Colin Dickey

Or, why families under siege make for great movies.

What do we do when there are whole cities full of ghosts, each one with their own unique story to tell, each one with something left undone?

How the gun became a cultural icon—and unmade America.

Betty and Barney Hill lost three hours on a New Hampshire highway in 1961. They spent years trying to understand it.

Public outcry over whistleblower William Morgan's disappearance gave rise to the Anti-Masonic Party, which nominated a candidate for president in 1832.

And justified the most extreme responses.

Moral panics repeat, again and again.

A classic ghost story has something to say about America—200 years ago, 100 years ago, and today.

The little-told tale of the 1651 trial of Hugh and Mary Parsons.

It’s never been easier to piece together a family tree. But what if it brings uncomfortable facts to light?

The great discoveries of the age captivated Poe’s imagination. He almost always misunderstood them.

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

As innovations go, the Good Humor vehicle is as sweet as it gets.

Tracing the history of the Grateful Dead folktale and the evolving obligations of being alive.

The 1800 election shows there is nothing new about conspiracy theories, and that they really take hold when we don’t trust each other.

Tracing the evolution and challenges of fact-checking in journalism.

How William Cooper envisioned a web entangling global capitalism, the government, and UFOs, and incubated the politics of conspiracy.

Though the practice is now more associated with Halloween, spooking out your family is well within the Christmas spirit.

Civil War monuments erased an emancipated Black population, but the Sphinx looked to an integrated Africa and America.

In the 1970s and 1980s, homeowners were terrified by the idea that they didn't own the land they'd just bought.

Writer Colin Dickey sets out across America to investigate America's haunted spaces in order to uncover what their ghost stories say about who we were, are, and will be.