A painting of Osceola by George Catlin

Ghost Stories at Flagler College

Telling a spooky story around a campfire—or in a dorm room—may be the best way to keep a local legend alive.
Psychic researcher Harry Price X-raying a sealed box which once belonged to religious prophetess Joanna Southcott with his assistant, August 1938

Ghosts of Landed Gentry, But Never the Ghosts of Serfs

Psychical researcher Harry Price combined the power of academic language with a cultural identity crisis to build a reputation as a “scientific” ghost-hunter.
Benito Mussolini on a visit to inspect Italian troops in a North African battle zone, 1942

Mussolini’s Colonial Inspiration

In its plans for the conquest of Eastern Europe, the Third Reich looked to the example set in Africa by Fascist Italy.
Anita Bryant is hit in the face with a pie during a press conference on October 14, 1977

Proposition 6 (The Briggs Initiative): Annotated

Proposition 6, better known as the Briggs Initiative, was the first attempt to restrict the rights of lesbian and gay Americans by popular referendum.
Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/40690/40690-h/40690-h.htm

Walking Streetlamps for Hire in Seventeenth-Century London

Much in the same way we hail cabs in cities today, a medieval Londoner could hail a torch-bearer (a link-boy) to light their way home from a night on the town.
Jinn gathering for combat in Shah Namah, the Persian Epic of the Kings

Life with a Jinni

A jinni in the home can help a Muslim explore religious tenets, but it may also interfere with the direct relationship between human and god.
Three costumed girls, Pauline, Barbara and Dorothy Luck surrounding Halloween pumpkin, 1940

Halloween: A Mystic and Eerie Significance

Despite the prevalence of tricks and spooky spirits in earlier years, the American commercial holiday didn’t develop until the middle of the twentieth century.
Slender Man

The Horror!

If Dracula represented the collective fears of his day, what do the likes of Slender Man and other internet monsters tell us about the zeitgeist of right now?
Construction of the Pedregulho Residential Complex

Latin America Revisits Its Modern Architecture

As preservationists grapple with crumbling monuments in Brazil and Peru, they’re also confronting the progressive agendas that originally shaped the buildings.
A truffle pig

Mosquitoes, Truffles, and a Neanderthal Clan

Well-researched stories from NPR, Scientific American, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.