Maybe you’re sprawled on the sofa, clutching the armrest in terror — yet still unable to tear your eyes away — as Freddy Kruger slices his way across the screen in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Or perhaps you’re tiptoeing through a haunted house at a local amusement park, bubbling with nervous anticipation as you walk around every corner. You might even be sitting in the dark of a movie theater, gasping and shrieking at Hollywood’s latest horror flick in unison with dozens of strangers. ...read more

In folklore, animals are depicted as messengers, symbols, or omens. Many of these stories are similar in cultures throughout millennia and feature folk beliefs brought on by fear of death, illness, and the unexplained. The animals mostly related to symbols or omens of death are scavengers, nocturnal, or associated with negative events. "So generally, in folklore, animals that are associated with death are the ones that are omens of death," says Sabina Magliocco, a folklorist and professor of an ...read more

Ancient Greeks knew that death was the final door they had to cross. After a burial in the Earth, water carried deceased mortals into Hades, the realm of the Underworld. They spent the rest of their existence there until they were ultimately forgotten.The Greeks’ idea of Hades and what it looked like constantly evolved over time, but one thing was certain: Once you were dead, you could not cross back into the living (and vice versa). The guardian of these barriers between life and the afterlif ...read more

While wooden stakes, sunlight that burns and bats come to mind when you think of vampires, you probably wouldn't think of a padlock and scythe. But the findings of an alleged "vampire" in Poland shows there was some paranoia around the paranormal. The remains of a 17th-century woman with a scythe across her neck and a padlock clamped on her toe indicate she may have been accused of being a witch or a vampire. She was buried with these precautions to ensure that she, the ghost or spirit of this ...read more

Breast cancer is one of the world’s most prevalent types of cancer worldwide. It is a tumor that starts in the milk ducts of the breast and then spreads into the surrounding breast tissue and, sometimes, other parts of the body.About 98 percent of women who are diagnosed with breast cancer at stage 1 will live another five years and more, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But just an estimated 25 percent of women survive if their cancer is diagnosed when it’s alrea ...read more

Mining resources from our planet can take a devastating toll on the environment, both local and global. Even beyond this, using the resource could cause disastrous effects to our planet and dependence on a single resource can wreak havoc on a country's economy. Yet, many of these resources are needed for our daily life -- sometimes as a luxury, sometimes as a necessity. Any responsible country or company should always take pause to consider what impact mining of any kind can have on the planet.I ...read more

All sorts of strange animals bounded through medieval minds. There were the blemmyes, beings who wore their faces on the front of their torsos, and the bonnacons, bullish beasts that fought their foes with fireballs of dung. There were sea monks and mermaids and mermen, not to mention the many species of sea serpents. And while barnacle birds fell from trees as if they were fruit, some mythical sheep were thought to be suspiciously strong thanks to the wriggling worms that sat inside their brain ...read more

Earlier this year, on 13 July, an asteroid the size of an office block flew past Earth at about a quarter of the distance to the Moon. In astronomical terms, that’s a hair’s breadth, the closest of close shaves. A direct hit would have produced an explosion equivalent to 1.5 megatons of TNT. By comparison, the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima produced just 20 kilotons. Perhaps the most worrying aspect of this incident was that astronomers didn’t spot the body—called 2023 NT1—until 2 d ...read more

If you work in an office, like me, it’s easy to go through most of the day only interacting with other humans. But all it takes is a walk in the park to see that we are just one of the many animals that walk this Earth. Ants crawl out of cracks in the sidewalk, songbirds flit between tree branches and, if you’re unlucky, yellow jackets show up to steal a sip of your iced tea.Some animals, like squirrels and pigeons, have become all-to-familiar. But, others have evolved and thrived in environ ...read more

What does it mean to be a good thinker? Recent research suggests that acknowledging you can be wrong plays a vital role.I had these studies in mind a few months ago when I was chatting with a history professor about a class she was teaching to first-year students here at Wake Forest University. As part of my job as a psychology professor who researches character – basically, what it means to be a good person – I often talk to my colleagues about how our teaching can develop the character o ...read more