Some people just know how to get their spook on. A vampire used to lurk over John DeProspero’s house in First Ward every Halloween. It flourished its cape when people walked by—terrifying. But then he and his wife had their roof replaced, and she banished the bloodsucker. That hasn’t stopped DeProspero from having his creepy-season fun. Of all of the…
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Custom furniture makers find beauty in the raw. Few businesses have names that capture the essence of their product so well as Morgantown’s Artfully Industrial Furniture. Only one year after the company’s inception, its modern, custom pieces are beginning to make appearances in tastefully decorated businesses and homes throughout the area. Josh Perry is co-owner of Artfully Industrial and does…
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The annual making of Fright Farm. Back in 1990, Tom Rich’s brother Michael had an idea for putting an old house on the family’s Smithfield, Pennsylvania, farm to fun and productive use. Friends and family helped out. “We all worked together and picked a theme and put together a haunted house,” Rich recalls. The first weekend Fright Farm was open,…
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Historians at a Lewis County landmark go to great lengths to tell the story of the criminally insane, a history long kept behind locked doors. “It all starts with a question,” says Rebecca Gleason, operations manager at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston. Each year, tour guides marshal legions of people through the state mental hospital–turned–historic attraction. They show off…
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Go to Jim’s Gym for the workout. Go back for the workout and the stories. Jim March stopped going into Pittsburgh to earn $25 or $50 at the Saturday night fights when he got married at 17. But listening to country music on WKKW one day in December 1983, stoking the wood burner in the basement and eight months out…
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