Have you heard?

If you were to look back at a list of bestsellers over the last few years, there are a number of trends to be found – and one among them is the rise of the mythical retelling. The popularity of return

While the original National Folklore Survey from the 1960s was unscientific and open ended, simply asking random people “what do you know to be true?”, its 21st century successor is a very different b

Reading Laura Mauro’s “Japanese Toilet Ghosts” [FT459:30-35], reminded me of a less well known fear in the Western world, which –according to the modern rabbinical Internet resource site TheTorah.com

An old man lives at the bottom of my garden. His name is Robert Barkus, or Bakehouse, or Bagust. Nobody is quite sure. But I often sense him around when I’m gardening, and I’ve found out a fair bit ab

This month’s story, ‘The Surrogate’ by Tessa Hadley, is a study of two men through the eyes of one woman. The title suggests that one man is a surrogate for the other, but is it as simple as that? As

The SAS (Special Air Service) make routine use of sleep-deprivation exercises in their selection process, and these often feature in later training. Hallucinations during such exercises are very commo