Rue: The Smelly Herb That Bossed-Off Bad Luck
Folks from Naples to Nuevo Leon used bitter rue-ruda-to hang over cradles, sprinkle in doorways and bathe babies so jealous eyes and nasty luck would take a hike.Read More 
That Underground City With The Rolling Stone Doors
There is a cliff-town under Cappadocia that you can literally bolt shut from the inside with millstone doors and I adore the theatricality of it.Read More 
They Ground Up Mummies And Called It Medicine
Honey, for centuries Europeans bought powdered Egyptian mummies from apothecaries and swore they cured everything from headaches to bad manners.Read More 
When Paris Printers Went After the Cats
In 1730s Paris a crew of low-paid printing apprentices literally held mock funerals and massacred neighborhood cats as a dark, theatrical protest - and a historian smelled a story worth savoring.Read More 
How The South Outsmarts Ghosts With Old Bottles
They hang colored bottles in trees to trap roaming spirits - a Hoodoo-rooted Southern trick that's equal parts faith, recycling and stubborn charm.Read More 
Colombia's Giant Roasted Ants Are Deliciously Unruly
In Santander they toast hormigas culonas - nutty, bacony courting snacks that make polite dinner talk evaporate.Read More 
That Time Space Whispered 'Wow' and Ghosted Us
August 15, 1977: a radio dish heard something so rude it earned a single-word reaction and never explained itself.Read More 
The Dried Hand Thieves Loved
Believe it or not, at one time burglars carried a pickled hanged man's hand like it was a get-out-of-jail-free card.Read More 
They Buried Pee And Pins To Stop Curses
In old houses folks filled bottles with urine, hair and bent pins, buried them in hearths and pretended the devil would take a number and wait.Read More 
That Barnacle That Makes Crabs Babysit Its Babies
Meet the parasitic barnacle that sneaks into a crab, turns him into a sterilized nanny and gets him to love every minute of it.Read More
