Unsurpassed in its sheer scope and depth, it employs an extensive range of historical documentation and folklore from throughout Europe to powerfully portray the horror associated with belief in werewolves.Summers adopts a comprehensive theological and philosophical approach, cataloging a series of literary connections between witch and wolf. Drawing upon the work of anthropologists, totemists, and rationalists, he examines the supernatural practice of shapeshifting, notes the finer distinctions between werewolfery and lycanthropy, and explores the differences of opinion on exactly how ordinary humans are transformed into creatures of "unbridled cruelty, bestial ferocity, and ravening hunger." The author's Gothic style, rich in fascinating examples and anecdotes, offers compelling fare for lovers of esoteric lore. Even the most skeptical of readers can appreciate the evocative ways in which The Werewolf in Lore and Legend conveys the dread of those for whom these monsters were not mere superstition but terrifying reality.

      The real-life scandals of Hollywood’s personalities rival any drama they bring to life on the silver screen. This book provides 365 daily doses of high and low crimes, fraud and deceit, culled from Tinseltown’s checkered past.   Whether it’s the exploits of silent-era star Fatty Arbuckle, the midcentury misdeeds of Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, or the modern excesses of Lindsay Lohan, this calendar of Hollywood transgressions has a sensational true tale for every day of the year. It’s an entertaining and sometimes shocking trip down memory lane filled with sneaky affairs, box-office bombs, and careers cut short—sometimes by murder. It shows that the drama doesn’t end when the credits roll.

    –Tom Clancy I met Riley in a small tavern in Peru. As we were both ex-pats and enjoyed the same libations, we got to talking. One thing led to another and he told me he had a story he thought would make a good book. By this time, he knew that I had written and published a number of books, most as a ghost-writer. Before our conversation started, he asked me if I believed in the paranormal--ghosts and spirits, that kind of thing. I told him I kept an open mind. That's when he told me about Skinwalker Ranch, a ranch property in Utah believed to be the location of a portal between worlds or into some alternate dimension, depending on your take on these things. He explained that the property was purchased by one of the wealthiest men in America, Robert Bigelow, who bought it from a family which had experienced some fantastic encounters with alien entities, unidentifiable anomalies and disembodied voices. Following the purchase, Mr. Bigelow hired a team of scientists and security experts to both investigate the alleged paranormal activity and keep the property free of trespassers and thrill seekers. Riley was one of those security experts. His story tells of his own personal experiences and encounters, not only while working on the ranch itself, but how the entities he attracted interrupted his life some 500 miles away. The climax of his tale--and he tells it in a way that is so real and genuine that it is hard to deny--is actually passing through the portal and to the other side--the only property guard to report such an encounter. Here for the first time anywhere and in any form is Riley's story. If you have read the other fantastic books written about Skinwalker Ranch, or are interested in the paranormal and the concept of portals, this book is a must read for you. Read and learn what's really out there!

    Every town has its local legends, and countless books, movies, and TV shows are haunted by their presence. But our obsession with ghosts runs deeper than we know—and is embedded in the very fabric of American history. Writer and historian Marc Hartzman dons the mantle of tour guide, taking readers on a fascinating journey through supernatural history, including: • The Fox Sisters and the rise of Spiritualism • The supernatural obsessions of famous figures like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle • Famous haunted sites like the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and the LaLaurie House in New Orleans • Famous ghosts like the Bell Witch of Tennessee and the Greenbrier Ghost of West Virginia • Paranormal investigators like Ed and Lorraine Warren Deeply researched and highly entertaining, with archival images and black and white illustrations, Chasing Ghosts will satisfy believers and skeptics alike.

    Steeped in folklore and fantasy, it is a rich and diverse account of the part that fairies and fairy stories have played in culture and society.The pretty pastel world of gauzy-winged things who grant wishes and make dreams come true--as brought to you by Disney's fairies flitting across a woodland glade, or Tinkerbell's magic wand--is predated by a darker, denser world of gorgons, goblins, and gellos; the ancient antecedents of Shakespeare's mischievous Puck or J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. For, as Diane Purkiss explains in this engrossing history, ancient fairies were born of fear: fear of the dark, of death, and of other great rites of passage, birth and sex. To understand the importance of these early fairies to pre-industrial peoples, we need to recover that sense of dread.This book begins with the earliest manifestations of fairies in ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean. The child-killing demons and nymphs of these cultures are the joint ancestors of the medieval fairies of northern Europe, when fairy figures provided a bridge between the secular and the sacred. Fairies abducted babies and virgins, spirited away young men who were seduced by fairy queens and remained suspended in liminal states.Tamed by Shakespeare's view of the spirit world, Victorian fairies fluttered across the theater stage and the pages of children's books to reappear a century later as detergent trade marks and alien abductors. In learning about these often strange and mysterious creatures, we learn something about ourselves--our fears and our desires.

