Above we see a sectional view of the Earth, revealing its “central fire” and active volcanoes from 1665′s “Mundus Subterraneous” by Athanasius Kircher. The Jesuit polymath researched and wrote on a variety of scholarly topics, but this beautifully-illustrated tome served…

I’m catching up on my Space Music and first stop is a new project from DJ Cheeba based around the cult-classic b-movie “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” The 1959 film is of course Ed Wood’s masterpiece, which continues to resonate…

We’ve covered demons here before on Monster of the Week, but never the Devil himself. In keeping with this week’s episode on Satanic Panic, I thought we should change that. The physical manifestations of the horned one are too many…

In our podcast episode “Satanic Panic,” guest-host Christian Sager and I explore the Satanism-fueled moral panic of the 1980s and 90s. We deal a good bit with the cultural kindling underlying the panic, as well as how popular media fanned…

Take a visual tour through the culture of Satanic Panic… Read more ›

Here we see a satirical illustration entitled ‘The Physician Curing Fantasy’ by Mathaus Greuter (1564–1638) satirizing the modern medical treatments of the late 1590s or early 1600s. At left, we see a doctor pouring liquid through a funnel into a…

A handful of photos from Zoo Atlanta’s brand new Slimy Scaly Spectacular reptile and amphibian house…Read more ›

We’ve already looked at 19th century Persian vision of the dragon of tooth aches, so I simply had to share this woodcut of demons causing tooth decay. The date is unknown, but Corbis Images alleges that the photo itself —…

If you’ve noticed reduced blog content around her lately, that’s because I’ve decided to refocus some of that time and energy towards writing articles for HowStuffWorks.com. For instance, I just finished up “What’s the largest snake that has ever existed?”…