Old Haunts
Old Haunts
Timeless stories from our 174-year archive handpicked to add context to the news of the day.
Trick or Treat?
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Téa Obreht stalks the Balkans for the real-life undead.
Read “Twilight of the Vampires” by Téa Obreht
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“We are not the kind of couple who would naturally keep open house for ghosts.”
Read “Four Months in a Haunted House” by Harlan Jacobs
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Groan if you’ve heard this one before: the Halloween boom in the Rust Belt.
Read “The Haunting of Western Pennsylvania” by Rachel Wilkinson
Fright Night?
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“Whenever somebody more than usually atrocious is elected to high public office, we serious thinkers are apt to console ourselves with the reflection that under a democratic system a people gets the government it deserves. It is time to get rid of this facile optimism. In a few days some twenty-five or fifty million of us will go to the polls and express our choice…”
Read “The Presidents We Deserve” by Elmer Holmes Davis
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Nightmares in the wake of the 2016 election.
Read “Night Terrors” by Lucy Corin
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Lewis H. Lapham recounts the fateful, fitful election of 2000.
Read “The Dimpled Chad” by Lewis H. Lapham
Ghosts of World Series Past
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Don DeLillo’s baseball classic.
Read “Pafko at the Wall” by Don DeLillo
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George Plimpton chats with Marianne Moore while watching the Dodgers beat the Yankees.
Read “The World Series with Marianne Moore” by George Plimpton
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Marianne Moore chats with George Plimpton while watching the Dodgers beat the Yankees.
Read “Ten Answers” by Marianne Moore
Run!
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“I never would have believed that the New York City Marathon could bring tears to anyone’s eyes. This is an end-of-the-world spectacle.”
Read “Ads for Ourselves” from “The New York City Marathon” by Jean Baudrillard
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It’s a marathon, not a sprint: on the New York runners who chose the way of the tortoise over the way of the hare.
Read “Going Nowhere Fast” by Lawrence Shainberg
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Gotta go fast? Steve Hendricks experiments on an empty stomach.
Read “Starving Your Way to Vigor” by Steve Hendricks