Monsters have always patrolled the margins of the map. By their very strangeness, they determined the boundaries of the regular world.

Nineteenth-century medical schools plundered the graves of African Americans.“I remember a colored lady was going to work early in the morning, about half past five o’clock. She was standing at Twelfth and Market Streets when an automobile came u…

We’re out until January 5, but we’re re-posting some of our favorite pieces from 2014 while we’re away. We hope you enjoy—and have a happy New Year! * Foreclosed homes as haunted houses.My wife and I began searching for a house in 2008, just as the…

Grief and adventure on the path to the North Pole.For two weeks in the summer of 2013, I traveled around the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard as part of the Arctic Circle Residency, proceeding up the west coast of the main island, Spitsbergen, and m…

Foreclosed homes as haunted houses.My wife and I began searching for a house in 2008, just as the market was crashing, just as those first waves of foreclosed homes and short sales were hitting the market. Priced out of Los Angeles real estate for so…