Honoured for their gifts and feared for their wrath, the fairies remind us to respect both the world we live in and forces we cannot see.In Meeting the Other Crowd, Eddie Lenihan presents a book about a hidden Ireland, a land of mysterious taboos, dangers, other worldly abductions, enchantments and much more. It is a world which most Irish people acknowledge exists, but which few of them, except the very oldest or professional folklorists, know much more about.Eddie Lenihan opens our eyes to this invisible world with the passion and bluntness of a great storyteller. In doing so he provides one of the finest collections of Irish folklore in modern times.

    Sometimes provocative, sometimes surprisingly down-to-earth, these candid firsthand accounts come from both psi vampires who feed on energy and sanguine vampires who drink actual blood. Their true stories shed light on a variety of topics, including awakening to vampirism, the compulsion to feed and feeding practices, donor ethics and etiquette, and vampire traditions and codes of behavior.

    Rich with magic and achingly beautiful, they speak of a land of heroic battles, intense love and warrior ideals, in which the otherworld is explored and men mingle freely with the gods. From the vivid adventures of the great Celtic hero Cu Chulaind, to the stunning 'Exile of the Sons of Uisliu' - a tale of treachery, honour and romance - these are masterpieces of passion and vitality, and form the foundation for the Irish literary tradition: a mythic legacy that was a powerful influence on the work of Yeats, Synge and Joyce.

    Celebrating the 125th anniversary of its original publication, this expanded and updated edition of a classic reference features a new, simplified organization.

    The result of sixteen years of research in Talmudic, gnostic, cabalistic, apocalyptic, patristic, and legendary texts, the classic reference work on angels is beautifully illustrated and its reissue coincides with the resurgence of belief in angels in America.

    Popular books, movies and television shows have cemented the city's connection to vampires in public imagination.Rumors swirled about the fate of the Casket Girls, a group of mysterious maidens traveling to the New World from France with peculiar casket-shaped boxes. A charismatic man who moved to the French Quarter in the early 1900s eerily resembled a European aristocrat of one hundred years prior bearing the same name. A pair of brothers terrorized the town with their desire to feed on living human blood during the Great Depression. Marita Woywod Crandle investigates the origins of these legends so intricately woven through New Orleans's rich history.

    Why, in other words, fairy tales "stick." Long an advocate of the fairy tale as a serious genre with wide social and cultural ramifications, Jack Zipes here makes his strongest case for the idea of the fairy tale not just as a collection of stories for children but a profoundly important genre.Why Fairy Tales Stick contains two chapters on the history and theory of the genre, followed by case studies of famous tales (including Cinderella, Snow White, and Bluebeard), followed by a summary chapter on the problematic nature of traditional storytelling in the twenty-first century.

    Anne Ross is a Gaelic-speaking scholar and archaeologist who has lived and worked in crofting communities, which has enabled her to collect information firsthand and assess the veracity of material already published. In this substantially revised edition of a classic work first published 25 years ago, she portrays the beliefs and customs of Scottish Gaelic society, including seasonal customs deriving from Celtic festivals, the famous waulking songs, the Highland tradition of seers and second sight, omens and taboos, chilling experiences of witchcraft, and rituals associated with birth and death.

    This easy-to-read guide cuts out the boring details, and instead, provides you with a thrilling lesson in classic mythology.From the heights of Mt. Olympus to the depths of the Underworld, this book takes you on an unforgettable journey through all the major myths born in ancient Greece and Rome, such as Achilles's involvement in the Trojan War; Pluto's kidnapping of the beautiful Proserpina; and the slaying of Medusa by Perseus, the heroic demi-god. You'll also learn all about the wonders of the world as well as the greatest creatures ever recorded in history.Like Charon navigating the River of Wailing, Mythology 101 will guide you through the most glorious (and completely terrifying) tales the ancient world has to offer.

