Legends of the Mountain State
West Virginia often can be a scary state, and the 13 stories included in the anthology, Legends of the Mountain State: Ghostly Tales from the State of West Virginia, graphically demonstrate just how scary.    Edited by Michael Knost, a Logan, WV-based fiction writer, the collection of Mountain State urban legends, naturally includes Mothman - perhaps the state's most famous apparition - but with a pulp fiction twist as a hit man is hired by a Las Vegas crime boss to travel to Point Pleasant and kill the ghostly demon.    Writers in the collection include professional horror, science fiction and fantasy writers, as well as those that Knost calls "up and coming writers in and around the state of West Virginia." Quite a few actually live in the Mountain State, but even those who live on the West Coast or Baltimore have managed to capture the ghostly spirit that sends a chill up and down the spine of residents at night.    The stories are based - in addition to Mothman and the related Silver Bridge collapse - on such legends as the Ethel coal mine specter, the Chapmanville school haunting, the Ghost of #22 Mountain and many others. There's an excellent introduction by Rick Hautala that puts the reader in the picture about the ghostly state of West Virginia.  What an assemblage of writers! And, in closing, a few words from the editor ( I wonder if Knost rhymes with Ghost; it really should!):    "It is especially exhilarating to see writers of this magnitude focusing on our great state," said Michael Knost. "This is the first work of its kind in the Mountain State."    I certainly agree. --David M. Kinchen, Huntingtonnews.net Book CriticThis thirteen book ghost story collection will entertain readers as West Virginia makes a perfect setting for these horror tales. All the entries are well written as ghosts haunt the mines, mountains, and towns without one reference to Byrd or pork.  From the onset with Thomas F.Monteleone's strong opening Images in Anthracite in which a dad reaches from a mine cave in grave to plead with his adult son to stop that cavern from being opened to Jude-Mari Green's closing act Wild Mountain Freesia of picking up a hitchhiker heading to a memorial park, readers will enjoy the stories. Some have twists like the hitman's final shot in Money Well Warned by Joseph Nassise and others are simply haunting like the reporter investigating The Blackwater Lights by Michael M. Hughes.  LEGENDS OF THE MOUNTAIN STATE is a superior horror anthology filled with all new tales to keep the lights on at night and the out of state tourists away from West Virginia. --Harriet Klausner, Worlds of WonderLegends of the Mountain State is one of those rare books that brings someone my age (my mid-forties) back to my childhood. It conjures up memories of how I'd lie beneath the covers at night with a flashlight, reading scary stories long after I was supposed to be asleep. It returns me to those days when my friends and I would sit outside at night, maybe by a campfire, maybe just in someone's backyard, and we'd tell each other tales about men with hooks for hands, which houses in town were haunted, and how someone's big brother had a friend who once saw a big, hairy creature roaming through the woods. In other words, Legends of the Mountain State is a collection of old-fashioned stories meant to do only two things: send shivers up your spine and entertain you. --J.G. Faherty, Fear Zone