A Curious Compendium of Strange Events Volume Two

by Phineas Strange · December 2025

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 Two

A Curious Compendium of Strange Events, Volume Two by Phineas Strange A Curious Compendium of Strange Events, Volume Two continues the exploration of true tales of oddities, mysteries, miracles, and madness from every corner of the world. Curated by Phineas Strange, this second volume expands the growing archive of strange-but-true stories that history recorded but never fully explained. Each chapter delivers a fast, atmospheric dive into real events drawn from newspapers, eyewitness accounts, historical records, and documented anomalies. Inside these pages you’ll find unexplained encounters, eerie coincidences, bizarre tragedies, curious survivals, impossible moments, and hidden stories that sit just beyond the edges of everyday life. These are not rumors or recycled folklore. Every account is grounded in verifiable sources, crafted to preserve the facts while capturing the unsettling, fascinating, or quietly haunting moments that make the world far stranger than we admit. Perfect for readers who enjoy true mysteries, strange history, unexplained phenomena, odd events, real-life X-Files cases, uncanny coincidences, paranormal history, and forgotten headlines, Volume Two can be read on its own or as a companion to Volume One. A Curious Compendium of Strange Events, Volume Two is the next entry in The Phineas Strange Compendium—an ongoing archive of true stories that prove reality is rarely boring, and often profoundly weird.

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.

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