More Halloween Traditions for Your Fictional Parties
Halloween today is different than when most of us were young, when packs of elementary and middle school kids wandered neighborhoods with only minimal...
This AI Can Let You Speak to the Dead
New technology could soon allow us to talk to digital replicas of our deceased friends and family members. HereAfter AI conducts interviews with the...
A Secret Language of Women
In 19th-century China, women in the county of Jiangyong in Hunan Province developed their own way of writing, and researchers are still trying to...
How Much Would You Pay to Be Buried Alive?
A Russian company will bury you alive and hold a mock funeral for 3.5 million rubles, or about $57,000. Company founder Yakaterina Preobrazhenskaya promises that...
Halloween in the Victorian Era
Even though we're familiar with the tropes - fog, gaslights, Inverness cloaks - Halloween was different in Victorian London.
In America, Puritans frowned on religious...
The Murder of Bridget Cleary
On March 14, 1895, Michael Cleary murdered his wife Bridget on suspicion of being a changeling. Was this a result of Michael's superstitions or...
Is This the World’s Scariest Painting?
Is Hands Resist Him the world's scariest painting? An image on eBay made a user speak in tongues and break down in tears. A...
It Takes a Thief
This week's Write the Book prompt was suggested by Stephen Kurkjian, author of Master Thieves, the story of the the largest art theft in history. This...
What’s at the Bottom of Eldon Hole?
Another portal to Hell story, this time from Elizabethan England. In the late 1580s, Lord Robert Dudley, purportedly a favorite suitor of Queen Elizabeth...
The Ancient Roman Gate to Hell
Archaeologists believe they've discovered the Roman Gate to Hell, a mythological cave where any person would die within a matter of minutes. Located in...
