Skeptophilia

Thursday's post -- about a strange legend from England called the "fetch" and similar bits of odd folklore from Finland, Norwa...

I ended up going down a rabbit hole yesterday -- not, honestly, a surprising nor an infrequent occurrence -- when a friend of mine asked if ...

The difficult thing about any sort of historical research is that sometimes, the evidence you're looking for doesn't even exist. In ...

I went into historical linguistics because of my fascination with origins. It's manifested in other realms of study.  My primary interes...

One of the strangest tales out of old England comes from the turbulent reign of King Stephen , which lasted from 1135 to 1154. Stephen was t...

I don't own many things that are all that old. I'm referring to human-made objects, of course.  I have a couple of Devonian-age brac...

When I lived in Olympia, Washington, I knew a woman who was a professional spinner and weaver.  She made beautiful wearable items as well as...

Skeptics trying to tease apart fact from fiction in accounts of allegedly paranormal occurrences are fighting against a confluence of human ...

Seems like for each of the last few years, we've said, "Well, at least next year can't be as bad as this year was!"  Then,...