Witchcraft, a term loaded with fear and kitsch, dredges up images of pointy hats and bubbling cauldrons. But for an increasing number of people today, witchcraft is not just a spooky movie or costume. For some, it’s a religion, a community, a spiritual journey and a daily practice.
Read MoreAlong the Hudson River, about an hour north of New York, is a church perched atop a hill in a village called Sleepy Hollow. When Washington Irving immortalized the Old Dutch Church with its Headless Horseman in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” it became a literary mainstay. For 300 years, the ghost who haunts the churchyard has frightened people. These days, a new force distresses the locals.
Read More(ANALYSIS) As early as 1856, experts gleefully noted that one could create images of ghosts “for the purpose of amusement.” Commercial photographers began producing this spectacular phenomenon for fun and profit and – as I have found while researching early portrait photography – thereby helped feed media fascination with all things ghostly.
Read MoreWhile many Jews don’t celebrate Halloween, that doesn’t mean we don’t have our own share of spooky, scary skeletons scattered throughout our day.
Read More(REVIEW) Hellboy is an odd character with a bumpy cinematic history. Based on a comic book series, Hellboy is the son of a demon and a witch who was brought from hell into the world by Nazis. He was rescued and raised by Professor Broom of the BPRD (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense) who became his surrogate father and trained to help save the world from monsters.
Read More(REVIEW) Unlike exorcism movies, which have largely gone unchanged since the 1973 film ‘The Exorcist,” vampire films have gone through interesting cycles of evolution. While vampires originally were portrayed as evil, alien creatures, franchises such as “Twilight” and “The Vampire Diaries” showed them as hot antiheroes and even — at times — as wholesome and misunderstood.
Read More(REVIEW) The “Beetlejuice” sequel shows that Tim Burton continues to present religious themes, such as when Beetlejuice makes the sign of the cross and immediately catches on fire. Also, the movie expands the afterlife and shows how there are places beyond the waiting room and hallways we were shown in the first movie.
Read More(ANALYSIS) Exorcism movies are making a comeback — and the reasons are more interesting than you might think. The likely reasons actually say a lot about the present and the future of religion in America and its intersection with the future of mass media. Here's a deeper look at why Hollywood is going all in on the genre.
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