Uncover the twisted tales that inspired the big screen's greatest screams.Which case of demonic possession inspired The Exorcist? What horrifying front-page story generated the idea for A Nightmare on Elm Street? Which film was based on the infamous skin-wearing murderer Ed Gein?Unearth the terrifying and true tales behind some of the scariest Horror movies to ever haunt our screens, including the Enfield poltergeist case that was retold in The Conjuring 2 and the serial killers who inspired Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.Behind the Horror dissects these and other bizarre tales to reveal haunting real-life stories of abduction, disappearance, murder, and exorcism.

The true story of a wild dancing epidemic that brought death and fear to a 16th-century city, and the terrifying supernatural beliefs from which it arose. In July 1518 a terrifying and mysterious plague struck the medieval city of Strasbourg. Hundreds of men and women danced wildly, day after day, in the punishing summer heat. They did not want to dance, but could not stop. Throughout August and early September more and more were seized by the same terrible compulsion. By the time the epidemic subsided, heat and exhaustion had claimed an untold number of lives, leaving thousands bewildered and bereaved, and an enduring enigma for future generations. Drawing on fresh evidence, John Waller's account of the bizarre events of 1518 explains why Strasbourg's dancing plague took place. In doing so it leads us into a largely vanished world, evoking the sights, sounds, aromas, diseases and hardships, the fervent supernaturalism, and the desperate hedonism of the late medieval world. At the same time, the extraordinary story this book tells offers rich insights into how people behave when driven beyond the limits of endurance. Above all, this is an exploration into the strangest capabilities of the human mind and the extremes to which fear and irrationality can lead us.

The scandals in the White House have always commanded attention, but little has been acknowledged of the documented paranormal events that have shaken its stately columns and porticoes for more than two centuries. They are, in fact, part of the declassified, substantiated records dating back from George Washington to the present day. Now, complete with actual transcripts of channeling sessions and séances, the history of the paranormal phenomena in the presidential residence is revealed for the first time in a fascinating exploration of the country s most famous portal to the unknown. Throughout America s history, psychics, spiritualists, mediums, and seers have been enlisted to investigate the secret, untold phenomena of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Featuring a comprehensive see-for-yourself guide to presidential haunted places.

Spanning a million years of history, the mysteries in these pages include fabled relics, legendary cities, mythical species, and undeciphered languages that have bedeviled seekers for centuries. Perhaps the single most common theme across all of history is loss. The loss of lands, loss of sacred objects, loss of languages, of rights, of life—the past groans with disappearances of all kinds. This enthralling narrative collects the most spellbinding tales of these experiences and weaves them into a thoughtful meditation on what it all means across the sweep of human history and the scope of human lives, including: The long-lost city of Troy The hidden tomb of Genghis Khan The destruction of the fabled library of Alexandria The near-destruction of the Mona Lisa and other art The decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs The extinction—and potential resurrection—of dodos, mammoths, and other iconic species Provocative, surprising, and above all entertaining, this globe-trotting narrative acknowledges the sheer scale of humanity’s losses, celebrates the treasures we have managed to retain, and reveals why they continue to captivate us centuries later.

He feeds on blood... but he's starving for her. Elara's scent kills every vampire who gets close. Three have died trying to touch her. She doesn't mourn them—they were abusive bastards who deserved it. Kassian is the Vampire King who's been alone for nine hundred years because no omega can survive his bite. He's starving, hollow, going slowly mad from hunger no blood can satisfy. Then he catches Elara's scent. Toxic. Lethal. Absolutely intoxicating. He should die just from breathing her in. Instead, he gets hard. Kassian has been searching centuries for an omega immune to his deadly bite. Elara has been hiding her whole life from vampires she can't escape. They're perfect for each other. Deadly and desperate. He makes her an Seven days. Let him feed from her wrist, her throat, wherever she'll allow. If she still wants to leave after a week, he'll let her walk away. But Kassian knows the truth. Once he tastes her, once she feels his fangs sink deep while she comes, once she realizes he's the only vampire who can fuck her the way her omega craves—rough, possessive, dangerous—she won't be going anywhere. One bite, and she's his forever.

An intellectual feast for fans of offbeat history,  Ghostland  takes readers on a road trip through some of the country's most infamously haunted places — and deep into the dark side of our history. Colin Dickey is on the trail of America's ghosts. Crammed into old houses and hotels, abandoned prisons and empty hospitals, the spirits that linger continue to capture our collective imagination, but why? His own fascination piqued by a house hunt in Los Angeles that revealed derelict foreclosures and "zombie homes," Dickey embarks on a journey across the continental United States to decode and unpack the American history repressed in our most famous haunted places. Some have established reputations as "the most haunted mansion in America," or "the most haunted prison"; others, like the haunted Indian burial grounds in West Virginia, evoke memories from the past our collective nation tries to forget.             With boundless curiosity, Dickey conjures the dead by focusing on questions of the living — how do we, the living, deal with stories about ghosts, and how do we inhabit and move through spaces that have been deemed, for whatever reason, haunted? Paying attention not only to the true facts behind a ghost story, but also to the ways in which changes to those facts are made — and why those changes are made — Dickey paints a version of American history left out of the textbooks, one of things left undone, crimes left unsolved.        Spellbinding, scary, and wickedly insightful, Ghostland discovers the past we're most afraid to speak of aloud in the bright light of day is the same past that tends to linger in the ghost stories we whisper in the dark.

