What’s Up With Death Valley’s Bespoke Coffin Workshop?

The Nevada desert is arguably home to some of the strangest attractions in North America. From Clown Motels and Ghost Towns to haunted dolls and Area 51 there is no shortage of places to satisfy your taste for weird America, but none like Coffinwood, a custom coffin factory, wedding chapel, hearse garage and pet cemetery…

The Wicked Art Nouveau Illustrations of Mr. Wilke

“Art Nouveau – but make it spooky.” That’s Karl Alexander Wilke (1879-1954) in a nutshell. When first we found the Austrian-German illustrator, who carved out his own delightfully eerie corner of Art Nouveau artworks through clever magazines covers and adverts, we were suitably jazzed. Quite frankly, we’re pleasantly slack jawed that some of these babies…

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A Hauntingly Good Guide to Autumn in New York

No one does Fall like the East Coast. The air grows perfectly crisp, and a tide of orange leaves sweeps the Catskills and Central Park alike in such cinematic fashion, you practically expect Meg Ryan to come sauntering around every corner with a jug of piping hot cider. Of course, this year is different in…

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Halloween Costumes: Celebrity Dress-Up, Unique Ideas & Funny Kids

A for Effort, Heidi Klum Kim Kardashian didn’t have to do very much to look like Disney’s Jasmine from Aladdin Anne Hathaway is super-chic as Cleopatra Fashion Designer does Fashion Designer: Roberto Cavalli as Karl Lagerfeld Audrina Partridge from MTV’s The Hills does a very good 80s Madonna impersonation Teri Hatcher goes all out as…

Book your Bedroom in the Paris Catacombs on Halloween Night

So I’ve given you tips on how to explore the catacombs, party in the catacombs, farm organic mushrooms in the catacombs and even swim in the catacombs, but would you dare to sleep in the Parisian catacombs? Picture a fluffy white duvet, expertly plumped pillows, surrounded by candlelight … and six million human skeletons. Yup, it’s the latest…

21 Houses to Avoid on Halloween

Don’t be that stupid guy that gets killed first. Think twice before you go looking for a thrill this Halloween…. (queue the spooky music). 1. Wooden Houses with pointy Witch hats. This house is obviously cursed and will have you sprouting Latin (or some other dead language) in no time. Detroit, via here …

60 Seconds Inside a Paris Coven

Meet Xenia Rybina, the Parisian witch you never knew you needed in your life. Her artistic talents range from fashion illustration to stop-motion animation; esoteric embroidery to straight-up witchcraft. Which, she explains, gets a bad rap. “Let me tell you something, we are all witches,” she tells us from her Paris apartment, snake in hand.…

Nature’s Humble Gold: The Unexpected Elegance of Straw Craft

And now, for a DIY project at the intersection of spooky and cozy: the corn doll – which isn’t always in the form of a doll, mind you. That term is shorthand for any kind of straw artwork, be it a horseshoe or a crown, a dog or a pentagram. We love it because it’s…

The Buried African Folklore behind the Pop Culture Zombie

There is a law still in effect in the Haitian criminal code that dates back to 1883, making it illegal to try to turn someone into a zombie. The word “zombie” in fact, comes from “nzambi,” a word that means “spirit” in the voodou religions of Haiti and the African diaspora, but the Haitian zombie…

Interview with a Vampire in Paris

It was a dark and stormy night – or, at least, I had hoped it would be. The quaint and sleepy residential streets appeared an unseemly location for some of the most terrifying creatures imaginable to reside, until I arrived at a rusted cast iron gate overrun with foliage that also claimed every inch of garden…