Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22A_Thrilling_Hallowe%27en.%22_(Three_black_cats_flying_through_the_air_with_Jack-o-lanterns).jpg

Halloween Stories

Why are Victorians the default haunted house, what do ghosts have to do with the imagination, and why do we like to be scared?

Can You Photograph a Ghost?

William Hope claimed to be able to document the visitations of ghosts. The controversial images he produced add to our understanding of the history of photography.
Three titles edited by Judy Lynn del Rey

Judy-Lynn del Rey

The woman who revolutionized the fantasy genre is finally getting her due.
A "Gremlin" decorates a B-1B aircraft of the 28th Bombardment Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, 1988

Ghosts in the Machine

Forty years ago, Hollywood made gremlins loveable—portraying them as adorable, furry creatures. Their folkloric origins are far more sinister.
From “Stage-Land: Curious Habits and Customs of its Inhabitants” described by Jerome K Jerome with drawings by J Bernard Partridge. Published by Chatto & Windus, London, in 1890. The book is an entertaining account of the types of characters to be found upon the theatre stage and this shifty-looking individual is the ‘stage villain’. Of course, you would know that from his immaculate appearance and the fact that he is always smoking a cigarette. Things which would never happen in real life, naturally. And he does have a distressing tendency to get knocked down by the hero fairly regularly. Sad, really.

How to Be a British Villain

In classic British detective stories, villains might be atavistic monsters, foreign menaces, or conniving professionals—all tied to aristocrats’ anxieties.
Eva Bouchard's house in Péribonka

Quebec, Louis Hémon, and Maria Chapdelaine

Louis Hémon’s Maria Chapdelaine grew from his views as a French immigrant writer on the rural life of early twentieth-century Quebec.
Beale Street, Memphis

Memphis: The Roots of Rock in the Land of the Mississippians

Rising on the lands of an ancient agricultural system, Memphis has a long history of negotiating social conflict and change while singing the blues.
ACM Lifting Lives Music Camper sings to and with Recording Artist Wynonna Judd as part of ACM Lifting Lives Music Camp Karaoke with WYNONNA JUDD at Winner's Bar on June 28, 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Carry On, Karaoke

Karaoke became a global phenomenon after its invention in the 1970s, the wide embrace of it exemplifying transnational flows and hybridization.
Fredric Jameson, 2008

Verbatim: Fredric Jameson

Marxist cultural critic Fredric Jameson offered a philosophy of late capitalism that gave us a language for talking about globalization and the end of modernism.
F. Scott & Zelda Fitzgerald, 1923

Zelda Fitzgerald on F. Scott’s Writing

Zelda’s satirical review of F. Scott's second novel, The Beautiful and the Damned, revealed much more than her wit.