When Kuku first heard of the great hunters and warriors and their voyage into the forest beyond the mountains and never returned, his childish wish was to find out the truth behind the story. The perceptions about the flora and fauna were negative. The forest was believed to harbor wild animals. The dead forest. The devils vineyard. The inhabitants were against him, but Kuku was bent on finding out more about their ancestors of blessed memory. Follow him through the story full of suspense as he uncovers the mysteries in the dead forest.

When Kuku first heard of the great hunters and warriors and their voyage into the forest beyond the mountains and never returned, his childish wish was to find out the truth behind the story. The perceptions about the flora and fauna were negative. The forest was believed to harbor wild animals. The dead forest. The devil s vineyard. The inhabitants were against him, but Kuku was bent on finding out more about their ancestors of blessed memory. Follow him through the story full of suspense as he uncovers the mysteries in the dead forest.

How the ghost stories of pagan times reveal the seamless union existing between the world of the living and the afterlife • Demonstrates how Medieval Christianity transformed the more corporeal ghost encountered in pagan cultures with the disembodied form known today • Explains how the returning dead were once viewed as either troublemakers or guarantors of the social order The impermeable border the modern world sees existing between the world of the living and the afterlife was not visible to our ancestors. The dead could--and did--cross back and forth at will. The pagan mind had no fear of death, but some of the dead were definitely to be dreaded: those who failed to go peacefully into the afterlife but remained on this side in order to right a wrong that had befallen them personally or to ensure that the law promoted by the ancestors was being respected. But these dead individuals were a far cry from the amorphous ectoplasm that is featured in modern ghost stories. These earlier visitors from beyond the grave--known as revenants--slept, ate, and fought like men, even when, like Klaufi of the Svarfdaela Saga, they carried their heads in their arms. Revenants were part of the ancestor worship prevalent in the pagan world and still practiced in indigenous cultures such as the Fang and Kota of equatorial Africa, among others. The Church, eager to supplant this familial faith with its own, engineered the transformation of the corporeal revenant into the disembodied ghost of modern times, which could then be easily discounted as a figment of the imagination or the work of the devil. The sanctified grounds of the church cemetery replaced the burial mounds on the family farm, where the ancestors remained as an integral part of the living community. This exile to the formal graveyard, ironically enough, has contributed to the great loss of the sacred that characterizes the modern world.

Early modernity rediscovered tragedy in the dramas and the theoretical writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Attempting to make new tragic fictions, writers like Shakespeare, Webster, Hardy, Corneille, and Racine created a dramatic form that would probably have been unrecognizable to the ancient Athenians. Tragedy and the Return of the Dead recovers a model of the tragic that fits ancient tragedies, early modern tragedies, as well as contemporary narratives and films no longer called “tragic” but which perpetuate the same elements. Authoritative, wide-ranging, and thought provoking, Tragedy and the Return of the Dead uncovers a set of interlocking plots of family violence that stretch from Greek antiquity up to the popular culture of today. Casting aside the elite, idealist view that tragedy manifests the conflict between two equal goods or the human struggle against the divine, John D. Lyons looks closely at tragedy’s staging of gory and painful deaths, ignominious burials, and the haunting return of ghosts. Through this adjusted lens Le Cid, Hamlet, Frankenstein, The Spanish Tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, Phèdre, Macbeth, and other early modern works appear in a striking new light. These works are at the center of a panorama that stretches from Aeschylus’s Agamemnon to Hitchcock’s Psycho and are placed against the background of the Gothic novel, Freud’s “uncanny,” and Burke’s “sublime.” Lyons demonstrates how tragedy under other names, such as “Gothic fiction” and “thrillers,” is far from dead and continues as a vital part of popular culture.

There is nothing as entertaining as reliving some forlorn events. This account is of some events that a young man thought he had lost, but in fact, they are alive in retrospect, in his psyche, and his personality. For him to be able to bring back this vivid recreation of the past and to make it alive are the handiwork of a gifted craftsman with great imagination and a vivid sense of history and emotional balance. Anyone who had witnessed the Nigerian Civil War at the Asaba/Illah axis would really feel this genuine rehearsal of the events as if they happened just a few days ago. Festival and Civil War: The Agony of a Seven Year Old is a book of legacy.

New York magazine was born in 1968 after a run as an insert of the New York Herald Tribune and quickly made a place for itself as the trusted resource for readers across the country. With award-winning writing and photography covering everything from politics and food to theater and fashion, the magazine's consistent mission has been to reflect back to its audience the energy and excitement of the city itself, while celebrating New York as both a place and an idea.

The Return of the Living Dead film series has become one of the most successful zombie movie franchises of all time, gaining cult status across the world and inspiring movies such as 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead, and Zombieland. For the first time in 25 years, the cast and crew of all five films in this franchise reveal the stories behind the movies, offering their own opinions and details about life on the sets of some of the most fraught productions in cinema history. Supported by dozens of cast and crew members, The Complete History of the Return of the Living Dead features hundreds of previously unreleased behind-the-scenes photographs and exclusive artwork. This eye-catching, comprehensive book is the ultimate celebration of The Return of the Living Dead franchise and all those who contributed to its creation.