    But as Claude Lecouteux shows, their roots go far deeper than their appearance in medieval folklore; they are survivors of a much older belief system that predates Christianity and was widespread over Western Europe. Through his extensive analysis of Germano-Scandinavian legends, as well as those from other areas of Europe, Lecouteux has uncovered an almost forgotten religious concept: that every individual owns three souls and that one of these souls, the Double, can—in animal or human form—leave the physical body while in sleep or a trance, journey where it chooses, then reenter its physical body. While there were many who experienced this phenomenon involuntarily, there were others—those who attracted the unwelcome persecution of the Church—who were able to provoke it at will: witches. In a thorough excavation of the medieval soul, Claude Lecouteux reveals the origin and significance of this belief in the Double, and follows its transforming features through the ages. He shows that far from being fantasy or vague superstition, fairies, witches, and werewolves all testify to a consistent ancient vision of our world and the world beyond.

    The Loch Ness Monster: a creature that should have died out with the dinosaurs, or a legend built on hoaxes and wishful thinking?Sir Peter Scott, internationally renowned naturalist and president of the World Wildlife Fund, was convinced that the Monster existed. So were senior scientists at London's Natural History Museum and Chicago University; they lost their jobs because they refused to renounce their belief in the creature. For decades, the scientific establishment was determined to quash attempts to investigate Loch Ness - until Nature, the world's greatest research journal, published an article by Peter Scott featuring underwater photographs of the Monster. Drawing extensively on new material, Gareth Williams takes a wholly original look at what really happened in Loch Ness. A Monstrous Commotion tells the story as never before: a gripping saga populated by colourful characters who do extraordinary things in pursuit of one of evolution's wildest cards.Meticulously researched and dazzlingly written, this book will appeal to anyone fascinated by nature and its mysteries - and to everyone who enjoys a beautifully crafted detective story with a strong cast of heroes and villains, plenty of twists and an unexpected ending.

    From the mythical beasts of ancient Greece to the hormonal vampires of the Twilight saga, monsters have captivated us for millennia. Matt Kaplan, a noted science journalist and monster-myth enthusiast, employs an entertaining mix of cutting-edge research and a love of lore to explore the history behind these fantastical fictions and our hardwired obsession with things that go bump in the night. Ranging across history, Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite tackles the enduring questions that arise on the frontier between fantasy and reality. What caused ancient Minoans to create the tale of the Minotaur and its subterranean maze? Did dragons really exist? What inspired the creation of vampires and werewolves, and why are we so drawn to them? With the eye of a journalist and the voice of a storyteller, Kaplan takes readers to the forefront of science, where our favorite figures of horror may find real-life validation. Does the legendary Kraken, a squid of epic proportions, really roam the deep? Are we close to making Jurassic Park a reality by replicating a dinosaur from fossilized DNA? As our fears evolve, so do our monsters, and Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite charts the rise of the ultimate beasts, humans themselves.

    Many of the sources come from the period between 1400 and 1750, when more than 100,000 people - mainly women - were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe and colonial America.Including trial records, demonological treatises and sermons, literary texts, narratives of demonic possession, and artistic depiction of witches, the documents reveal how contemporaries from various periods have perceived alleged witches and their activities. Brian P. Levack shows how notions of witchcraft have changed over time. He looks at the connection between gender and witchcraft and the nature of the witch's perceived power.This Sourcebook provides students of the history of witchcraft with a broad range of sources, many of which have been translated into English for the first time, with commentary and background by one of the leading scholars in the field.

    In every culture and in every epoch in human history, from ancient Egypt to modern Hollywood, imaginary beings have haunted dreams and fantasies, provoking in young and old shivers of delight, thrills of terror, and endless fascination. All known folklores brim with visions of looming and ferocious monsters, often in the role as adversaries to great heroes. But while heroes have been closely studied by mythologists, monsters have been neglected, even though they are equally important as pan-human symbols and reveal similar insights into ways the mind works. In Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors, anthropologist David D. Gilmore explores what human traits monsters represent and why they are so ubiquitous in people's imaginations and share so many features across different cultures.Using colorful and absorbing evidence from virtually all times and places, Monsters is the first attempt by an anthropologist to delve into the mysterious, frightful abyss of mythical beasts and to interpret their role in the psyche and in society. After many hair-raising descriptions of monstrous beings in art, folktales, fantasy, literature, and community ritual, including such avatars as Dracula and Frankenstein, Hollywood ghouls, and extraterrestrials, Gilmore identifies many common denominators and proposes some novel interpretations.Monsters, according to Gilmore, are always enormous, man-eating, gratuitously violent, aggressive, sexually sadistic, and superhuman in power, combining our worst nightmares and our most urgent fantasies. We both abhor and worship our monsters: they are our gods as well as our demons. Gilmore argues that the immortal monster of the mind is a complex creation embodying virtually all of the inner conflicts that make us human. Far from being something alien, nonhuman, and outside us, our monsters are our deepest selves.

