Juliana believed in monsters. She believed in the one under her bed, the one in the closet, and the one under the stairs. Happily, she also had a mother who could knew how to handle monsters. “Juliana,” she said. “Give all of the monsters names, and then they can’t hurt you.” Juliana named the monster under the bed Mr. Scaredy-cat, the one in the closet Mr. Snagglepuss, and her sister,
I spent some time with Dracula Sunday night at a local art center. He was so dashing and such an elegant gentleman in his fabulous cape. Then, with a wickedly sexy smile, he started teasing me by calling me “Buffy” and “Slayer” as terms of endearment. I was immediately mesmerized by his exotic charm and became moonstruck. I am now intensely compelled to explain why you should hang out with
Halloween is all about the perfect costume. When I was a kid, my brothers and I spent at least two months thinking about what we wanted to be. Most of the time we decided against the selection of cheesy costumes at the store, which were basically a nylon suit worn over our clothes and a thin plastic mask held in place with an elastic band. Making our own costumes from
Recently, I visited a local haunted house, and it was absolutely fantastic. I screamed my lungs out and experienced a great range of emotion, witnessed some spectacular costumes, and got to watch others express themselves freely in a way only available in such houses of fear, awe, and weirdness. I highly recommend haunted houses for every one of the ten reasons I’ve detailed below. 1. Setting the mood. Haunted houses
The revival of an ancient religion has taken Mongolia by storm. Decades of oppression and religious conversions could not stop Mongolia’s first religion, Shamanism, from surviving. The hundreds of years of Chinese influence over Mongolia before the turn of the 20th century brought in heavy pressure for the region to convert to Buddhism. A majority of the area took to the reform, but their original religion continued to hold on in
He pulled his rifle and rucksack from the trunk of his Buick, then stepped out of the abandoned cattle shed and into the sunlight. To the south, a rusty barbed-wire fence separated ranch land from public domain. He scanned the hills beyond the fence. A local rancher had told him mule deer grazed just a few miles over the ridge. He headed in that direction. After hiking for half an
