Real articles

The good walkers (benandanti) were members of a widespread and apparently ancient dream cult uncovered by the Inquisition in the Friuli region of Italy. As the seasons changed during the “Ember Days,” the benandanti would enter deathlike trances and journey as spirits...

The Lion Man is a masterpiece. Sculpted with great originality, virtuosity and technical skill from mammoth ivory, this 40,000-year-old image is 31 centimetres tall. It has the head of a cave lion with a partly human body. He stands upright, perhaps on...

On the sixth day of February, 1721, a sickly boy was born to a prominent painter in Lubeck, a small town in modern-day Germany. The boy was called Christian Heinrich Heinecken, also known as "the infant scholar of Lübeck".

In the 1930s, an Indian girl named Shanti Devi claimed she was the reincarnation of another Indian woman named Lugdi Bai. Ludgi was born on January 18, 1902. She got married at ten and lost her first child after suffering a stillbirth....

Born Catherine Muller, Helene Smith (1861–1929) was a famous late-19th century Swiss medium. She was known as "the Muse of Automatic Writing" by the Surrealists, who viewed Smith as evidence of the power of the surreal, and a symbol of surrealist knowledge.

Hanan Monsour was born in the 30s in Lebanon. She married Farouk Monsour when she was only 20 years old and went on to have two daughters, Leila and Galareh. Soon after the birth of her second child, Hanan was diagnosed with...

Anatoliy Golitsyn is a Soviet KGB defector and author of two books about the long-term deception strategy of the KGB leadership. During his time in the Soviet Union, Golitsyn worked in the strategic planning department of the KGB with the rank of...

Literally, Bonseki means “tray rocks.” Bonseki are miniature pictures of the natural world made from nothing more than white sand and small rocks on a black tray. The art of Bonseki is said to have developed in the...

Angel Hair is a rare phenomenon that has so far defied explanation. It is made up of silken threads that rain down on to the earth, but reach out to touch it and it will almost certainly vanish before your eyes. It...

Children are seemingly not safe in Japan, either, especially since a demon named Eight Feet Tall uses a masculine voice to call out “Po . . . Po . . . Po” in an attempt to lure kids between the ages of...