It’s October, and in the spirit of Halloween, this month’s column focuses on the monster widely regarded as the most frightening in Doctor Who history: the Weeping Angels. This alien race made its first appearance in Series 3, in the Hugo Award-winning episode “Blink”. Their creator, Steven Moffat, was inspired in part by the children’s game “Statues”, in which someone …

Doctor Who is a program often dismissed, even by those involved with it, as a children’s show. Over the course of its long history, however, Doctor Who has featured a number of disturbing characters and plot lines that make the show relevant to horror fans. In this column we’re going to focus on the new series, beginning with the 9th …

With its ghosts, vampires, and voodoo, is there a better place for a horror convention than New Orleans? The HWA didn’t think so, and thus from June 13-16 World Horror Convention 2013 convened upon the haunted, historic city. In attendance at the French Quarter’s Hotel Monteleone were many of horror’s heavyweights, including guests of honor Robert McCammon (also a Lifetime …

Once the province of criminals and sailors, tattoos have steadily gained traction in popular culture as a trendy form of body modification. For true tattoo enthusiasts, it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish themselves with a unique piece of art. While young adults looking to shock their parents and the world at large often turn to horror for inspiration …

Of all the zombie-like creatures that stalk the annals of history, one of the most terrifying is the Scandinavian draugr. The creature has enjoyed recent popularity through the video game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and inspired the Others in George R. R. Martin’s bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire series. Even Tolkien drew from the ancient tales of …

Though they appear only in 6:1 through 8:5 of the Book of Revelation, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are one of the most enduring, and most feared, aspects of St. John’s vision. For Biblical literalists, the Four Horsemen are real figures, part of a future apocalypse predicted by the exiled St. John, in which war, famine, disease, and death …

Popularized in the 1981 film Clash of the Titans, the kraken is one of the few monsters possibly based on a real animal. It is not of Greek origin, however, but Scandinavian, nor is it even remotely humanoid in appearance. While the earliest reports describe the kraken as more akin to a crab than an octopus or squid, the kraken …

The Asian countries are probably best known, where monsters are concerned, for their depictions of vengeful female ghosts. It should come as no surprise that these ancient lands would also be home to a host of strange demons, spirits, and monsters unlike anything with which most Westerners are familiar. One of the most intriguing of these Asian monsters comes from …

Each part of the United States claims its own strange legends and fantastic creatures, but one of the most bizarre is the Jersey Devil, a merger of Revolutionary-era folklore and cryptozoological conjecture. Dwelling deep within New Jersey’s Pine Barrens, an area of cedar, oak, and pine trees teeming with wildlife, the Jersey Devil is allegedly responsible for livestock deaths, unnerving …