Well, if you celebrate Halloween in the mundane sense you’re certainly carving up pumpkins and call them Jack-o’-lanterns, but do you know why? I thought the story of Stingy Jack was well-known to everybody, but I recently discovered I was wrong. We take a look at it today on my Patreon.
In the Galician folktale I present you today on my Patreon, a boy goes to the Devil’s house to pay off a gambling debt and recover his soul, but falls in love with the Devil’s daughter instead. He doesn’t take it well.
A cat-witch, or bakeneko, was haunting the grounds of the temple in Okabe, disguised as an old woman. Let’s take a look at her legend today on the Patreon.
For many of us, fall is the best season and October is the best month, leading up to all things spooky. Many people out there are creating prompts for artists and all people creative (check this out from WorldAnvil last year, for instance) and prompts are always a good place to start when you feel […]
On day 2 of Giambattista Basile‘s 1634 Tale of Tales, also known as The Pentameron, the sixth tale features a story that’s close to “Allerleirauh” by the Grimm Brothers and features some typical tropes in folklore, including shapeshifting through a magical object. Henriette-Julie de Murat, a XVII Century aristocratic French writer, uses this same device […]
Today’s post on my Patreon is the outline of a Galician folktale: it tells the story of a guy born with supernatural strength from the unwilling union of a woman with a bear, who battles the Devil, goes down a well and gets the girl. Does it sound familiar? Well, if it does, it might […]
For a very small and specific part of the novel, I decided to research the role of a specific kind of dancers in medieval Japan, called shirabyōshi. As it happens, their role and characteristics are highly romanticized (i.e., objectified) by male authors of the time: they’re often portrayed as femmes fatales and seductresses, and this […]
It’s the plain black Venetian mask, the one that’s creepy as fuck. It’s also called “servetta muta”, mute handmaiden. Do you know why? Hint, it’s not because it doesn’t have a hole for the mouth: it’s much creepier than that.
My stay in Los Angeles was brief but fantastic. I had the privilege of being showed around by a local guide (and what a guide!) so that’s the good news. The bad news is that I don’t take lots of pictures when I’m around with others, so I might not remember everything I saw. I […]
Quest’anno la Rinascente festeggia i 100 anni del suo nome, ideato da Gabriele D’Annunzio. Cominciava così una storia fatta di passione, talento e capacità di visione tale da suscitare, a partire dai primi del Novecento, un impatto innovativo sui modelli di consumo e sull’evoluzione che portò Milano ad affermarsi come motore economico dell’Italia postunitaria. Attraverso […]