Supernatural

An 1843 illustration for A Christmas Carol by George Leech, in which Ebenezer Scrooge is shown his own tombstone

Charles Dickens Was a 'Fascinated Skeptic' of the Supernatural

A new exhibition explores the writer's enduring interest in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena

Alexander Skarsgård stars as Amleth, a Viking prince who seeks to avenge the murder of his father.

Based on a True Story

The History Behind Robert Eggers' 'The Northman'

The revenge saga blends traditional accounts with the supernatural to convey the lived experience of the Viking age

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What the History of 'Spirit Photography' Portends for the Future of Deepfake Videos

Today’s video hoaxes can be downright ugly. But image-makers have been fooling viewers from the beginning

An engraving from German zoologist Ernst Haeckel's Kunstformen Der Natur, a 1904 book that celebrated the symmetry of nature

From Books Bound in Human Skin to Occult Texts, These Are Literature's Most Macabre, Surprising and Curious Creations

A new tome takes readers into collector Edward Brooke-Hitching's "madman's library"

Smithsonian gemologist Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig) meets her colleague, Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) in Wonder Woman 1984, which was filmed at three Smithsonian museums.

How 'Wonder Woman 1984' Was Filmed at the Smithsonian

The blockbuster saw the superhero working as a museum anthropologist. But how accurate was its depiction of the Institution at the time?

Christopher Lee as the titular vampire in Terence Fisher’s 1958 Dracula, showing off bloody canines that would prove weirdly influential.

How the Vampire Got His Fangs

An incisive history of a Halloween snarl

Why Were Two Victorian Chess Pieces Hidden in a Barn?

They may have been intended to protect the property’s human and animal inhabitants from evil spirits

Previous excavations at the site have revealed raven talons, toad bones and even bronze cauldrons filled with the remains of ritually sacrificed puppies

Cool Finds

This Ancient 10-Year-Old Received a ‘Vampire Burial’ to Prevent Return From the Dead

The malaria-stricken Roman child was buried in the ominously named Cemetery of the Babies with a stone inserted into its mouth

Eeek!

Zombie Movies Are Never Really About Zombies

Zombies have offered a way to work out cultural fears about everything from race to climate change

Another supposedly unlucky thing: black cats.

Why Is Friday the 13th Supposedly Unlucky?

No one really knows–spooky, right?

A friendly Nauga.

How the Nauga and its Fictional Friends Helped Make Synthetic Fabric Cuddly

What started out as an advertising ploy turned into a low-key cultural phenomenon

Shakespeare wrote 'Macbeth,' which features three witches, during James I's reign, which also was the time of some of England's most famous witch trials.

England’s Witch Trials Were Lawful

It might seem like collective madness today, but the mechanisms for trying witches in England were enshrined in law

The beast of Gévaudan terrorized French villagers for three years, killing around 100 and injuring nearly 300.

When the Beast of Gévaudan Terrorized France

The tale of this monster grew in the telling, but the carnage still left nearly 100 dead

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