The rush of adrenaline is a heady sensation. That evolutionary fight-or-flight response strikes a primal chord deep within our primitive reptilian brain, and the heart-pounding, blood-pumping energy that protected our ancestors from hungry predators has, in modern humans, become a kind of addiction.

Imagine, if you will, this hypothetical scenario: Stephen King, pre-eminant author of the United States, one day decides to storm an army base with a group of friends, intending to spark an insurrection against the government through a broadcast reading of his stories before committing grisly suicide.

According to figures from both the National Institute of Drug Abuse and the National Safety Council, there were more than 106,000 reported drug overdose fatalities in the United States in 2021, a 58% rise from only two years earlier.

Tales of vampires and their carnivorous ilk have spanned centuries and continents.

On the storytelling family tree, suspense and horror are shoots of the same literary branch, attached to a common trunk and rooted in our primitive collective reptilian brain.

Let’s begin with some unusual facts about human anatomy:

- Some women can lactate through the skin of their armpit after giving birth.

- A condition called hyperdontia causes people to be born with an excessive amount of teeth.

Ah, the Wild West. The mere mention of the term arouses near-mythic associations profoundly embedded in the American national psyche. That period of Manifest Destiny, of expansive vistas and painted horizons. Cowboys and Indians, desperadoes, cattle rustlers, long nights on the open range, showdowns at high noon.

In 1968, a minor television commercial director helmed a low-budget black-and-white production in the pastoral American barrens outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and irrevocably altered the course of entertainment history. George A.

Dreams, their content, meaning, interpretation and influence upon our waking lives, have fascinated humankind for thousands of years.

The British medievalist scholar and author Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) is best remembered for his volumes redefining supernatural fiction.