The belief that animals cross the “Rainbow Bridge” to an afterlife is relatively new and not part of any formal theology, yet many Americans embrace it.

In the early twentieth century, folk music in Sweden was connected with right-wing nationalists, leaving a complicated inheritance for today’s music fans.

Dragons began life as snakes, but natural historians gradually began describing them in more fantastical ways.

The poet adopted a "Pythagorean" diet, which eliminated meat, and wrote that vegetarians would "no longer pine under the lethargy of ennui."

The Roman sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, was presided over by a goddess whose shrine stood near the Forum.

How the Brothers Grimm went hunting for fairytales, accidentally changed the course of historical linguistics, and kickstarted a new field of scholarship in folklore.

In general, a vampire is a malicious spirit or soul of the deceased who is not confined to the grave. Where did the idea come from?

In the University of Texas library, our writer found a previously unknown audiotape of an interview with a woman who'd been born into slavery.