By the author of the acclaimed Eat Dat, a brand-new guide to New Orleans's scary side, from Voodoo rituals to historic cemeteries and haunted mansions Fear Dat New Orleans explores the eccentric and often macabre dark corners of America’s most unique city. In addition to detailed histories of bizarre burials, ghastly murders, and the greatest concentration of haunted places in America, Fear Dat features a “bone watcher’s guide” with useful directions of who’s buried where, from Marie Laveau to Ruthie the Duck Girl. You’ll also find where to buy the most authentic gris-gris or to get the best psychic reading. The Huffington Post tagged Michael Murphy’s first book Eat Dat, about the city’s food culture, the #1 “essential” book to read before coming to New Orleans. New Orleans Living called it “both reverent and irreverent, he manages to bring a sense of humor to serious eating—and that’s what New Orleans is all about.” In Fear Dat, Murphy brings similar insights and irreverence to New Orleans voodoo, vampires, graveyards, and ghosts.

The history, altars, art and ceremonies that anchor Voodoo in Crescent City culture are revealed in this authoritative study. The diverse spiritual roots of New Orleans run deep—and they all converge in the practice known as Voodoo. The city's Roman Catholic influence and its French, Spanish, Creole and American Indian traditions blended with the rites and rituals that West Africans brought to Louisiana as enslaved laborers. The resulting Voodoo tradition became a unique and integral part of New Orleans culture and heritage. While 19th century enslaved practitioners held Voodoo dances in designated public areas like Congo Square, they also conducted secret rituals away from the prying eyes of the city. By 1874, some twelve thousand New Orleanians attended Voodoo queen Marie Laveau's St. John's Eve rites on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. This cultural history traces the Voodoo tradition from its earliest beginnings to its continued practice in the Crescent City today.

Pull up a chair or gather round the campfire and get ready for creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences under the New Orleans skies. Whether read around the campfire on a dark and stormy night or from the backseat of the family van on the way to grandma's, this is a collection to treasure.

Grab a stake, a fistful of garlic, a crucifix and holy water as you enter the dark, blood-curdling world of the original pain in the neck in this ultimate collection of vampire facts, fangs, and fiction! What accounts for the undying fascination people have for vampires? How did encounters with death create centuries-old myths and folklore in virtually every culture in the world? When did the early literary vampires—as pictured by Goethe, Coleridge, Shelly, Polidori, Byron, and Nodier as the personifications of man’s darker side—transform from villains into today’s cultural rebels? Showing how vampire-like creatures organically formed in virtually every part of the world, The Vampire Almanac: The Complete History by renowned religion expert and fearless vampire authority J. Gordon Melton, Ph.D., examines the historic, societal, and psychological role the vampire has played—and continues to play—in understanding death, man’s deepest desires, and human pathologies. It analyzes humanity’s lusts, fears, and longing for power and the forbidden! Today, the vampire serves as a powerful symbol for the darker parts of the human condition, touching on death, immortality, forbidden sexuality, sexual power and surrender, intimacy, alienation, rebellion, violence, and a fascination with the mysterious. The vampire is often portrayed as a symbolic leader advocating an outrageous alternative to the demands of conformity. Vampires can also be tools for scapegoating such as when women are called “vamps” and bosses are described as “bloodsuckers.” Meet all of the villains, anti-heroes, and heroes of myths, legends, books, films, and television series across cultures and today’s pop culture in The Vampire Almanac. It assembles and analyzes hundreds of vampiric characters, people, and creatures, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vlad the Impaler, Edward Cullen and The Twilight Saga, Bram Stoker, Lestat De Lioncourt and The Vampire Chronicles, Lon Chaney, True Blood, Bela Lugosi, Dracula, Dark Shadows, Lilith, Vampire Weekend, Batman, Nosferatu, and so many more. There is a lot to sink your teeth into with this deep exhumation of the undead. Quench your thirst for facts, histories, biographies, definitions, analysis, immortality, and more! This gruesomely thorough book of vampire facts also has a helpful bibliography, an extensive index, and numerous photos, adding to its usefulness.

How do educators, clergy, attorneys, and the concerned public come to terms with meaningful, workable ethics in an age that eschews any attempt to define truth and error? Michael A. Milton has addressed that question in the new monograph, From Flanders Field to the Moviegoer: Philosophical Foundations for a Transcendent Ethical Framework. Milton draws on English literature, sociology, history, public policy, and theology to mark milestones in the cultural journey from the philosophical crisis after World War I, the end of modernity and the introduction of the “theater of the absurd” in post-modernity. Rather than merely a survey, this monograph proposes a “way forward” in teaching metaphysical ethics. Originally given as a paper before American and British defense leaders in Washington, DC, Milton’s original paper is now expanded for use in undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate classrooms, as well as libraries and professional military education.

New York Times bestselling author of Mindhunter John Douglas reveals more unique cases from his time as head of the FBI's elite Investigative Support Unit. In the #1 New York Times bestseller Mindhunter, John Douglas, who headed the FBI's elite Investigative Support Unit, told the story of his brilliant and terrifying career tracking down some of the most heinous criminals in history. Now, in Journey into Darkness, Douglas profiles vicious serial killers, rapists, and child molesters. He is straightforward, blunt, often irreverent, and outspoken, but takes pains not to glorify any of these murderers. Some of the unique cases Douglas discusses include: -The Clairemont killer -The schoolgirl murders -Richmond's First Serial Murderer -The brutal and sadistic murder of Suzanne Marie Collins -Polly Klaas' abduction and murder by Richard Allen Davis, -The tragedy that lead to the creation of Megan's Law With Journey into Darkness, Douglas provides more than a glimpse into the minds of serial killers; he demonstrates what a powerful weapon behavioral science has become. Profiling criminals helps not only to capture them, but also helps society understand how these predators work and what can be done to prevent them from striking again. Douglas focuses especially on pedophiles and child abductors, fully explaining what drives them, and how to keep children away from them. As he points out, "The best way to protect your children is to know your enemy." He includes eight rules for safety, a list of steps parents can take to prevent child abduction and exploitation, tips on how to detect sexual exploitation, basic rules of safety for children, and a chart, based on age, which details the safety skills children should have to protect themselves. In his review for Mindhunter in The New York Times Book Review, Dean Koontz said, "Because of his insights and the power of the material, he leaves us shaken, gripped by a quiet grief for the innocent victims and anguished by the human condition." Journey into Darkness continues this perilous trip into the psyche of the serial killer, but also offers a glimmer of hope that profiling may enable law enforcement to see the indicators of a serial killer's mind and intervene before he kills, or kills again.

Manhattan's past whispers for attention amongst the bustle of the city's ever-changing landscape. At Fraunces Tavern, George Washington's emotional farewell luncheon in 1783 echoes in the Long Room. Gertrude Tredwell's ghost appears to visitors at the Merchant's House Museum. Long since deceased, Olive Thomas shows herself to the men of the New Amsterdam Theatre, and Dorothy Parker still keeps her lunch appointment at the Algonquin Hotel. In other places, it is not the paranormal but the abnormal violent acts by gangsters, bombers, and murderers that linger in the city's memory. Some think Jack the Ripper and the Boston Strangler hunted here. The historic images and true stories in Ghosts and Murders of Manhattan bring to life the people and events that shaped this city and raised the consciousness of its residents.