The files
Figures in sixteenth-century dress dance in motion blur in a narrow Strasbourg street at sunset while onlookers watch, with the cathedral at the end of the street.

The Dancing Plague of 1518 | What Strasbourg Wrote Down, and the Deaths It Never Recorded

A young Victorian woman in trance in an armchair beside a lamp-lit table, while a bearded man takes notes across from her.

Leonora Piper | The Medium William James Called His White Crow

A long sandstone temple corridor with rows of carved royal cartouches lit by a raking shaft of golden sunlight.

Timeline of the Pharaohs | Every Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, From Narmer to Cleopatra

A small plaster relief of the Virgin Mary on a whitewashed wall, with a single tear running down her cheek in slatted morning light.

Weeping Statues | The Madonnas That Cried Tears and Blood, and the People Who Came to Take a Sample

A glowing dot-matrix world map on an archive table at night, with coloured verdict markers, case folders and a magnifying glass.

The Atlas of Mysteries | Every Case File on a Map of the World

An open hand under a spotlight on a dark stage, holding a small heap of dark uranium oxide powder.

Galen Winsor | The Nuclear Chemist Who Ate Uranium in Front of His Audience

A long dark records vault lined with steel filing cabinets, one drawer open with a folder lit by a desk lamp.

Secret Government Programs | The Case Files, From MKULTRA to Area 51

A stepped mud-brick ziggurat rising over a Sumerian city of canals and palm groves at golden hour, under a crescent moon and the evening star.

Sumer and Mesopotamia | The Case Files, From the First Cities to the Anunnaki

A carved relief of a serpent rising from a lotus inside an oval, lit by lamplight in a narrow stone crypt.

The Dendera Light | The Egyptian Light Bulb Carved in the Crypts of Hathor

A small crab on wet sand, seen from above, whose shell ridges form the face of a scowling warrior.

The Heike Crab | The Samurai Faces in the Strait Where an Emperor Drowned

The small grooved moon Phobos above Mars, with one tall boulder casting a long shadow near a large crater.

The Phobos Monolith | The Tower on the Moon of Fear and the Spacecraft Now Flying to It

A burned-out armchair with a small pile of ash beneath it in an otherwise undamaged 1950s living room, with a smoke stain on the wall and ceiling.

Spontaneous Human Combustion | The Bodies That Burned to Ash in Rooms the Fire Never Touched