Author: Ms. R.

On a winter morning in 1892, several men gathered in a rural Rhode Island cemetery to dig up a family of vampires. First they exhumed Mary Eliza Brown, who had died eight years early of consumption; they found her body partially mummified. Next was her elder daughter, Mary Olive. She had died not long after her mother of the same disease; nothing remained but bones and hair. Finally, the men removed Mary’s younger daughter, Mercy, from the family crypt,……

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In a 17th-century castle called Belton House just outside of the town of Grantham in Lincolnshire, England, there’s a mysterious painting of a black man in profile. He’s wearing a straw hat, a torn white shirt, with his arms resting on his left leg. Seated in front of what looks to be a landscape painting, the model looks relaxed, perhaps even bored. At the bottom of the portrait, there is a signature that has long baffled art historians. “The……

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This unique bridge is the work of the renowned Australian architect and civil engineer John Grainger. It’s one of the oldest surviving swing bridges in Australia, being constructed between 1880-1883, and is regarded as one of the engineering wonders of Gippsland, being able to swing through 360 degrees.  A few minutes drive south from Sale, the National Trust classified Swing Bridge is located at the junction of the Thomson and Latrobe Rivers. The bridge was designed to swing open……

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Although Paul Revere was in fact a rider during the night of April 18, 1775, the account of him being a lone rider popularized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Paul Revere’s Ride, is far from the truth. Most people associate with Revere saying “The British are coming!” when in reality, many residents of colonial Massachusetts considered themselves British and this statement would have made little sense. According to historians based on eyewitness accounts, Revere apparently said “The Regulars are coming……

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La Quinta Avenida is the main touristic street of the resort city of Playa del Carmen. As such, walking along, you will find many expected sights such as fast food restaurants, bars, and souvenir shops. Looking into the gardened courtyard of the San Pedro Hotel, you can also find a very unexpected sight: a small wooden structure, similar to a doghouse, painted in bright colors. Above the entrance, the word “ALUX” is spelled out in big letters, as if……

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Michelle Boggess-Nunley is a Grosse Pointe, Michigan-based artist who holds the Guinness World Record for the biggest hand-drawn maze. This is Michelle’s second original puzzle for Atlas Obscura. Check out her first here! When I’m creating a maze, I often focus on real places. I dive into research of a landscape and the attributes of the location. In this case, and to celebrate Halloween, I went to the Paris Catacombs. They are a natural fit for maze-making—a real-life maze……

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When Zemede Asfaw was growing up on a farm in eastern Ethiopia, he soaked up plant lore and other traditional knowledge the way a tree takes in sunlight and converts it to energy. “I knew the crops, and the wild plants, and the fruits and other things,” says Zemede, who goes by his given name. The practical methods he learned covered every aspect of farming: Instead of stone walls or wire fences, plant field edges with darker crops, so……

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Shortly before his death in 1700, John Hale, a Puritan reverend from Beverly, Massachusetts, decided to document a dark historical moment. His posthumously published work, A Modest Inquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft, is one of the few written records from someone present at the Salem Witch Trials. Whether or not Hale is a reliable narrator, he certainly had the credentials to write such a text. At the age of 12, he saw his first execution of a convicted……

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