Today we talk to Joseph A. Citro. Mr. Citro is an expert on New England oddities (including ghosts, fortean, and spiritual phenomena). He has written both novels and non-fiction books. His latest work is The Vermont Monster Guide.

IFP: How did you become interested in Vermont/New England history?

JC: Born here. But my father had an eye for the weird, so he’d tell me all the local lore. I liked the dark side. Lovecraft, among others, taught me I didn’t have to travel to Transylvania or Victorian England to find scary stuff; it was right here under my feet.

IFP: What fascinates you about local myths and legends?

JC: They are stories, and I like stories. You have to consider my orientation to this material. I began my writing career with five published novels. Soon, I discovered my state (and all of New England) is full of wonderful examples of people getting wicked scared. So I took what I intended to be a brief detour from fiction and began to collect strange-but-true, strange-but-MAYBE-true, and best of all: strange-but-hopefully-not-true stories.

IFP: How do you research these stories?

JC: Via any avenue available to me. For the old stuff, I look at newspapers, journals, local history books, sometimes even diaries. For newer stories, I try to do interviews whenever I can.

IFP: What have you found out about the history of Vermont/New England while doing your research?

JC: Answering that question could fill a whole book. But you’re right, tracking ghost stories is a good way to learn history. Here in Vermont, ghosts have been part of the landscape for hundreds of years, since long before Champlain sailed down the lake. Those early Native American spirits are still with us, though they’ve been upstaged by specters of every ethnic persuasion, marking each phase of Vermont’s historical development. That makes Vermont kind of a spectral melting pot.

IFP: Are there any patterns to the stories that you’ve unearthed?

JC: I’m not much interested in patterns. I leave that to the academic folklorists. Certainly, there is a lot of repetition and overlap. Many states have a phantom hitchhiker, a premature burial, or a vengeful wraith. What interests me is how these themes are locally customized. Each New England state might have its own version of essentially the same tale.

IFP: What is the creepiest or most unusual ghost story that you have found?

JC: When what seems to be a natural law is broken, that’s creepy. I’m not sure if there are degrees of creepiness. Is the apparition of a dead relative more creepy than, say, a drinking glass that explodes while you’re watching it, or a fork that twitches in your hand?

IFP: Do you run into many supernatural stories about things that aren’t ghosts?

JC: Sure, there are a lot of creepy stories about thing other than ghosts. I’m not prepared to say they’re supernatural, but I’d never say they aren’t. Rains of rocks seem not to be ghostly. Or rain inside houses. Or Bigfoot. Around here (Burlington, Vermont) we have a lake with a monster in it. Natural or supernatural, who can say?

IFP: Has your research made you more or less likely to believe in the supernatural?

JC: I’m still sitting on the same fence where I started. Belief doesn’t seem essential to a good story. What’s important is that the storyteller (or writer) believes it while s/he’s telling it, and that the audience believes it while they’re hearing or reading it.

IFP: What other projects have you done in the past?

JC: Well, I’ve written five novels, a number of collections of Vermont and New England weirdness, a couple of travel guides, co-edited a book of essay – I’ve done commentary on public radio, written for a number of magazines, recorded a CD, and have written a few screenplays. Oh, and just recently a collection of my short stories came out.
It may seem like a lot, but don’t forget, I’ve been doing this since 1987.

IFP: What is your favourite project that you’ve worked on?

JC: That is always a tough question. Some writers say it is like asking me to pick the favourite of my children. This may seem like a cop-out, but I think it’s true: My favourite is the one I’m engaged in at the time. But I have an enduring fondness for my two firstborn, the novel Shadow Child and the collection of weird Vermont stories called Green Mountains Ghosts, Ghouls, and Unsolved Mysteries. I’m partial to the latter for a number of reasons, but mainly because no one had ever done it before. It’s cool being the first to do something.

IFP: What is your favourite nonfiction book about folklore?

JC: I guess it depends on the definition of folklore. Possibly the books of Charles Fort. This may be a perfect place to insert a quote from his work, one with which I agree wholeheartedly. He said, “I cannot say that truth is stranger than fiction because I have never had acquaintance with either.”

IFP: What academic or artistic accomplishment are you the most proud of in your career so far?

JC: I’m proud that I was the first to write certain books about Vermont. I was the first to collect Vermont’s weird tales. I was the first to write a Vermont Ghost Guide. And I was the first to collect Vermont monster stories.

IFP: What kind of advice would you give to someone just starting out in the field?

JC: Generally I don’t give advice. I think back to the advice I was given when I first started writing. Even the non-writers offered advice. Most, if not all, of it was useless.
If I had to give a bit of advice, it would be this: If you start something, finish it.

IFP: Please tell us about your upcoming projects.

JC: Predicting the future is always a little risky. I’d like to do another book about monsters because, frankly, I’m getting kind of bored with ghosts. There are also two novels I’d like to write, and I might try to reanimate a movie project I had going for awhile. Then there’s always the unexpected opportunity that might just drop into my lap, so to speak. Like the day Mark Moran called me up and asked me if I’d like to write Weird New England.

IFP: What is your dream project?

JC: Good question! I guess dreaming has a lot to do with this type of work. There is a true story about two 19th century mediums from here in Vermont, who baffled the world by conjuring three dimensional apparitions of recognizable dead people. Thing is, they were never officially exposed. My dream project would be to write a novel about them and the detective who came here to debunk them. It would be great fun to immerse myself in nineteenth century Vermont and to try to bring that exciting era back to life in a historical novel.

And if I never get around to writing it, it can still be my dream project.

Born and raised in Vermont, Joe Citro has been writing professionally since 1987. He is the author of 13 books, five of them novels. He also lectures and is a commentator on public radio. To learn more about him visit his homepage: http://www9.addr.com/~jacitro/ or his blog: http://josephacitro.blogspot.com.

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