By Paula R. Stiles

St Andrew’s Day (November 30) is a big deal in Scotland, and an even bigger deal in namesake medieval city St Andrews, on the east coast of Scotland in Fife. St Andrews has been a settlement since the Mesolithic for at least 8000 years. I’ve heard there’s even a stone circle about seven kilometers south of town. St Andrews’ history as a medieval Christian town dates back about 1500 years. There are also stories of a legendary shipwreck in which a man named “St Rule”…

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By Carla Lee

(Yet another The Lost Boys reference in the title. The full quote is: “If you read the TV Guide, you don’t need a TV.”)

The season of the hiatus has begun and if you’re anything like me, you miss the show already. The hiatus is a great time to explore what content the internet offers and to connect with other fans. In that vein, I’ve put together a collection of links to useful The Vampire Diaries sites.

The Vampire Diaries is the official website for the television show.…

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Today we are talking to Daniel Heath Justice, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and author of the fantasy trilogy, The Way of Thorn & Thunder. In addition to writing fiction, he teaches Indigenous North American literatures and Aboriginal studies at the University of Toronto:

IFP: Can you tell us a bit about your The Way of Thorn and Thunder trilogy?

DHJ: The Way of Thorn and Thunder is a story about the defiant struggle of the Folk, a confederacy of Indigenous peoples whose lush green homeland, the…

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by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The Devil’s Backbone, originally set in Revolutionary Mexico and shifted to take place during the Spanish Civil War when Mexican funding proved elusive, is the original template for Pan’s Labyrinth. Containing most of the elements of Pan: a child, war, a supernatural force and terror, The Devil’s Backbone is the seed from which Guillermo del Toro’s most famous movie will be born.

Unlike Pan’s Labyrinth, the supernatural forces in The Devil’s Backbone are never in doubt. There is no unreliable narrator: the ghost haunting the orphanage…

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by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. But sometimes, delayed gratification has its negative side-effects. Argento filmed the first of his Three Mothers movies in 1977. While I consider Suspiria inferior to the second in the series, Inferno, it had its good scenes and is widely regarded as one of the top horror films of all time. The kernel in these movies – the obscure female witches housed in three buildings throughout the world – was exciting, and I waited for years to watch the…

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Today on Hidden Histories, we talk to British author David Harrison about his new book The Genesis of Freemasonry:

IFP: Tell us about your academic career. Where did you go to University?

DH: I went to the University of Wales in Bangor to study Archaeology and medieval history, but on leaving found out archaeology didn’t pay so well, so did a teacher training course then became a lecturer while researching my PhD at the University of Liverpool – which was on the history of Freemasonry.

IFP: How did…

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