an encyclopaedia of the impossible world

The oceans are deep and dark, the ancient and ancestral home of all life, and sometimes spawn things more alien and more horrendous than a healthy mind might conceive of. Although its closest common relatives were once believed to be starfish (from whose scientific class it takes the latter part of its name) the Lichtenberg Asteroidea is, some now argue, more likely an unnatural mutation of some already-strange cephalopod. Hunting primarily in the waters of the Tsushima Basin

Lost, found, then lost again; there is a totem which contains the essence of being completely and irrevocably forgotten, of being written entirely out of time and memory. The Château de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley has a long and storied place in French history, but outside of its more commonly known past it was also the location of a secret prison and grave, the need and the intent behind its creation and construction long forgotten. Seeming to predate even the earliest mi

Humanity has created some of the most terrible monsters imaginable, our kindest impulses becoming our cruellest punishments, where hubris and the best of intentions meet. Despite the detailed documentation of the deeds and circumstances by which The Veilwight was created, the exact moment when the results of ritual and prayer birthed its unintended horror is unclear; iterative and accumulative as the accidental genesis of this singular apparition appears to have been. It bega

Named both as vaguely as is descriptive and as specifically as our knowledge will allow, The Abhorrence brings incomparable death or inconsolable suffering per its whims. The Abhorrence is one of the oldest phenomena for which we have a name, the oldest thing that no amount of speculation or study - such as is possible - has even begun to create an understanding of. An ancient force, fundamentally an instantiation of the platonic ideal of ‘wrong’, The Abhorrence is everything

Whilst the island of Crete may be most famous for its place in a history that has become mythical, the consequences of that infamy live on in its most notorious children. Both prison and punishment, the presence of the Labyrinth of Daedalus, and the snorting, grunting bellows of Asterion - the minotaur - that echoed out in the silence when the seas were becalmed, were an oppressive and constant reminder of those that had been taken from the people of Crete: The fathers and br

If hate can be elevated into ecstasy, if the breaking of bones and the rending of flesh can be considered a form of art, who could turn such miseries into their vocation? Named for the grim consistency of its vision and, pun unintended, its execution, The Art of Mars is the title given to a series of baroque, brutal and charnel tableaus staged all throughout recorded history. Sometimes considered the work of a murderous cult, especially where more mundane investigations are a

Whether or not you believe in the reality of aethereal essences that fan the sparks of life into immortal flames; those who do see a value and a power in collecting them. At the twilight of the nineteenth century the Chicago World's Fair promised many marvels, some of which would later go on to become banal in their ubiquity, but on its fringes there were one or two... unofficial exhibitors... whose work and workings remain shrouded in secrecy. Not for them the promise of tec

Murder is not only a terrible and much too commonplace crime but, in any number of faiths and natural philosophies, is seen to create an imbalance that must be redressed. Eventually almost all burial sites are left untended, falling into disarray and becoming overgrown with whatever opportunistic local weeds happen to chance upon the soil. Nonetheless, even the most scrupulously maintained of resting places can - in rare cases and certain circumstances - become the home for a

Murder is, undoubtedly, a horrendous crime no matter the motive and means. Still, there is something especially sinister when no aspect of it can be reasoned or reckoned. Though the events leading up to the atrocity were not covered up so much as barely considered and reported upon, in even local news, their horrifying consequences were hidden methodically, carefully. In the September of 1998 thirty-four itinerant and at-risk citizens of Cologne were abducted by persons or pa