'There's so much weirdness centered in Western Pa.': Author mines paranormal legends that just keep coming
PITTSBURGH - Bigfoot sightings on Chestnut Ridge, the Annabelle doll in Gettysburg and a UFO touching down in Kecksburg, Westmoreland County.
Whether you believe in them or not, these bits of Pennsylvania folklore continue to spark stories and books.
Maxim Furek, a retired psychologist living in Mocanaqua, Luzerne County, has penned nine books, mining paranormal legends in the region that just keep coming.
"There's so much weirdness centered in Western Pennsylvania," he said.
"It's not just Chestnut Ridge, but it's Greene County. It's a whole bunch of abnormalities with sightings of cryptids, orbs and flying saucers. George Romero's 'Night of the Living Dead' kicked things off.
"There's dark tourism - hiking those woods, searching areas and Bigfoot outings. People are drawn to the forbidden."
Some of Furek's book titles reveal his paranormal fascination with the region: "Coal Region Hoodoo: Paranormal Tales From Inside the Pit," "The Lost Tribes of Bigfoot," "The Smurl Haunting" and "Flying Saucer Esoteric: The Altered States of Ufology."
He has attended the annual Kecksburg UFO Festival in Mount Pleasant, Westmoreland County.
Furek's interest in the paranormal had been percolating for decades due to his upbringing in Berwick, Columbia County, in northeastern Pennsylvania.
When he was younger, he was among the throngs of spectators and international media for the 1963 mine rescue in Sheppton, Schuylkill County, and the demonic Smurl hauntings in West Pittston, Luzerne County, in 1986, later chronicled in the blockbuster 2025 movie "The Conjuring: Last Rites."
Both places were within 50 miles of Furek's home.
"I was 16, there were thousands of people, the National Guard, the Salvation Army and the paparazzi came from around the world to Sheppton. This was a huge story that year, surpassed only by the assassination of Kennedy."
Then in the 1980s, he was a face in the crowd in West Pittston for the Smurl haunting, an alleged demonic infestation that terrorized the Smurl family, garnering international headlines.
During that time, Furek, a Vietnam War veteran, was a full-time psychologist in addiction and recovery services while working part time as a freelance rock music journalist.
After retiring from counseling more than a decade ago, he began writing books and started an odyssey into paranormal investigation.
"I have an academic baseline that allows me to look at things as a skeptic and both sides. I am not a true believer," Furek said. "I am a skeptic looking for answers like everyone else."
When the paranormal finds you
Paranormal stories found Furek; he didn't go looking for them.
When he was a rock journalist living in Berwick, he wrote stories about a local band, the Buoys, whose song "Timothy" was a national hit in 1971.
The song appears to be based on ill-founded rumors of cannibalism during the Sheppton mine disaster in 1963, when two miners were rescued and a third was never found.
" 'Timothy' was the highest charting song from northeast Pennsylvania, and I wanted to write about it. I like to promote my region," he said.
But in researching the music story, Furek found something else. The surviving miners told stories of "visions" and being in the presence of then-recently deceased Pope John XXIII.
He published "Sheppton: The Myth, Miracle & Music" in 2015, which opened doors with media attention and invitations to speak at conferences.
Furek also returned to the Smurl haunting story. During the time of the alleged haunting and media frenzy, Furek took photos of the crowds outside the home and talked to neighbors in the early 1980s.
Paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine Warren visited the Smurl family as well. Their involvement inspired the 1988 book "The Haunted: The True Story of One Family's Nightmare" by Robert Curran. That book inspired several movies, including "The Conjuring" films.
When the controversial demon-hunting couple embarked on a national book tour to promote "The Haunted," Furek interviewed them in 1988 in Jim Thorpe, Pa. He published stories about the Warrens for Time Out magazine and other publications.
"They were grateful and respectful," Furek said. "I thought they were mentors, and they remained controversial in the public's eye."
He kept in contact with the Warrens until their deaths.
Furek wrote "The Smurl Haunting: When Ed and Lorraine Came to Town," which was published by Anxiety Press in 2025.
In that book, he chronicled another paranormal story by the Warrens - the tale about Annabelle, an allegedly haunted doll that inspired three popular horror films.
Furek met paranormal investigator Dan Rivera, who took the Annabelle doll on a tour, stopping at the Gettysburg Soldiers' Orphanage for a presentation in July 2025.
Furek was set to interview Rivera just a few days later while he was in Gettysburg, but Rivera died unexpectedly in his hotel room from cardiac issues.