    And there are people who have claimed to have directly encountered this world of mystery. From stories of people who see strange lights in the sky, to those that have actually claimed to have visited other times, dimensions and worlds completely unknown to life’s average traveler. These brave sojourners have found themselves face to face with humanities worst fears, darkest questions, and most confounding confusions and (most) have lived to tell the tale.These are the stories that are sometimes frightening, sometimes creepy, always unusual, and often enough, downright ridiculous. We will never know everything that exists in the unknown bandwidths of life, but it’s entertaining to try nonetheless. So sit back, relax, and get ready for some mind blowing excursions into the unknown... Here Is A Preview Of What's Inside... Unexplained Encounters: Excursions Into the Unknown Unexplained Encounters: Deadly Encounters at Dyatlov Pass Unexplained Encounters: Encounters with Angelic Aliens Unexplained Encounters: A Bit Of Inter-dimensional Thievery Unexplained Encounters: The Mothman Unexplained Encounters: Dr. Eben’s Unexplained Encounter with God Much, much more! Grab this book today!

    Someone [the murderer?] had covered him with a small strip of carpet.Nearby, in a ditch,lay Mrs Chandler - her face and torso bafflingly blanketed in beer cartons.The discovery made international headlines. It swiftly emerged that Dr Bogle, a brilliant specialist in solid state physics, had recently accepted a research post in Washington – and had been preparing to fly there, with his wife and children. Mrs Chandler, who’d worked as a nurse before her marriage, had been at the same New Year’s party with Gilbert Bogle the evening before. They had left separately.Scientists found that the pair had died of acute heart failure – but they could suggest no cause. There were no signs of violence: no smothering or strangulation; no hypodermic marks; no evidence, in the body tissues, of poisons, or radioactive substances of any kind.From the morning the bodies were found, the Bogle-Chandler conundrum would perplex the law’s keenest forensic minds...

    Bigfoot may be howling from a lonely mountaintop, but the bigfoot phenomenon is whispering secrets... if we will only listen.Eyewitnesses, investigators, and cryptozoologists worldwide contend ample evidence exists supporting the survival of large, hairy, apelike creatures alongside mankind today, lurking in the wilderness. By all appearances, these beings seem wholly natural, interacting with their surroundings and leaving behind hair, blood, droppings, and, of course, footprints.Yet despite their apparently physical nature, bigfoot and its hairy hominid kin consistently appear mired in High Strangeness—the peculiar, ineffable, and nonsensical absurdities so often encountered in paranormal phenomena.Some sightings seem more consistent with mythology than biology. Bigfoot often present supernatural attributes, like luminescent eyes or the ability to pass, ghostlike, through structures. Anomalous lights are regulalry seen in areas of frequent sasquatch activity. Footprints persistently, if rarely, display odd numbered toes, and—most bafflingly—bigfoot trackways suddenly terminate in the middle of open, untouched terrain.In Volume 1 of Where the Footprints End: High Strangeness and the Bigfoot Phenomenon, authors Joshua Cutchin and Timothy Renner carefully examine not only the intersection of hairy apemen with global folklore—of poltergeists, faeries, extraterrestrials, magic, witches, ghosts, and archetypal women-in-white—but also question the fundamental assumptions underlying contemporary cryptozoological beliefs surrounding bigfoot.

    That's what it means to be steadfast. But in a world where so much can undermine our faith or pull us off track, steadfastness is often a rare and elusive trait. James longs for his readers to be steadfast. His letter meets us in our suffering and sickness, our trials and temptations, our wealth and poverty, our ups and downs. He confronts our sin, our speech, and our pride. He encourages believers to have a more resilient and concrete faith: not just to hear the word, but to do it. He calls us to persevere in truth in a world of lies, to see that God's steadfast love is ultimately the source of our steadfast faith.This 8-week study of James provides:5 days of study each week-observing, interpreting, and applying the textDevotional commentary with space to journal your thoughtsMemory verse each weekSmall group discussion questionsKeynote Teaching Videos from the TGC's 2020 Women's Conference In a fickle and wayward age, we need biblical wisdom if we are to stay the course and be steadfast saints. The book of James provides this wisdom, and Steadfast will help you apply it.

    Following the tragedy, their father, John, set out to teach his boys everything about the paranormal evil that lives in the dark corners and on the back roads of America . . . and how to kill it.Fans of the blockbuster television phenomenon can rejoice! A one-of-a-kind compilation of all of Sam and Dean's demon-busting knowledge, The Supernatural Book of Monsters, Spirits, Demons, and Ghouls contains illustrations and detailed descriptions that catalogue the more than two dozen otherworldly enemies that most people believe exist only in folklore, superstition, and nightmares: vampires, ghosts, revenants, reapers, and even bloody clowns. You'll find within these pages Sam and Dean's notes, observations, and memories interwoven with sections of John Winchester's invaluable journal, making this book the perfect companion to every thrilling episode — and an essential weapon in the secret war against the hidden creatures of the darkness!