A Curious Compendium of Strange Events Volume Five

by Phineas Strange · March 2026

Hey there, Thanks for finding your way here. This all started when I was eleven years old and stumbled onto the books of Frank Edwards — an Indianapolis radio broadcaster who spent his life collecting the strange, the documented, and the unexplained. He didn’t dress it up. He just laid it out and let reality speak for itself. I’ve never really gotten over him. As I got older, a different obsession took hold — the whys of true crime. What made killers do what they did. How they thought about their victims. Capote’s In Cold Blood, Bugliosi’s Helter Skelter, and Rule’s A Stranger Beside Me led my list. The best true crime, I came to believe, isn’t really about the killer at all — it’s about everyone else caught in the wreckage. I didn’t start writing until I was 69. Since then I’ve completed twelve novels under another name, six volumes of A Curious Compendium of Strange Events, and I’m currently working on Stone Walls & Steeples — a true crime series moving through New England, one state at a time. You’ll see those books appearing here over the next few months. I grew up in the Midwest, lived overseas for twelve years, and have spent the better half of my life here in New England — where I raised my family, walked the same streets where some of these stories happened, and became quietly obsessed with everything this region keeps to itself. I don’t write heroes. I write events, people, and the strange things that happen when the world doesn’t behave the way it’s supposed to. If you’re the kind of person who pulls the thread, even when you probably shouldn’t — welcome. You’re in the right place. — Phineas Strange

— Phineas Strange

About A Curious Compendium of Strange Events Volume Five

A Curious Compendium of Strange Events, Volume Five by Phineas Strange History is full of events that sound impossible, yet they really happened. In this fifth volume of A Curious Compendium of Strange Events, Phineas Strange presents another collection of true stories drawn from newspapers, historical archives, eyewitness accounts, and documented events that remain strange, mysterious, or difficult to explain. Inside this volume you will find bizarre accidents, unexplained events, strange coincidences, mysterious disappearances, curious deaths, improbable survivals, disasters, odd historical incidents, and forgotten stories that once made headlines and were then lost to time. Every story in this book is based on real events. Some are unsettling, some are tragic, some are astonishing, and some are simply very, very strange. This book is part of The Phineas Strange Compendium, a continuing series collecting true stories of the strange, the unexplained, and the unusual from history. If you enjoy strange history, unexplained mysteries, odd true stories, forgotten headlines, paranormal history, or real events that sound like fiction, this book belongs on your shelf. Reality, it turns out, is often far stranger than fiction.

Phineas Strange

Phineas Strange and Michael McDonald are both pen names for the same New England author. Phineas Strange has a lifelong fascination with the unexplained, the true, and the weird. He writes A Curious Compendium of Strange Events, which explores documented supernatural phenomena with the eye of a skeptic and the heart of a true believer, and Stone Walls & Steeples, a true crime series that brings forgotten New England victims back into the light — one region, one era, one state at a time. Michael McDonald and Karen McDonald write post-apocalyptic fiction set within the October Fall World — four standalone series, twelve books in total. The author grew up in the Midwest, met his New England born wife while she was in college and they transplanted to New England. They also lived overseas for twelve years — which explains a lot.

View profile