I finished elementary school in northern Indiana. We accidentally found some crinoid fossils in the gravel of the playground. We went and asked our teacher what they were and, surprisingly, she knew. After that we spent all our time sifting through the gravel for more fossils. That was more than 40 years ago and I still have my old school pencil box full of crinoid fossils.
The gravel in the northern Midwest is great for that. As a kid living outside of Cleveland, I gathered quite a few fossils in this and that gravel driveway.
Somewhere in my vast collection of stuff I have some crinoid stems. I too am in Indiana, and they show up everywhere.
However, Petoskey stones[1] are cooler, in my opinion.
Finding them is surprisingly relaxing, and satisfying when you find a big one. The different distributions on beaches is really interesting, it varies so much both within and between beaches even right next to each other.
The beaches of Fife around Anstruther & St Monans are littered with them. There's sea coal in the Firth of Forth, perhaps this relates. I have a wee handful from my childhood with me still.
I was there 2 weeks ago and got about 10. They are usually very small and take a while to find, you can often see people hunched over the same spot for a while sifting through the sand.
I live practically in Northumberland and it's the first time I've heard of these.
Very interesting.
The Graphic Novel "Alice in Sunderland" covers a lot of weird local history that may be of interest to you. I vaguely think I recall these being mentioned but I may be misremembering.
This is a great book, I'm from Sunderland and knew very few of the stories in it!
I live in Sunderland.
Opportunistic plug since the article mentions Northumberland: anyone wanting to visit the UK as a tourist who doesn't relish spending the whole time in London, you would do well to travel north to York (fantastic medieval city), then onwards to Durham (another ancient cathedral city) and the surrounding area, which is Northumberland. One of the most beautiful parts of England. From there, it is a short journey further north to Edinburgh, which is IMO the best city in the whole of the UK.