folklore

What can ancient stories tell us about modern disasters? Hakai magazine took a look at the history of indigenous stories about long-ago earthquakes, and what they can reveal to us about the long history (and possible future) of earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest.

In 1937, A Badass Old Lady Sued Her Neighbor For Calling Her a Witch

This is the Virginia home of “Aunt Jane” Dutton in 1937, when the 82-year-old was accused by her neighbor, “Rocky Joe” Stanley, 83, of being a witch—a slanderous accusation so low she sought a warrant for his arrest. The ensuing trial offered a fascinating mix of courtroom drama and local folklore. On October 5, 1937,…

9 Real People Who May Have Inspired Fairy Tales

Fairy tales and folklore come from a variety of sources, changing as they are told and retold. And some of these tales have been inspired by real historical figures, whose lives either formed the genesis of the story or altered it along the way. So what is fact and what is fiction? Top image: Dream…

Has Creepypasta Reinvented Classic Folklore?

If you ever read a story online about a haunted TV episode, you’ve already eaten the creepypasta. Scary viral stories, images, and vids, often very short, are creepypasta — some will scare you so much that they’ve been nicknamed “shitbrix.” And they could be the closest thing we have to folklore in the twenty-first century.…

13 Places on Earth People Believed Were Entrances to Hell

While in some belief systems, the afterlife can only be accessed by spiritual means, in others, the underworld could be accessed directly from the Earth. Here are 13 real spots that people have thought (and in a few cases, still do) lead straight to the lands of the dead. Photo of diorama from Fengdu by…

A haunting Russian stop-motion animated fairy tale from 1968

Nikolai Serebryakov made his short film Klubok (Ball of Yarn) in 1968, but it remains an evocative piece of animated folklore. A poor old woman discovers a magical ball of yarn, but she gets too greedy with her gift. Incidentally, the score for Klubok was written by famed Russian composer Eduard Artemiev, who also wrote…

Must-Read Essay: Cordwainer Smith as Folklorist of the Future

Cordwainer Smith remains a unique figure in science fiction history: a pioneer of psychological warfare who lived in China and bonded with Chinese culture. A brilliant inventor of future history whose Instrumentality universe was totally cohesive. But he also created a vision of the future as folklore. That’s what an essay over at Christ and…

The Biggest Reasons Why Fairies Are Evil

Disney and other Hollywood sanitizers have convinced everybody that fairies are benevolent wish-granters, or maybe environmental champions. But in actual folklore? Fairies are terrifying. They’re more into baby-stealing and murder than pixie dust. Here are 10 terrifying things fairies could do to you. Fairies, or the “Good People” from the legends of Ireland, Scotland and…

Saturday Webcomic: Hemlock is the tale of a woodland witch and the monstrous husband she must routinely poison

When Tristan was a little boy, he saw a witch in the woods, an ancient, wild thing who lives in the shell of a giant snail an casts powerful spells from spit and blood. He forgets about the encounter until one day, as a grown man, he falls from his horse, cracking open his skull…

10 of the Grossest and Most Grotesque Vampires from Folklore

Vampires get a bad rap in modern Western media for being too pretty. And while there are tons of folkloric vampires who are stunningly beautiful and seductive, plenty of bloodsucking beasts are pretty darn gross. From vampires who let their intestines show to those who vomit up their victims, here are 10 vampires you won’t…

How to hunt a Basilisk and live to tell the tale

If you’re hunting vampires, you’ll want to carry crosses, garlic, stakes, and holy water. For werewolves, a gun loaded with silver bullets is your best protection. But what if you’re off to hunt the deadly basilisk, that mythological creature that could kill with a single glance? An account of the hunt of the Warsaw Basilisk…

Why Remakes Are One of Our Greatest Achievements as a Civilization

Whenever a reboot or remake of a movie comes out, people complain that it’s “not original.” When creators turn a book or comic into a TV show, critics sneer at Hollywood for having “no new ideas.” But they’re wrong. What remake-mania demonstrates is that pop culture behaves the way folklore has for thousands of years.…

Zora Neale Hurston, Zombie Hunter

She’s best known as the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God and one of the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. But in her capacity as a folklorist, Zora Neale Hurston also recorded an encounter with a real-life zombie. In Tell My Horse, her 1938 recounting of her fieldwork in Haiti, she talked about what…

How evolutionary psychology proved some old folklore…and why both are wrong

There’s an old bit of folklore that children tend to more closely resemble their fathers than their mothers. There’s a possible evolutionary explanation for this, and one study seemed to confirm it all. Here’s why it’s all bogus. The basic problem with evolutionary psychology is that it can be used to explain practically anything if…

The Moon affects rainfall here on Earth…and we have no idea why

Even the most ridiculous and obviously false bits of folklore can turn out to have a kernel of truth. It turns out the Moon really can affect how much rain the Earth gets. The reason why is still a mystery. There’s an old wives’ tale that says rain follows both the full and new Moon.…

B-String Monsters That Deserve a Turn in the Limelight

Vampires, zombies, and werewolves have dominated horror movies for some time now. Looking for a new monster to chill you to your core? Here are some less-used beasties that deserve a shot on the big screen. We noted earlier this month that the mummy, once one of Universal’s favorite movie monsters, has been absent from…