Dr. Cailín Murray was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Western Washington University in Bellingham, followed by a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the University of Washington. Before joining the faculty at Ball State University, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Her fascination with ghosts and spirits began during graduate school while reading Karl Marx, and she has been actively researchi

Dr. Bernice Murphy is an Associate Professor in Popular Literature at Trinity College Dublin, where she specializes in American horror and Gothic fiction and film. She completed her PhD on Shirley Jackson at Trinity in 2003 and has since become a leading scholar on Jackson’s work, editing Shirley Jackson: Essays on the Literary Legacy and serving as academic consultant on The Letters of Shirley Jackson (Penguin Random House, 2021). Her research explores themes of place and

Shirley Jackson’s brilliant literature, monsters, and your scary neighbor. October invites us to play with fear. We pull the blanket to our chin or peek between our fingers, safely terrified by ghosts, vampires, and the things that go bump in the night. I’ve been thinking a lot about monsters and what they speak to in our larger society. But lately I've been thinking about the monsters hiding in shadows, but those just outside our front door. Because real horror rarely announ

Darkness falls across the land / The midnight hour is close at hand / Creatures crawl in search of blood / To terrorize y'alls...

Dr. Imani M. Cheers is a cultural curator, multimedia producer, and Associate Professor of Digital Storytelling at The George Washington...

Shannon Evans is not your typical Southerner. Known for her direct approach, she combines her storytelling abilities with her penchant...

The word empathy has been having a real moment recently, but it’s worth pausing on what it means and how it’s different from sympathy. I...

JOHN DAVID GRAHAM is the founder and executive director of Good Samaritan Home, a non-profit social service agency in Ohio, offering...

Curiosity and the work of meeting each other across universes of our own making. When my kids were little, we loved Thomas the Train. One...

George Goulburn left his 30 year corporate career behind at the age of 51 to take an unconventional path and become a professional male...

There is a house in my neighborhood that has been sitting in disrepair for years. Apparently, the woman who owned it had a son who died...

Jenelle Coolidge is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC), Certified Eating Disorder Specialist (CEDS), and EMDR-trained therapist...

This summer, I (guiltily) watched And Just Like That and The Summer I Turned Pretty. Both shows are messy, nostalgic, occasionally...

Last night I made an amazing corn and tomato salad and afterward, sat outside looking at stars, night-blooming jasmine thick in the air....

One of my favorite must-watch shows as a kid was Star Trek: The Next Generation. I loved the adventure of meeting new people across the...

Gerry Wilson is the author of an historical novel, That Pinson Girl, and a story collection, Crosscurrents and Other Stories. A seventh...

Kev grew up in Wisconsin and has always had a fascination with Sasquatch, which has led him to go on many expeditions across the country...

I struggled to know what to write given the weight of this week. The militarization of our own cities, from police in LA to troops in...

Jackie Lapin is the Historic-Traveler-in-Chief at The Historic Traveler, an online destination for history lovers that combines stunning...

I grew up in a place where summer buzzed. Quite literally, there was a constant hum of cicadas and crickets and frogs and bees. Where the...