Dark Tales & Strange Histories
Plagues, witch trials, monsters and unexplained events: the unsettling corners of history and folklore.
- mystery
- folklore
- halloween
Some of the stories included
Tycho Brahe's Metal Nose and Mysterious DeathTycho Brahe lost his nose in a 1566 duel and wore a brass one, and in 2012 tests ruled out the rumor that he was poisoned.
Martin Guerre: The Impostor HusbandIn 1556 a peasant named Arnaud du Tilh lived three years as Martin Guerre until the real Martin returned with a wooden leg.
The Black DeathThe Black Death reached Europe in 1347, killing a third to a half of the population and remaking the medieval world.
The Great Hanoi Rat HuntIn 1902 Hanoi paid for rat tails, 20,114 arrived in one day, then inspectors found farms breeding rats for the bounty.
The Origins of HalloweenHalloween's roots are in Samhain, a Gaelic festival where carved turnips, not pumpkins, first lit the night.
Jack the RipperIn 1888, a killer terrorized London's East End, exposing the city's deep social divides and creating an enduring mystery.
Elizabeth BáthoryElizabeth Báthory was arrested in December 1610, but the bloody bath tale first appeared in print in 1729.
Conan Doyle and the Cottingley FairiesTwo cousins fooled Sherlock Holmes's creator with cardboard cutouts and hatpins, and kept the secret for 66 years.
Baba YagaThe witch of Slavic folklore travels in a mortar, lives in a hut on chicken legs, and tests all who enter her forest domain.
Jeanne Calment and the Bet on Her DeathA notary paid a 90-year-old widow 2,500 francs a month for her flat in 1965. She lived to 122 and he died first.
The Salem Witch TrialsIn 1692, a Massachusetts panic led to over 200 accusations of witchcraft, 19 hangings, and the death by pressing of one man, Giles Corey.
The Donner PartyThe harrowing story of American pioneers trapped by snow in the Sierra Nevada after taking a supposed shortcut to California.
The Murderer Who Helped Write the Oxford English DictionaryAn asylum inmate sent over 10,000 quotation slips to the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.- The Dancing Plague of 1518The Dancing Plague of 1518: hundreds of people in Strasbourg danced for weeks, the city's strange cure, and how historians explain it today.
The Life and Death of Edgar Allan PoeThe story of the master of the macabre, from his tragic life to his mysterious death in Baltimore in 1849.
The Mary CelesteIn 1872 the Mary Celeste was found sailing the Atlantic with 3.5 feet of water in her hold and none of her ten people aboard.
Chopin's Heart Smuggled to WarsawDying in 1849, Chopin asked his sister Ludwika to take his heart home. It later survived the 1944 destruction of Warsaw.
The Dyatlov Pass IncidentThe 1959 deaths of nine Soviet student hikers in the northern Urals, the strange evidence that fuelled decades of theories, and the 2021 study showing a delayed slab avalanche could explain it.
The Fall of Anne BoleynThe dramatic story of how Queen Anne Boleyn went from the throne to the executioner's block in just four months in 1536.
The Wendigo's Eternal HungerThe Algonquian legend of the Wendigo, a spirit of greed whose insatiable hunger grows with every victim it consumes.
The Rise and Fall of RasputinHow a Siberian mystic gained influence over Russia's empress and his legendary assassination foreshadowed the fall of the Tsars.
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