Topic
Europe
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Trolls – Part 1: Why Norway’s Mountains Have Faces
Norway is full of trolls. You just have to know how to read the mountains. In this first part of our Norway special there’s…
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The Witches of Zugarramurdi – The Largest Witch Trial in History and the Inquisitor Who Stopped it!
In November 1610 the Spanish Inquisition burns people from the Basque village of Zugarramurdi at Logroño as devil-worshippers – the climax of the largest…
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The Drummer of Tedworth – Haunting or Hoax? An analysis of England’s first poltergeist.
Wiltshire, 1662: a magistrate takes a travelling beggar’s drum away — and afterwards his house drums for two years. Out of nowhere. The “Drummer…
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Lamia: How a Queen Became the Child-Killing Demon of the Greeks
She waits at the roadside, she is beautiful, she loves you — and she is fattening you to drink your blood. The Lamia is…
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The Moura Encantada – Portugal’s Most Beautiful and Saddest Legend is not a Monster at all…
At the edge of a spring, on the shortest night of the year, a woman of unearthly beauty sits combing her golden hair. She…
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Peter Stubbe: The Man They Turned Into a Monster in 1589. Was he the first Werewolf?
In the autumn of 1589, near Bedburg in the German Rhineland, a wealthy farmer is broken to death as a werewolf. His name: Peter…
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Europe’s Oldest Recorded Haunting — And the Man It Destroyed (Bingen, 858)
In the year 858, the Annals of Fulda — one of the most important historical sources for the East Frankish kingdom — record an…
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The Fire Burns — But the Witch Is Lying | The Invented Tradition From the Alps
Every year on the first weekend after Ash Wednesday, thirty-metre wooden towers are erected across Vorarlberg, Austria — and set ablaze along with a…
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The Bruxa – The Monster With a Thousand Names (The Witcher: 4 monsters and their origin, part 4/4)
The grand finale of our four-part series on the real myths behind the monsters of “The Witcher” takes us away from the Slavic forests…
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Guardian, Devil, Monster: The Leszy’s Lost Face (The Witcher: 4 monsters and their origin, part 2/4)
He’s one of the most iconic creatures in “The Witcher 3”: the Leshen, a towering forest terror with a deer skull and antlers. But…