Furek said he was one the last paranormal researchers to talk with Rivera before he died.
His sudden death sparked national headlines with suspicions that the Annabelle doll was somehow involved.
Furek had seen the doll and wasn't scared by it.
Furek tapped the Vincent Psychic Sisters of Butler, known mediums in the paranormal community, for their take on Rivera's death. They, too, had known the Warrens and had seen the doll before.
In Furek's book, Suzanne and Jean Vincent said:
"When you take something like Annabelle - already steeped in dark energy - and place her in a location like Gettysburg, where the veil is thin and the sorrow runs deep, you're inviting a dangerous convergence of spiritual forces. That's not folklore. That's energy, and we've seen what it can do."
Furek continued to turn his attention to unexplained phenomena in Western Pennsylvania with the publication of "The Lost Tribes of Bigfoot," published by Hangar 1 in 2024.
He recalled a neighbor who claimed to have seen two Bigfoot creatures, one black, one cinnamon, in Luzerne County.
After interviewing the neighbor, he called UFO documentarian Stan Gordon, who lives in the Laurel Highlands, to check out the account.
"What is important here is that Stan Gordon, born and raised in Chestnut Ridge, is one of the few individuals who maintain such exact paranormal records."
Gordon, of Greensburg, has been taking reports from the public of UFOs, Bigfoot, cryptids and other anomalies for 66 years via a hotline and email. Just in southwestern Pennsylvania, he has received thousands of UFO reports and hundreds of Bigfoot and cryptid sightings, he said.
The reports are almost nonstop and are often from first responders and hunters who do not want to go public, he said.
Recently, he has received a flurry of reports of small orbs of light occurring in the Laurel Highlands, Allegheny County and surrounding areas.
On Feb. 2, a Derry Township woman told Gordon that she saw three white orbs sitting in the snow at night. She retrieved her phone to take a photo and they were gone.
Pennsylvania ranks among the top states with the most Bigfoot sightings, Furek said. However, the commonwealth is special because those sightings also include UFOs and orbs - balls of light that some associate with spiritual energy.
Furek's review of the UFO sighting in Kecksburg in 1965 includes many possible - or impossible - explanations, including a U.S. spy satellite and a Venus space probe, among others.
"The most bizarre, however, is that Nazi Germany time-traveled a secret weapon known as Die Glocke [The Bell], which was transported from the 1930s to Kecksburg in 1965," he said.
Folklore rules here
Southwestern Pennsylvania is unique, with the migration of various ethnic groups that brought their supernatural folklore traditions.
"Pittsburgh was the gateway to the West and has had a stable population with many families staying for generations and passing down community knowledge before the internet," said Tom White, archivist and curator at Duquesne University and an adjunct professor of history at Duquesne and La Roche University.
He has written 11 books on Pennsylvania legends, folklore, ghost stories and weird stuff in the state. In 2021, he published "The Witch of the Monongahela: Folk Magic in Early Western Pennsylvania."
"I chronicle stories. I don't try to convince people," said White, who describes himself as a historian.
"I have experiences I can't explain. Lots of times, there's an explanation. But these things can be more complicated.
"Every generation thinks they got it figured out. The reality is that they work in the context of what they know. It's arrogant to think we have an explanation for everything."
Place matters. For example, the Laurel Highlands is a place of transition - it's not heavily populated, and it's a space outside of most people's daily world.
"Folklore stories develop in these places where there is an atmosphere where different things seem possible," he said.
Northern Appalachia has strong folklore traditions as well.
People generally like stories about paranormal and folklore, and that is why there are so many books and storytellers.
"Some people just like the legends and creepy stories. Others are hardcore believers, and some of the stories carry a message," White said.
He believes that ghost stories are a form of history.
"Look at ghost stories of the 1800s, excluding the Civil War. They are almost always women, immigrants, African Americans and Native Americans," he said.
"You never hear about dead white Protestant lawyer ghosts."
UFOs came into prominence after World War II when the prospect of technological destruction loomed, White said.
The proliferation of Bigfoot stories can be tied to environmental damage and the possibility that a massive species somehow slipped through.
"Those are just two interpretations. These stories can be interpreted through a variety of lenses," White said.
He has been collecting folklore stories for about 30 years, and each year, he hears about 50 new stories.
"When you approach these things, more is going on culturally and historically," he said. "It's more than just a monster."
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This story was originally published February 12, 2026 at 5:39 AM.