    Come face to face with modern-day dinosaurs, extraterrestrials, dragons, lizard men, giants, and flying humanoids. This illustrated collection includes more than 250 monsters and cryptids that will make your hair stand on end when you hear something go bump in the night.From Alabama to Wyoming and everywhere in between, these enigmatic abominations lurk in the darkest corners and the deepest shadows. This eye-opening book details the origins, appearance, and behaviors of these bizarre creatures so that if you should come across a terrifying beast in the wild, you'll know exactly what you're dealing with.Praise: "Jason Offutt does a special service to the field of cryptozoology with this new book Chasing American Monsters. By keeping all of us up-to-date and incredibly informed--beyond the scope of lesser guidebooks--we have a better head start on knowing where to look for these cryptids. Highly recommended."--Loren Coleman, author of Cryptozoology A to Z and director of the International Cryptozoology Museum

    A city of gas lamps, cobblestone streets, and horse-drawn carriages—and home to the controversial surgeon Dr. Spencer Black. The son of a grave robber, young Dr. Black studies at Philadelphia’s esteemed Academy of Medicine, where he develops an unconventional hypothesis: What if the world’s most celebrated mythological beasts—mermaids, minotaurs, and satyrs—were in fact the evolutionary ancestors of humankind?  The Resurrectionist offers two extraordinary books in one. The first is a fictional biography of Dr. Spencer Black, from a childhood spent exhuming corpses through his medical training, his travels with carnivals, and the mysterious disappearance at the end of his life. The second book is Black’s magnum opus: The Codex Extinct Animalia, a Gray’s Anatomy for mythological beasts—dragons, centaurs, Pegasus, Cerberus—all rendered in meticulously detailed anatomical illustrations. You need only look at these images to realize they are the work of a madman. The Resurrectionist tells his story.

    They investigated the inexplicable. They had one hell of a hangover. On an odyssey of oddities that would take them all to the very limits of their imagination (and inebriation), bestselling author Nick Redfern teamed up with professional monster-hunters Jonathan Downes and Richard Freeman. For six weeks in the summer of 2001, the intrepid-yet-hard-partying trio rampaged across the remote wilds of Great Britain in hot pursuit of werewolves, lake monsters, giant cats, ghostly devil dogs, and ape-men. Their adventures led them deep into ancient forests, into the dark corridors of a mansion hiding a wild man, and to the shores of the legendary Loch Ness -- along the way encountering all manner of curious characters, including witches, government agents, and eyewitnesses who claim to have seen monsters firsthand. And only at journey's end did the hard questions posed at the start of their quest begin to reveal some mind-bending answers. That monsters truly do exist in our world. And that we are responsible for their existence! Whether you're seeking a glimpse into the bizarre reaches of reality, or just looking for a good time, Three Men Seeking Monsters is a uniquely gonzo trek with a trio of adventurers who pushed themselves to the edge -- and went right over it.

    From the evolution and anatomy of dragons and unicorns to their own special skills (fire-breathing in dragons, reliable virgin detection in unicorns), this unique book of whimsical zoology, complete with drawings, will delight and enchant any modern reader.

    “The group of beliefs which constituted what for convenience' sake is called the Egyptian religion in an existence of some thousands of years passed through nearly every phase known to the student of comparative mythology. If the theologians of ancient Egypt found it impossible to form a pantheon of deities with any hope of consistency, assigning to each god or goddess his or her proper position in the divine galaxy as ruling over a definite sphere, cosmic or psychical, it may be asked in what manner the modern mythologist is better equipped to reduce to order elements so recondite and difficult of elucidation as the mythic shapes of the divinities worshipped in the Nile Valley.”

    Folklorist Helene Adeline Guerber brings to life the gods and goddesses, giants and dwarves, and warriors and monsters of these stories in Tales of Norse Mythology. Ranging from the comic to the tragic, these leghends tell of passion, love, friendship, pride, courage, strength, loyalty, and betrayal.