Vampire: Did you mean...?

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-did-dracula-become-the-world-s-most-famous-vampire-stanley-stepanic Over a hundred years after his creator was laid to rest, Dracula...

Ghost stories have existed for thousands of years, often in similar forms and frequently dealing with the same themes, in many of the most ancient cultures. The writer H.P. Lovecraft once wrote, "As may...

Lamia is a female or a hermaphroditic demon found in Greek mythology who devoured children and seduced men. She appears in literature as early as the 6th century BCE and is said to be fearsome to look upon with an ugly face, the upper...

Halloween is among the oldest traditions in the world as it touches on an essential element of the human condition: the relationship between the living and the dead. The observance evolved from ancient rituals marking the...

The term mythology comes from the Greek words mythos (“story of the people”) and logos (“word”) and so is defined as the spoken (later written) story of a culture. Modern scholars have divided myths...

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/vampires-folklore-fantasy-and-fact-michael-molina The myth of the bloodsucking vampire has stalked humans from ancient Mesopotamia to 18th-Century CE Eastern...

Ishtar (Inanna in Sumerian sources) is a primary Mesopotamian goddess closely associated with love and war. This powerful Mesopotamian goddess is the first known deity for which we have written evidence. While largely unknown in the modern...

Slavic cultures are far-ranging, comprising East Slavs (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus), West Slavs (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland) and South Slavs (the countries of former Yugoslavia plus Bulgaria...

The sagas tell us that the Vikings believed in an undead creature much like the zombie or traditional Eastern European portrayals of the vampire. Dr. Jackson Crawford is Instructor of Nordic Studies and Nordic...