It’s Halloween: An American Witch Bottle

Stories of American witch trials have been very much in the forefront of my mind this month, as I have done several programs on the topic at both of the museums at which I work. So it was especially interesting when  I came across an article written in 1980, but posted by  Archaeology.org today, about [...]

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It’s a Mystery: The Pale Blue Eye, by Louis Bayard

Blue eyed girl
As 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe, it’s fitting that the interests of several novelists have turned to him. Louis Bayard chose to depict Poe in a little known segment of his life, his tenure as a cadet at West Point. The mystery revolves around the [...]

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Monday Morning Poem: Haunted House

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Here was a place where none would ever come
For shelter, save as we did from the rain.
We saw no ghost, yet once outside again
Each wondered why the other should be so dumb;
And ruin, and to our vision it was plain
Where thrift, outshivering fear, had let remain
Some chairs that were like skeletons of [...]

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It’s a Mystery: The Lady in the Alcove, by Anna Katherine Green

Miss Van Arsdale Goes Undercover
A forerunner of the classic English mystery genre, The Woman in the Alcove was written by an American in 1905. Miss Van Arsdale, short and plain, is a member of the lower echelon of New York’s high society, and has recently resigned her self to a life as a spinster [...]

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Book Bloggers Beware!

Lately there’s been a huge increase in opportunities for readers who write reviews to obtain complimentary copies of  about-to-be released books. This afternoon I ran across the following caviat on the Guardian.co.uk Book Blog:
The US Government is after me – and you, if you’re a book blogger.
If you get a free book, and don’t disclose [...]

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Monday Morning Poem: Requiescat

by Oscar Wilde

Tread lightly, she is near
Under the snow,
Speak gently, she can hear
The daisies grow.
All her bright golden hair
Tarnished with rust,
She that was young and fair
Fallen to dust.
Lily-like, white as snow,
She hardly knew
She was a woman, so
Sweetly she grew.
Coffin-board, heavy stone,
Lie on her breast;
I vex my heart alone,
She is at rest.
Peace, peace, she cannot [...]

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It’s a Mystery: The Book of Lies, by Brad Meltzer

Ultimate villain vs ultimate hero

We all know the Superman stories, but most of us don’t realize that they were created back in the ’30’s by a teenager, Jerry Siegal, who had just lost his father to murder. Thriller writer Brad Meltzer has been fascinated by this footnote to history, and in The Book of [...]

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It’s Halloween Again: What is an angel but a ghost in drag?

Stan Rice asked the title question, and got me wondering about that myself. We’ve all told scary stories around the old camp fire, dressed as ghosts at Halloween, and laughed at “Ghost Busters”. Many of us believe we have had ghostly encounters of various kinds, close or otherwise. But what exactly IS a ghost? [...]

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Monday Morning Poem: Ghost House

by Robert Frost
I DWELL in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and [...]

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Almost Halloween: Superstitions

Superstitions are usually based partly upon fear and partly upon fact. Which of the following beliefs is true? You never know……..
Put your clothes on inside out and walk backwards on Halloween night to meet a witch.
A person born on Halloween can both see and talk to spirits.
If you see a spider on Halloween, it’s the [...]

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