The folk tale tradition—from fairy tales to ghost stories—has origins stretching back to the start of human speech. The art of oral storytelling predates the written word, and has been used for time ...

Philip Pullman's new book distills classic stories to their purest form, and their purest form resembles today's basest TV shows and movies. "There is no psychology in a fairy tale," Philip Pullman ...

The dead of winter is one of the best times to break out your favorite creepy American folk tales. What else is there to do? It's too cold to venture outside for anything more than the bare ...

Fear old women in fairy tales. For as long as people have been telling stories, crones have been scaring the wits out of children. But why does the face of evil so often belong to an old woman?