"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
Katsukawa Shun'ei (1762 – 1819) is a Japanese artist of the ukiyo-e aesthetics. Today on my Patreon we take a look at his 1790 Book of Ghost Stories preserved at the MET. ...
In our latest October, 15th post on the basic plots of fiction we took a look at what Christopher Booker calls Dark Figures, especially in relation to the "Overcoming the Monster" trope. Today I thought we might take a closer look at an aspect I only...
Today we take a look at a painting preserved at the National Museum of Scotland: it shows a merry scene of women dancing in a dark room. Most of them are old and conform to the idea we might have of the grotesque witch, but...
The Dream of Akinosuke is a beautiful and heart-breaking oneiric folktale retold by Lafcadio Hearn in his Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things, written during his life in Japan and published in 1904. We take a look at it today on my Patreon. ...
Famed Italian author Italo Calvino, an author some intellectuals fiercely insist he never wrote fantasy or science fiction way beyond the point of the ridiculous, collected and translated 200 folktales from around the Country and published them in a vastly underrated book. Among them, some tales...
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...
Object Of The Day: Memento Mori Ring Today on my Patreon we take a look at an XVII Century ring, preserved at the Ashmolean Museum: it presents a turnable facet: on one side, a woman's face is painted in great detail, with rosy cheeks and red...
When we talk about witch hunts, the mind usually goes to remote and muddy villages where poor old practitioners, mostly focused on healing with herbs and indulging their neighbours' tantrums, were fiercely snatched away from their lives and persecuted on someone's whim. This is of...
Well, we all take pandemics badly, but some of us take them worst than others. It's the case of one Solomon Eagle and we take a look at him 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. ...
