VALDOSTA — South Georgia Regional Library has planned a Halloween treat by taking a walk through “Weird Georgia” Saturday.

As part of the Fall Carnival festival, the Valdosta-Lowndes County Library hosts Jim Miles, author of the book “Weird Georgia.”

“Reading his book, ‘Weird Georgia,’ is like looking at the state through a carnival mirror; it is a disorienting glimpse at something you know so well,” says Halley Little, the library’s public relations coordinator. “The side-show quality to the book is magnified by the illustrations and photographs which accompany each entry.”

The Valdosta Daily Times has interviewed Jim Miles on past occasions, regarding his two different volumes of “Weird Georgia.”

The first volume allowed him a break from his day job as a Macon-area high school history teacher and his regular writing gig as an author of Civil War history books. Miles based “Weird Georgia” on a life-long pursuit of collecting newspaper, magazine and other reports of bizarre incidents throughout Georgia.

For readers, the first paperback “Weird Georgia” is a fascinating collection of reports involving UFOs, Bigfoot, were-people, ghost stories, oddballs and various unexplained phenomenon from around the state.

The second “Weird Georgia” is a hard-cover volume filled with dozens of illustrations. There are fewer tales. Though most of them are new, many revisit accounts from the first volume. The new volume has the feel of a highlighted travelogue to it, while the first “Weird Georgia” had the thick density of sharing every iota of a lifetime of stories.

But they both contain wonderful tales of Georgia’s odd and unexplained.

The second “Weird Georgia” features the graffiti-stained Spook Bridge, the broken-down span off Highway 84 along the Lowndes-Brooks county line. Spook Bridge receives three pages and accompanying photographs in the book. Tales of Spook Bridge were researched by Miles’ daughter, Melanie, who attended Valdosta State University for three years. Spook Bridge once had a reputation of being the site of area devil worship, with its many pentagrams spray-painted on its shattered architecture. Miles noted that his daughter discovered only “slightly stoned chess players, hordes of bugs and an oddly painted bridge” upon her visit. He also noted that people caught trespassing on the bridge are typically arrested.

The book mentions Brooks County’s Devil’s Hopper, a sinkhole cave near Quitman.

A Bigfoot sighting is also noted, having been reported near Lakeland’s Banks Lake in the early 1990s. Though the man reporting the phenomenon claimed to be driving and nearly run over the creature, he reportedly took a photo of the being, which Miles describes as “an extremely tall and burly prehistoric man or ape covered in very dark, thick, matted hair, but with patches of bare skin on the face and chest.”

Alapaha’s Hogzilla also receives heavy coverage here.

Miles had privately enjoyed and collected accounts such as these since childhood. He recalls reading these types of news stories as a boy and saving them. He still has his boyhood collection among his lifetime of recording such oddities.

Perhaps, scouring newspapers for his oddities collection led him to the more scholarly pursuits of becoming a history teacher and, eventually, a published historian.

As he matured, Miles’ fascination turned more toward the Civil War. Twenty years ago, he began writing a published volume on the Civil War, which included information on touring the historic sites in the Atlanta region. His publisher suggested Miles write similar history-tour guide books on other Civil War regions. After 20 years, he wrote more than a dozen such volumes.

Several years ago, Miles needed a diversion from his Civil War work and that diversion became his first “Weird Georgia” volume.

Given his lifelong dedication to collecting these reports, one might assume that Miles is a devotee of the paranormal, a true believer of the accounts he seeks.

That would be a poor assumption.

He said in past interviews that the “UFO people and Bigfoot people” have no proof of their claims. These advocates claim these phenomena are out there, but none of the accounts, which Miles has diligently collected for years, verifies anything.

With all of the reported Bigfoot sightings across the nation, Miles noted one would think that at least the bones of such a creature would have been discovered by now. Or that a more definitive record of UFOs or other long-running paranormal activities would have left some more solid evidence other than albums of blurry photographs.

Yet, Miles did not completely discount these events either. He called it the “Miles Unified Theory of Weirdness.”

“I’m educated and relatively sophisticated for an Alabaman, but all of this stuff comes from somewhere,” Miles said. “There’s just no proof as to where it comes from or what is causing it.”

He noted similarities between tales of the supernatural past with accounts of the paranormal present. In days of yore, there were claims that fairy folk kidnapped people. Now, there are claims that UFOs kidnap people.

Is this mere coincidence? Ingrained delusions of humanity and society? Or does such a similarity speak to some deeper relevance?

Jim Miles noted that he’s found no evidence to prove anything and it is partly that mystery that spurred his continued exploration of Weird Georgia.



WEIRD GEORGIA

South Georgia Regional Library hosts author Jim Miles to discuss book “Weird Georgia.”

When: Noon-1 p.m. Saturday.

Where: Valdosta-Lowndes County Library, 300 Woodrow Wilson Drive.

Admission: Free.