Stories By Van

Since ancient times, ghost stories - tales of spirits who return from the dead to haunt the places they left behind - have figured prominently in the folklore of many cultures around the world. A rich subset of these tales involve historical figures ranging from queens and politicians to writers and gangsters, many of whom died early, violent or mysterious deaths. What Is a Ghost? The concept of a ghost, also known as a specter, is based on the ancient idea that a person’s spirit exists separately from his or her body, and may continue to exist after that person dies. Because of this idea, many societies began to use funeral rituals as a way of ensuring that the dead person’s spirit would not return to “haunt” the living. Did you know? The notorious mobster Al Capone has reportedly appeared to disrespectful visitors at his funeral plot in an Illinois cemetery. Spectral banjo music has supposedly been heard coming from inside Capone's old cell at Alcatraz, where he was one ...

Regular readers of my blog will know that I love horror films. My favorite type are the archetypal ‘slasher’ movies (franchises such as Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Halloween, etc.), I do like a bit of ‘schlock horror’ (such as the David Cronenberg’s films Scanners and The Fly) as well as ‘psychological horror’ (such as Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Jaume Collet-Serra’s Orphan). But why do we love to watch scary films? Dr. Jeffrey Goldstein, a professor of social and organizational psychology at the University of Utrecht (and for whom I have written book chapters on various aspects of video game play) in a 2013 interview for IGN (formerly Imagine Games Network) was quoted as saying: "People go to horror films because they want to be frightened or they wouldn't do it twice. You choose your entertainment because you want it to affect you. That's certainly true of people who go to entertainment products like horror films that have big effects. They w...

A week after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s “1984” is the best-selling book on Amazon.com. The hearts of a thousand English teachers must be warmed as people flock to a novel published in 1949 for ways to think about their present moment. Orwell set his story in Oceania, one of three blocs or mega-states fighting over the globe in 1984. There has been a nuclear exchange, and the blocs seem to have agreed to perpetual conventional war, probably because constant warfare serves their shared interests in domestic control. Oceania demands total subservience. It is a police state, with helicopters monitoring people’s activities, even watching through their windows. But Orwell emphasises it is the “ThinkPol,” the Thought Police, who really monitor the “Proles,” the lowest 85 per cent of the population outside the party elite. The ThinkPol move invisibly among society seeking out, even encouraging, thoughtcrimes so they can make the perpetrators disappear for ...

The word “psychopath” immediately directs our minds to several icons of modern culture. Not all of them would be consistent with the pathology in question, but in general, film, television and literature are full of real and fictional characters that cause fascination, fear, curiosity and rejection at the same time. Why are we so attracted by psychopaths? What is it about their minds and in their form of behaving that have us searching for explanations and possible justifications? Psychopathy is a type of personality disorder. A psychopath is a person whose personality is characterized by dominating others through threats, feeling no guilt or remorse for their actions, and using manipulation to achieve their own interests. All under a facade of being absolutely normal. Are They Insane? People often make the mistake of confusing psychopaths with psychotics. The main difference is that the former does not have hallucinations or other forms of irrational thinking, and does ...

When a report on climate change hit the U.S. president's desk, the suggestion was not to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Rather, scientific advisers counseled intervention via technology in the climate system itself—a practice now known as geoengineering. And the president was not Barack Obama, George W. Bush or even Bill Clinton—it was Lyndon Johnson in 1965. "This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through…a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels," President Johnson told Congress in February of that year. To address the problem, his science advisers suggested spreading reflective particles over 13 million square kilometers of ocean in order to reflect an extra 1 percent of sunlight away from Earth. Today, with climate change accelerating and little being done to curb the greenhouse gas emissions, some scientists have resurrected the idea of "deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary...

Okay, it's Monday, which means it's time for another conspiracy theory. Full disclosure right up front: I HATE THIS THEORY Always have, always will. This goes right up there with the Flat-Earth theory. How do people still believe this theory? We went to the moon multiple  times since this one. I don't know if maybe people are saying that just the first moon landing was faked, or if it's all of them. There's no way people think that we've never  been to the moon. I mean, we have the technology! Mankind first stepped foot on the Moon on 20 July 1969, achieving what is arguably humanity’s greatest ever feat of exploration. For two and a half hours, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the lunar surface on foot while Michael Collins piloted the Apollo 11 orbiter around the Moon. That’s the history that we continue to celebrate today, nearly 50 years on from the first landing. Many of us either remember watching the landing ourselves or have heard the memorie...

Today, personalized wedding vows are becoming more and more popular, with couples wanting to pay tribute to their unique relationship using their own words instead of something that's been said before (and maybe impress their guests in the process). But plenty of people still use traditional vows - either in whole, in part, or adapting some portion of them. Standard wedding vows have also given us some of our most memorable pop culture moments, like the immortal "I, Ross, Take Thee, Rachel" Friends scene. In the United States, the traditional Catholic wedding ceremony finds many couples (regardless of how religious they really are in their day-to-day lives) reciting the time-honored spiel up at the altar. Though there are several variations, a standard version goes like this: "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part." The whole beginning "I'll love you...