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What draws us to the darker side? What compels us to look whenever we pass a grisly accident on the highway and drives us to watch horror movies and television coverage of disasters? Eric G. Wilson, a literature professor and a lifelong student of the macabre, set out to discover the source of people’s attraction to the morbid, drawing on the perspectives of biologists, sociologists, psychologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians and artists.
Wilson shares his findings in his latest book Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck. He is the Thomas H. Pritchard Professor of English at Wake Forest University.
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As the economic opportunities of this annual tradition are exploited more with every passing year, Halloween has become a time of feasting, fun-filled frights, and fancy-dressed festivities. According to the Indo-European Etymological Dictionaries, the origins of All Hallows’ Eve are commonly held to date back around two thousand years to a pre-Christian Celtic festival known as Samhain, or "Summer’s End," held to acknowledge the passing of the season of summer and the approach of the dark winter months. Samhain, pronounced sow-en or saw-win, was usually celebrated on 31st October or 1st November.

‘From the earliest records, Samhain is seen not simply as a day for the dead but when the dead might reach out to the living.’
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We all love a good monster movie, don’t we, even if it’s viewed with just one eye open from behind the safety of our sofas?

Year after year, Hollywood favourites such as Count Dracula and the Wolfman, and other classic fiendish figures continue to draw crowds of eager horror-movie-lovers. But when and where did our preoccupation with the "bogeyman" arise? Is there any basis in truth to the stories of mythical monsters?

Greg McDonald, director of forensic medicine at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, says that like many myths and scary stories, both Dracula and the Wolfman stemmed from a poor understanding of medical maladies.
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You’ve been hearing bumps and unexplained footsteps in the middle of the night, or get the feeling that someone is watching you, but when you turn round there is nobody there. The door opens or closes on its own, the dog is behaving strangely, or you keep having the same dream over and over again. You can smell pipe smoke, but no one in the family smokes, or, inexplicably, you feel an icy chill and goose-bumps on a hot summer’s day.

Do any of these scenario’s sound familiar? If so, you could have an unexpected house guest!
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