The Kaguru Ghostland
The anthropologist T.O. Beidelman recounts meeting a woman in Tanzania in 1957-1958 who had a ongoing dispute with her dead father. Her people, the Kaguru, believe that there exists a parallel world of ghosts, and that all souls cycle between our two worlds in an endless circle of rebirth. This belief, and the way it […]
The Cruel, Prophetic Witch of Northern Greece
Ancient Greece was full of legends about witches in Thessaly, a wild region in the north. The Roman poet Lucan (39-65 A.D.) channeled the most horrid of these in his Pharsalia. This epic poem about the Roman civil war between Caesar and Pompey includes an aside where Pompey’s son consults a monstrous fortune-teller: the cannibal […]
The Murder of Monsieur Dorbain
This 1579 murder of a minor lord in rural France is great inspiration for a murder mystery. The case looks cut-and-dried at first, but the deeper the you look, the more complicated it becomes. An adventure based on the case may culminate in an ethical quandary and a readymade hook leading to your next adventure! April was […]
Saber-Toothed Tigers and Weapons Ghosts Recognize
Medieval Finns believed stone age artifacts were magical. The millennia-old knapped stone tools sometimes turned up by their plows could, they thought, ward off evil. Medieval Finns buried these tools in the foundations of their walls and hearths to guard their homes. There’s something very cool about stone arrowheads and adzes as wards, whether they […]