The chilling story of the Sodder children, who vanished after their West Virginia home went up in flames in 1945, leaves more questions than answers.The citizens of Fayetteville, West Virginia awoke to tragedy on Christmas Day in 1945. A fire had consumed the home of George and Jennie Sodder, leaving five of the couple’s 10 children dead. Or were they? Before the sun set on that tragic December 25, nagging questions arose about the fire, questions that persist to this day, placing the Sodder children at the center of one of American history’s most infamous unsolved cases. Read More...
Represented in both traditional Japanese plays and contemporary television shows, the shinigami are multi-faceted and often terrifying gods of death that lure humans to their demise.Public DomainShinigami from the Ehon Hyaku monogatari by Takehara Shunsen, 1841.
Some of the most interesting customs and traditions of different cultures around the world relate to death. For an event that every human being experiences, death as it is depicted varies drastically across borders, languages, and religions. Read More...
The astonishing blue flames from the Kawah Ijen volcano often look like lava, but they're actually just molten sulfur.If you gaze upon the Indonesian Kawah Ijen volcano at night, you’ll encounter a dangerous mix of beauty and toxicity. Pure molten sulfur that, upon making contact with air, combusts and smolders, creating a glow reminiscent of blue fire and spills down the sides of the 8,660 feet tall volcano.
The substance is not lava, as some assume. Read More...
