Skeptophilia

Yesterday's post, about the remarkable similarities between mythological gods and goddesses in cultures widely separated in space and ti...

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

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...

In C. S. Lewis's novel Perelandra,  the protagonist, Elwin Ransom, goes to the planet Venus.  In Lewis's fictional universe Venus is...

Ever heard of the " Bonneville Slide ?" It sounds like some obscure country line dance, but the real story is more interesting, an...

My mom was an extremely devout Roman Catholic, and I still recall her instructing me to "pray to St. Jude " when I was worried abo...

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...

Once upon a time, there was a man who was looking for a house to buy.  He came upon a large home on a lovely piece of land, something that m...

The oral tradition presents anthropologists and historians with a difficult, sometimes insurmountable, problem; given that by definition its...