Author: Julianna Ainsleigh
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How a teenage emperor called Elagabalus shattered Rome’s deepest taboos, drowned their hopes and ignited their anger, inspiring stories of murder, decadence, and a banquet of deadly roses that smothered his guests to death. The Ceiling Is Moving A single rose petal floats down, brushing the cheek of a senator who cannot move. He was…
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Imagine the weight of another person’s skin against your own. Not draped loosely like cloth, but pressed intimately, wetly, the residual warmth of their final heartbeat seeping through to your flesh. Now imagine wearing it for twenty days as it rots. Eating in it. Sleeping in it. Blessing children in it whilst the tissue liquefies…
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From leech collectors to plague buriers, these ancient jobs were filthy, fatal, and soaked in misery. History’s payroll of horror. Think your job is bad? Spare a thought for the poor souls of the past — those who waded through blood, dung, and death just to earn their bread, yet never gave up. 1. Leech…
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She was the last face the living saw. The Angel of Death wasn’t a priestess or a murderer; she was the technician of death. Among the Rus’ people, Viking traders who settled along the great rivers of Eastern Europe in the tenth century, this woman was known simply as the Angel of Death. But who…
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Archaeologists found 16 attendants possibly sealed alive with Lady Fu Hao, China’s warrior queen. What made them obey? The Anguished Ordeal Begins Lady Fu Hao And Her Sixteen Slaves For weeks, the attendants had watched their mistress decline, each laboured breath a countdown they dared not acknowledge. They probably swapped pointed looks, fiddled with their…
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Britain’s Blue-Eyed Ghost When scientists unveiled the face in 2018, the room went quiet. Dark skin. Bright blue eyes. It was a combination that startled researchers, not because it cannot occur today, but because of this particular ancient genetic signature. A dark-skinned hunter-gatherer gene paired with the early European light-eye mutation has long since been…
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They didn’t just eat the dead in Gough’s Cave, they drank from them. Gough’s Cave- 15 Thousand Years Ago The Cave That Remembered What happened here, it is important to say, was not carried out by primitive people. These were modern humans in every sense. They created art, music, and had abstract thought. They were families,…
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Volga River, A.D. 922 They asked for a volunteer, and she raised her hand, a small, petite, honourable slave girl. Ten days later, as part of ritual suicide, they would strangle and stab her on a burning ship while the whole village cheered them on. The air smelled of pine resin and blood. A longship…
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The Romans are well known for their elaborate feasts and decadence, but how much do you know about what they ate? While some items may be familiar, there are other things the Romans actually ate that are, shall we say, a bit different to what we expect.
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Right now, as you read this, something might be living under your house. Not rats. Not pipes. Something that remembers when your street was built, when the first nail was driven in, the first building was erected, and the first voices rang out – perhaps laughter, shared conversations, or sadness. Something that remembers when the…