citro decided to make an attempt to catalogue all of the eccentric legends, folk tales, mysterious monsters, UFO sightings, haunted houses, and general uncanny activity of New England. His books on these subjects include Green Mountains' Ghosts, Ghouls, and Unsolved Mysteries, Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors, Green Mountains, Dark Tales, and most recently Damned Yankees: Cursed in New England. Later, he published Curious New England: The Unconventional Traveler's Guide to Eccentric Destinations with Diane Foulds, a travel guide to New Englands peculiar and paranormal locations.

Citro has given many seminars about writing horror and non-fiction, and given commentaries on Vermont Public Radio

Vermont Public Radio

-WVPR:-WRVT:-VPR Classical:Since 2007, VPR has broadcast classical music on a separate network. The main station is WOXR , which is licensed to Schuyler Falls, New York and serves the Burlington/Plattsburgh area....

.

Novels

• Shadow Child
  Shadow Child
  Shadow Child is a novel by Vermont horror and paranormal activity author Joseph A. Citro. It was not the first book he wrote , although it was his first published one....
  
  (1987)
• Guardian Angels (1988)
• The Gore (1990)
• The Unseen (1990)
• Lake Monsters
  Dark Twilight
  Dark Twilight is a 1991 horror novel by author Joseph Citro...
  
  (1991)
• Deus-X
  Deus-X
  Deus-X is a 1994 horror novel written by Joe Citro. Of all his novels, Citro has repeatedly described it as being his darkest and most intricate. The idea for the book came from Citro's love for and fascination with the occult and paranormal...
  
  (1994)

Non-fiction

• Green Mountain Ghosts, Ghouls and Unsolved Mysteries (1994)
• Passing Strange: True Tales of New England Hauntings and Horrors (1996)
• The Vermont Ghost Guide
  The Vermont Ghost Guide
  The Vermont Ghost Guide is a comprehensive paranormal travel guide published in 2000 that documents all of the major hauntings and ghost-sightings in Vermont, inspired by the numerous Vermont wildlife and destination guides. The book was researched and written by Vermont folklore expert Joe Citro...
  
  (2000)
• Curious New England: The Unconventional Traveler's Guide to Eccentric Destinations (2003) (with Diane E Foulds)
• Cursed in New England: Stories of Damned Yankees (2004)
• Weird New England (2006) (with a foreword by Mark Sceurman and Mark Moran)
• The Vermont Monster Guide (2009)

External links