Image descriptions:
Image one: E-book titled The Bell Witch in Myth and Memory: From Local Legend to International Folktale (2023) - synopsis: The legend of the ghost who terrorized the Bell family of Adams, Tennessee, is one of the best-known pieces of folklore in American storytelling—featured around the globe in popular-culture references as varied as a 1930s radio skit and a 1980s song from a Danish heavy metal band. Legend has it that “Old Kate” was investigated even by the likes of future president Andrew Jackson, who was reported to have said, “I would rather fight the British ten times over than to ever face the Bell Witch again.” While dozens of books and articles have thoroughly analyzed this intriguing tale, this book breaks new ground by exploring the oral traditions associated with the poltergeist and demonstrating her regional, national, and even international sweep.
Image two: E-book titled Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires and the Undead from the Enlightenment to the Present Day (2013) - synopsis: This collection of interconnected essays relates the Undead in literature, art and other media to questions concerning gender, race, genre, technology, consumption, and social change. A coherent narrative follows Enlightenment studies of the vampire’s origins in folklore and folk panics, the sources of vampire fiction, through Romantic incarnations in Byron and Polidori to Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Further essays discuss the Undead in the context of Dracula, fin-de-siècle decadence, Nazi Germany, and early cinematic treatments. The rise of the sympathetic vampire is charted from Coppola’s film, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight.
Image one: E-books for Hallowen
Image two: E-book titled Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis (2017) - synopsis: Why has the zombie become such a pervasive figure in twenty-first-century popular culture? John Vervaeke, Christopher Mastropietro, and Filip Miscevic seek to answer this question by arguing that particular aspects of the zombie, common to a variety of media forms, reflect a crisis in modern Western culture. The authors examine the essential features of the zombie, including mindlessness, ugliness and homelessness, and argue that these reflect the outlook of the contemporary West and its attendant zeitgeists of anxiety, alienation, disconnection and disenfranchisement.
Image three: E-book titled A Guide to Sky Monsters: Thunderbirds, the Jersey Devil, Mothman, and Other Flying Cryptids (2021) - synopsis: Authors T. S. Mart and Mel Cabre introduce 20 flying cryptids with legends that span the United States. With 70 hand-drawn illustrations, A Guide to Sky Monsters details our fascination with these creatures and describes both historical evidence found in the fossil record and the specifics of modern-day sightings. By studying the fact, fiction, and pop culture surrounding these notorious beasts, Mart and Cabre help us lean into the question, “What if?”
