The children all knew the story of the Yara ma tha who. In the Aboriginal communities of the southeastern Australian coast, parents warned their sons and daughters about the little red men who hid in the boughs of the wild fig trees. Wayward boys and girls who wandered alone through the dense forests were the favored prey of these spirit men, who had...

Sitting on the Pacific coast in northwest Washington State, Tacoma is no stranger to high winds and stormy waters. But in November 1940, the strongest gusts in years twisted the massive Tacoma Narrows Bridge. Steel beams gyrated, the road warped, and, after a final creak, the whole structure collapsed. More eerie than the spontaneous failure was the...

A seemingly out-of-place comic book surprise sits on the 21st floor of the tallest university library in the world.  When. Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turt, it was an unserious and unambitious personal project that quickly spiraled their lives into unexpected stardom. Laird was born in North Adams, Massachusetts...

Guanyin, a bodhisattva sometimes called the "Goddess of Mercy," is revered by Chinese practitioners of Buddhism, Daoism, and folk religion alike as a savior of fishermen and sailors. Appropriate, then, that a small island off the coast of Taiwan would have a pilgrimage site dedicated to her.   In a sacred cave hidden in the hills of Green Island,...

Oxford is not only a city of dreaming spires, but also of gargoyles and grotesques, often silly and strange. The best examples of those may be found on the outer walls of Magdalen College, which are adorned by a cornucopia of creepy creatures, cartoonish chimeras, and humorous human heads. The bizarre menagerie consists of miserable-looking dragons,...

Fuzzy tails, wide eyes, long and distinguishable ears, and an ever-twitching nose—the rabbit seems fairly unassuming at first glance. Yet ancient beliefs about the Leporidae family refer to the creature as something crafty, otherworldly, and a bit spooky. It turns out rabbits provoke an ancient fear, one that has rippled in civilizations across the...