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The Weekly Column

How I Met Your Monster

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One nonhuman person at a time- cryptid, faerie, glitch in the night- and what showed up when they did. After a season as a guest in other pages, the column now writes from its own desk in the parlour.

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Once for Joy.. cover

Once for Joy..

On a stretch of West Peak in the last weeks of May, where the path narrows and the basalt drops away, a small short-haired black dog appears at the edge..

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Nana's Knickknacks cover

Nana's Knickknacks

A pair of traditional, at- minimum- vintage salt and pepper shakers sat on a shelf in a multi-generational Latino household in the spring of 2015, and the household had begun,..

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Numen Inest: Animism at a Glance cover

Numen Inest: Animism at a Glance

My grandmother's house held a clock I knew from the inside before I knew it from the outside. It hung on a wall in a dining room furnished the way..

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The Darling Month of May cover

The Darling Month of May

The cattle came up between the two fires at evening, and the druids who had built the fires spoke over them as they came, and the year reorganized itself around..

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Three Wards cover

Three Wards

In the last installment of this series, I followed the blood. I traced it from Bathory's bathtub through Roman gladiatorial arenas, through Aztec temples and Maasai cattle herds and the..

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Blood, Worship, and Blood Worship cover

Blood, Worship, and Blood Worship

I left you standing over a bloodless cow in an Oregon field, ten gallons of blood missing from a thousand-pound animal, the ground beneath her dry. I said that blood..

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What They Take: Foyson and Cattle Mutilations cover

What They Take: Foyson and Cattle Mutilations

In the last three installments of this series, I have been building a case. I started with the foyson itself, that old Scots word for the essence or goodness of..

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Sacred Cows cover

Sacred Cows

In the last installment of this series, I talked about the foyson diet- about freshness as a measurable biochemical state, about the biogenic amines that accumulate in food as it..

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The Foyson Diet: Faeries, Essence, and My Findings... cover

The Foyson Diet: Faeries, Essence, and My Findings...

I'd like to introduce some perhaps leading edge science, nutrition and folklore connections, and I think a gentle, relatable way to do that might be by explaining how and why..

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Faerie Well Then! Energy Feeding Phenomenon cover

Faerie Well Then! Energy Feeding Phenomenon

I was about five years old when I first noticed that other people's bodies did something to mine...

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What the Fluorescence?!: Nonhuman Encounters at the Grocery Store cover

What the Fluorescence?!: Nonhuman Encounters at the Grocery Store

My husband and I had just walked into Walmart, near the produce section, and I felt someone staring at me. Hard. I looked up, thinking I was imagining it, and..

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Paranormal Peach Tea cover

Paranormal Peach Tea

I was standing at my kitchen counter several years ago with two mixing bowls, a notebook full of failed ratios, and a problem I could not solve. The problem was..

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Can't See The Forest For The Beings cover

Can't See The Forest For The Beings

Can't See the Forest for the Beings..

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Leshy Forget... cover

Leshy Forget...

As we move into the last phase of Autumn, I find myself in my annual, nostalgic state. Memories of months and years past fill my mind, and I'm grateful to..

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Blood, Iron and Beyond: Bizarre Biology and the Paranormal cover

Blood, Iron and Beyond: Bizarre Biology and the Paranormal

Hello, Eerie Expeditioners!..

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While the Shelf Fills

More From the Writing Desk

Feature articles, seasonal editions, and the rest of the written work keep their home on the Journal page- and Intermediary Magazine holds the deepest cuts, shelved in the Subscriber Library for the Inner Table.

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