Imagine you’re at a flea market or in a library. You target some juicy old book, open it and…find out it’s filled with personal notes and doodles on the pages’ margins. Ever happened in real life? If you’re one of those people who value books as a sacred objects and

The find of the skeleton of a “vampire child” in Umbria, in Central Italy, by archaeologists from the University of Arizona and Stanford University, made headlines in the past weeks. Most of the publicity around this discovery surely comes from the dark aura it spreads, but to an historian’s eyes

We ended part I of our horror dental story hinting at the flourishing business of human teeth between centuries XVIII and XIX. As people were growing more and more attentive towards the health and look of their smile, the request of prosthetics that didn’t look like prosthetics at all (and

Besides writing on a couple of underground magazines, I am a high school teacher. More precisely, I teach Philosophy and History. And if making teenagers fall in love with the first is child’s play, the latter is always a really tough pill to sugar. Therefore, I borrowed from my middle

Having spent a great deal of my lifetime in Northern California, I’ve found that amidst the abundant redwood forests and grazing cattle, there was a much deeper underbelly of creepy stories and folklore. From the Golden State Killer to the ghost town of Bodie, there seems to be an inherent

When it comes to popular cults originating on U.S. soil, there are certain paths their enigmatic leaders have typically gravitated towards. These leaders have sexually terrorized congregations, mollified fear through mass suicide, summoned the fell swoop of government henchmen, or became wealthy enough to join Sea Org. However, some lesser