Odd Page History
The weird footnotes of the past. A small, one-person archive of strange folklore, lost stories, and the odd pages of history, curated by Eleanor Thorne in Boston, MA.
Latest entry
Thirty-Eight People, Skulls Touched With Red: The Chimú Tomb That Looters Never Reached — October 25, 2026
An untouched Chimú funerary platform at Chan Chan, at least 38 people, and skulls touched with red pigment — what an intact burial can tell us that a looted one cannot.
From the archive drawers
Twenty-three entries, filed by shelf. Every link below goes to a real entry in this build. There are no placeholder cards.
Folklore
Monsters, ghosts, and the stories people told before they had another explanation.
- Before the Pumpkin: The Victorian Halloween of Turnips, Witch Marks and Fairies — October 25, 2026
- Before Dracula: The Actual Vampire the 18th Century Was Afraid Of — April 18, 2026
- Why the Victorians Went Ghost Mad — A Short History of Victorian Spiritualism — April 16, 2026
- A Brief, Annotated History of the Werewolf — April 14, 2026
- The Fairy Tales the Grimms Cut Out — March 24, 2026
- What the Sailors Said They Saw: A Short History of the Sea Monster — March 22, 2026
Fun
Deaths, hoaxes, laws, and legends that sound invented and mostly are not.
- Seven Historical Deaths Too Strange to Invent — April 04, 2026
- A Cabinet of Supernatural Legends, Filed by Region — April 02, 2026
- Six Historical Hoaxes That Worked, and One That Did Not — March 15, 2026
- Twelve Historical Facts That Sound Invented — March 10, 2026
- Eight of History's Strangest Laws — With Citations — March 05, 2026
Stories
Letters, last words, shipwrecks, lost cities, and mysteries that stay open.
- Thirty-Eight People, Skulls Touched With Red: The Chimú Tomb That Looters Never Reached — October 25, 2026
- Six Historical Mysteries Archivists Still Argue About — April 10, 2026
- The Last Words They Meant, and the Ones They Were Given — April 06, 2026
- Five Lost Cities and the People Who Found Them Again — March 20, 2026
- Three Letters the Recipients Never Opened — March 17, 2026
- Five Forgotten Shipwrecks Worth Remembering — March 08, 2026
Lists
Failures, reigns, and remedies, filed as lists because the record comes in lists.
- The Ten Greatest Failures in History — April 08, 2026
- Eight of the Shortest Royal Reigns in Recorded History — March 12, 2026
- Nine Medieval Medical Treatments That Made Patients Worse — February 22, 2026
Finance
Money, markets, and the strange things people have agreed to treat as valuable.
- Six Disasters of the Stock Market — March 31, 2026
- Tulip Mania: Smaller, Stranger, and More Human Than the Legend — March 28, 2026
- Seven Unusual Currencies That Once Bought Real Things — February 28, 2026
About this archive
Every entry started in a primary source somewhere — a chronicle, a court record, a newspaper on microfilm, a contract, a report. Where the record is uncertain, the entry says so. Corrections are welcome through the contact page. Correspondence: archive@oddpagehistory.com.