FRIGHT CLUB Shock! Horror! Action! There’s no better way to get into the Halloween spirit than turning off the lights and scaring yourself out of your skin with a good horror flick. But if watching them (and rewatching them) on the small screen just isn’t enough any more, why not try to see some of the real-life locations where these cult classics were filmed? From a gas station made famous by a certain chainsaw-wielding maniac to a graveyard used in a Stephen King adaptation, here are 11 horror film sets that will still give you goosebumps. READ MORE → GASTRO OBSCURA Rediscovering Moorish Spain’s Cuisine For centuries, anyone trying to prepare “A dish [of carrots in sauce]” from Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī’s Fiḍālat al-Khiwān fī Ṭayyibāt al-Ṭaʿām wa-l-Alwān (Best of Delectable Foods and Dishes from al-Andalus and al-Maghrib), a cookbook composed in Tunis around 1260, would be stymied. Most of the cookbook’s 475 recipes survived in copies, but dozens of recipes were missing from its pages—including that carrot recipe. But in 2018, the British Library’s curator of Arabic scientific manuscripts stumbled upon a nearly complete copy of the Fiḍāla dating to the 15th or perhaps 16th century. He handed it to a food historian, Nawal Nasrallah, who then pieced together the first full English translation of al-Tujībī’s Fiḍāla. READ MORE → ATLAS OBSCURA EXPERIENCES Unseen Culinary Collections In this online experience, we'll feast our eyes on some of the most interesting culinary items culled from the collections of the New York Public Library! With the guidance of an expert NYPL staff member, we'll explore a selection of mouth-watering menus, curious cookbooks, and rare food and drink recipes. Join us as we stream live from inside the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. GET TICKETS → DETROIT, MICHIGAN Merrill Fountain This fountain sits in the middle of Palmer Park in Detroit, Michigan. Built in 1901, the fountain once occupied a place of honor in front of the old Opera House. Though the Detroit Opera House is long gone, its stunning white marble fountain remains. READ MORE → Ancient Korea’s ‘Moon Castle’ More than 1,600 years ago, close to the southeastern coast of the Korean Peninsula, laborers built a palace for a fledgling kingdom. They finished the foundation layer of the massive western rampart, which was complete from an engineering standpoint. But the ancient builders believed something more was needed to protect the structure: human sacrifices. In 2017, archaeologists excavating at Wolseong, the palace of the first dynasty to unify the Korean peninsula, found the remains of a couple. Now, ongoing investigations have yielded a grisly new find, as well as clues to who the victims may have been. The ongoing excavations overall are opening a window to the earliest days of the Silla dynasty, which built Wolseong. READ MORE → THE ATLAS OBSCURA PODCAST The World’s Quietest Room It might sound counterintuitive to say that we’re going to do an audio episode about a room that absorbs 99.99 percent of sound, and yet, that’s exactly what we’re going to do today. Welcome to the Orfield Anechoic Chamber in Minneapolis, a room in a concrete bunker that was once known as the quietest place on Earth. BRIDGEPORT, CONNECTICUT Gustave Whitehead Fountain Though the Wright Brothers are generally accepted as the first people to have achieved sustained powered flight, claims have been made that some managed to achieve the feat before them. Gustave Whitehead was one such inventor. In 1901, White allegedly flew the No. 21— a full-sized engine-powered flying machine with ribbed, bird-like wings and a flared tail— for a half-mile over a field in Fairfield, Connecticut, two years before the Wrights’ famous flight at Kitty Hawk. READ MORE → Magic, Mystery, and Masterpieces Some knew Ricky Jay as a magician, a renowned sleight-of-hand artist. Others discovered him as an actor or an accomplished author. But he was also an eminent collector; among the foremost collectors of texts, artworks, and apparatuses related to magic, its history, and all varieties of its curious offshoots. A quick look through Sotheby’s sale of The Ricky Jay Collection reveals rare, antique books; virtuosic artworks composed of hidden, microscopic writing; and an automaton with which Jay performed on stage. And in just over a week, this emporium of the extraordinary will be auctioned off. READ MORE → TOKYO, JAPAN Ikkoku Bridge Stone Marker for Lost Children In Japan, it’s quite common for shopping malls to come equipped with “lost child centers,” which serve as a sort of lost-and-found for children. A precursor to this feature existed even in the Edo period, which lasted from 1603 to 1867. In 1857, concerned squires of the town funded the construction of a “Stone Marker for Lost Children,” a bulletin board of sorts where parents put up posters describing their lost children, while notices were posted on the other side when the children with matching descriptions were found. READ MORE →