Shenron, Porunga, and the Dragon Gods of Dragon Ball
Everybody remembers the first time Shenron appeared. The seven Dragon Balls began to glow. The sky turned black. Lightning tore across the clouds. Then, from seven little orange spheres scattered across the ground, an enormous green dragon erupted into the night. For a few moments, Dragon Ball stopped feeling like a comedy. It stopped feeling […]
The Monkey King: How Son Wukong Became Son Goku
Everybody knows Goku. The spiky hair. The orange gi. The flying cloud. The magic staff.The endless appetite. The habit of picking fights with people much stronger than himself. But here’s the strange thing. None of those ideas started with Dragon Ball. Long before Akira Toriyama created Goku, another hero was leaping across the heavens. A […]
New Orleans is More Than “Haunted”: Tales from America’s Most Unbelievable City
Everybody knows New Orleans. The ghosts. The voodoo. The cemeteries. The shadowy figures wandering the French Quarter after midnight. The stories are everywhere. Ghost tours pack the streets. Haunted hotels advertise their resident spirits. Visitors arrive looking for chills and leave with stories of their own. But here’s the strange thing: The ghosts aren’t the […]
The Mothman: When the Monster isn’t the Scariest Part of the Story
A lot of people have heard of the Mothman. The glowing red eyes. The massive wings. The dark silhouette standing at the edge of a lonely road. A creature watching from abandoned places. A monster lurking in the darkness. That’s the image that survived. The one on T-shirts. The one in documentaries. The one that […]
Don’t Blow a Casket: A Brief History of Vampires
From Ancient Folklore to Dracula, Blade, and Beyond Everybody knows vampires. Maybe they sparkle. Maybe they brood dramatically while staring into the distance. Maybe they’re immortal aristocrats with suspiciously perfect hair. For most of us, the vampire arrives fully formed. Dracula. Then everything that came after him. But here’s the strange thing: The first vampires […]