A probing work of narrative history that reveals the hidden story of immigrant detention in the United States, deepening urgent national conversations around migration. In 2018, many Americans watched in horror as children were torn from their parents at the US-Mexico border under Trump's "family separation" policy. But as historian Ana Raquel Minian reveals in In the Shadow of Liberty , this was only the latest chapter in a saga tracing back to the 1800s—one in which immigrants to the United States have been held without recourse to their constitutional rights. Braiding together the vivid stories of four migrants seeking to escape the turmoil of their homelands for the promise of America, In the Shadow of Liberty gives this history a human face, telling the dramatic story of a Central American asylum seeker, a Cuban exile, a European war bride, and a Chinese refugee. As we travel alongside these indelible characters, In the Shadow of Liberty explores how sites of rightlessness have evolved, and what their existence has meant for our body politic. Though these "black sites" exist out of view for the average American, their reach extends into all of our the explosive growth of the for-profit prison industry traces its origins to the immigrant detention system, as does the emergence of Guantanamo and the gradual unraveling of the right to bail and the presumption of innocence. Through these narratives, we see how the changing political climate surrounding immigration has played out in individual lives, and at what cost. But as these stories demonstrate, it doesn't have to be like this, and a better way might be possible.

This heart-pounding Southern gothic horror debut from Beatrice Winifred Iker, takes readers to Bricksbury University, the oldest and most storied HBCU in the nation. But as one student is about to find out, a long history comes with a legacy of secrets. Zora Robinson is an ambitious grad student at her dream program, the Appalachian Studies at Bricksbury University. When her thesis advisor hands her a strange diary and suggests she research the local folklore about a beast roaming the woods surrounding campus, Zora finds a community uneager to talk to an outsider. As she delves into the history of the beast, she uncovers a rumored secret society called the Keepers that has tenuous ties to the beast…and Bricksbury itself. Zora soon finds herself plagued by visions of the past, and her grip on reality starts to slip as she struggles to uncover what is real and what is folklore. But when a student goes missing, Zora starts to wonder if the Keepers ever really disbanded. There’s something in the woods and it has its eyes on Zora.

Best-selling story meets beautiful art! In a world ravaged by a catastrophe, the remaining humans face off against mutated creatures called xenogens. Among them is An Zhe, a sentient mushroom who disguises himself as a young man to infiltrate a human base and reclaim what was taken from him. There, he encounters Supreme Judge Lu Feng, tasked with hunting down and eliminating his kind. Can An Zhe evade the Judge's piercing gaze and successfully complete his mission?

During the spring of 1933, Stalin's police rounded up nearly 100,000 people as part of the Soviet regime's "cleansing" of Moscow and Leningrad and deported them to Siberia. Many of the victims were sent to labor camps, but ten thousand of them were dumped in a remote wasteland and left to fend for themselves. Cannibal Island reveals the shocking, grisly truth about their fate. These people were abandoned on the island of Nazino without food or shelter. Left there to starve and to die, they eventually began to eat each other. Nicolas Werth, a French historian of the Soviet era, reconstructs their gruesome final days using rare archival material from deep inside the Stalinist vaults. Werth skillfully weaves this episode into a broader story about the Soviet frenzy in the 1930s to purge society of all those deemed to be unfit. For Stalin, these undesirables included criminals, opponents of forced collectivization, vagabonds, gypsies, even entire groups in Soviet society such as the "kulaks" and their families. Werth sets his story within the broader social and political context of the period, giving us for the first time a full picture of how Stalin's system of "special villages" worked, how hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were moved about the country in wholesale mass transportations, and how this savage bureaucratic machinery functioned on the local, regional, and state levels. "Cannibal Island" challenges us to confront unpleasant facts not only about Stalin's punitive social controls and his failed Soviet utopia, but about every generation's capacity for brutality--including our own.

Willy Wonka's famous chocolate factory is opening at last! But only five lucky children will be allowed inside. And the winners are: Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat boy whose hobby is eating; Veruca Salt, a spoiled-rotten brat whose parents are wrapped around her little finger; Violet Beauregarde, a dim-witted gum-chewer with the fastest jaws around; Mike Teavee, a toy pistol-toting gangster-in-training who is obsessed with television; and Charlie Bucket, Our Hero, a boy who is honest and kind, brave and true, and good and ready for the wildest time of his life!