Close Encounters of the Puritan Kind
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” ― H.L. Mencken We know that 17th Century New England …
Category Archives: Monsters
What Dreams May Come from Herr Wesermann?
“New roads; new ruts” – Gilbert K. Chesterton Sigmund Freud once referred to dreams as the “royal road to the …
Release the Calamari: Hans Egede and the Greenland Kraken
“Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty” – Brian Greene On the internet, nobody can hear you scream. Unless you use …
General Barter and the Ghost Who Dressed for Dinner
“They say that shadows of deceased ghosts do haunt the houses and the graves about, Of such whose life’s lamp …
If It Weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, We’d Still be Eating Frozen Radio Dinners
Veteran anomalist Seriah Azkath and I spend an hour discussing the vagaries of strange history, the War between the Pygmies …
Fear No Evil When You Walk through Oberlin’s Valley of Death
“Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted” – Percy Bysshe Shelley …
Our Furry Forefathers: The Basque History of Inter-species Relations
“When the fox is engaging you in conversation, keep an eye on your chicken” – Basque Proverb The Basque people …
The Ecstasy of Error: Green Cards in Magonia
“It is then that ceasing to take the natural, the spiritual view of the world and its waywardness, he takes …
Diabolus in Musica: The Devil is in the Dissonance
“Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the …
Haunted House Hunting with Mrs. Butler
“It is curious to think that what to one of us means so much to another is without any signification. …
The Bottle Smashing Ghost of Via Bava No. 6
“We are all mortal until the first kiss and the second glass of wine” – Eduardo Galeano The problem with …
Tempting Fate at Ticonderoga: Major Duncan Campbell and The Black Watch
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality” – Edgar Allan Poe Names …
Outsourced Morality: The Conscience-Formed Phantom Drums for You
“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not …
Prosecuting a Poltergeist: The Defamation Trial of the Curé of Cideville
“These days, there are angry ghosts all around us – dead from wars, sickness, starvation – and nobody cares. So …
Our Colonized Consciousness: Defense Against the Doppelgänger
“If you meet your double, you should kill him” – Chris Cabin, Double Take The marketing potential with doppelgängers is …
The Doppelganger is Ready for His Close-up
Miracle Max: He probably owes you money huh? I’ll ask him. Inigo Montoya: He’s dead. He can’t talk. Miracle Max: …
Combat Cats, Tactical Mice, and Special Forces Fish in Pelusium
“Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, …
I Left My Heart in the Vanished Kingdom of Chicora
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started …
The Devil’s Paparazzi: Spinello’s Unflattering Portrait of Lucifer
“A great portrait is always more a portrait of the painter than of the painted” – Samuel Butler One of …
Eternal Love and Other Supernatural Phenomena
“We have a love affair with the idea of the ‘natural,’ even though we, as a species, are about as …
Sympathetic Empiricism and the Palatine Lights
“Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response” – Arthur M. Schlesinger How many …
Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: In the Footsteps of the Hairy People
“There is a way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right” ― Edward Abbey I’ve come to the …
Wooden Ships, Iron Men, and Occasional Sea Serpents
“Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness” – Werner Herzog A …
The Headless Hitchhiker of St. Leonard’s Forest
“We live in a cult of the upgrade right now. There’s always something around the corner that will make whatever …
EsoterX at the Movies: Honoré Mirabel’s Gold-Sniffing Ghost
Spare the Rodenstein, Spoil the Schnellert: What to do about a Phantom like Maria?
“Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future” – Niels Bohr Some people don’t think of German as …
No One Suspected the Hantu Batu: Sumatran Poltergeists Throwing Stones
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself …
EsoterX: It’s Not True I Had Nothing On, I Had the Radio On
Saturday night, I spent two hours with the Dark Wizards of Podcasting Roejen Razorwire and Lobo on their Project Archivist …
The Danmar Experiments: Chasing Ghosts to the Tail of the Earth
“Empiricism and idealism alike are faced with a problem to which, so far, philosophy has found no satisfactory solution. This …
Nunne’hi Nights: Party with the People Who Live Anywhere
“It is folly to punish your neighbor by fire when you live next door” – Publilius Syrus An old Cherokee …
Philosophical Monsters Ship in Black Boxes
“Not all stories have happy endings; but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth the read” ― Cassia Leo, Black Box …
Why We Elect Monsters
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies” – …
Dude, Where’s My Spaceship?
“I believe alien life is quite common in the universe, although intelligent life is less so” – Stephen Hawking In …
Ghostly Gentrification: Chateaux Vauvert and the Monks of Chantilly
“Don’t you know there ain’t no devil, it’s just god when he’s drunk” – Tom Waits The Luxembourg Palace and …
The Best Speech Never Given: Phantom of the Continental Congress
“Bad literature is a form of treason” – Joseph Brodsky I don’t know about you, but when I’m plotting treason …
Disembodied Voices of Reason: Vain Ghosts and Altruistic Phantoms
“Is it still okay to make fun of schizophrenics? There’s a little voice in my head that says no” – …
Clowning Around: At Play in the Uncanny Valley
“I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one …
Jabberwocky in the House of Uncommons: The Honorable Apparition of Sir Carne Rasch
“I work for myself, which is fun. Except when I call in sick, I know I’m lying” – Rita Rudner …
Everyone’s a Little Bit Crazy: Schizotypy and Strange Phenomena
“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “We’re …
How to Measure Useful Fictions: Science, Anomalistics, and “As if” Philosophy
“There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if …
