Firefly’s Summer Glau is among the rising stars featured in Vanity Fair:

From The Washington Post:

An international team of archaeologists yesterday unveiled findings from graveyards and settlements occupied at different times over a 5,000-year period by two groups of people.

“Part of discovery is finding things that you least expect,” Paul C. Sereno, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago, said at a news conference at the National Geographic Society. “When you come across something like this, it sends a tingle up your spine.”

The site, which contains at least 200 burials, was found by chance in 2000 while Sereno was looking for dinosaur bones. The encounter, in an unusually remote section of central Niger, lasted less than an hour. It would be three years before Sereno could survey the discovery, let alone dig into it.

Three expeditions later, his team of American, African, French and Italian researchers has uncovered one of the larger Neolithic sites in Africa and one with an unusually rich collection of artifacts and animal, plant and human remains. They are starting to sketch a picture of Gobero’s ancient environment and inhabitants.

“I have never seen such an exceptional site as Gobero. It is actually eight sites where people not only buried their dead but actually lived, as well,” said lead archaeologist Elena Garcea of the University of Cassino, in Italy.

Billy Thornburn: Don’t Ever Change (1937)

Early in June I woke at dawn to let my dog out and found a wooden crate, the type used decades ago by a tea tea importer, outside the back door. The box was nearly identical to one I had found in an old barn in Ohio years earlier. The Ohio crate had contained diaries and journals of several people as well as newspapers and photographs - all from the 1890s - and a previously unknown story from author William Hope Hodgson that appeared to have been written in 1913 shortly before he left for the war that claimed his life. I had published several of the diary entries and the Hodgson story online as The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire.

My dog sniffed the box outside the back porch door with a suspicious air before she walked off to do her business under the trees.

I looked around, but did not see anyone. On top of the crate was an envelope with a handwritten note inside. The writer claimed to have tracked me down and left the chest to me because of my previous interest in the contents of the other crate. I carried the crate inside with my dog following at my heels. I set it on the kitchen table. Inside I found letters, notebooks, folders holding sheaths of yellowed, typewritten manuscripts, and a photo album containing dozens of images from the 1920s and 1930s.

As my morning coffee brewed, I glanced through the contents of the folder on top. It appeared to have been a manuscript written in the style of a 1930s pulp magazine story. My first guess was, of course, that the story was fictional. But as I went through the box and read the notebooks and what appeared to be investigation reports I began to wonder. I now suspect the story referred to actual events and the unknown author wrote up the account as a fictional story. I do not know if the author ever attempted to publish his or her stories, but I suspect from the writing style they were intended for Weird Tales or another pulp horror or adventure magazine such as Weird Spicy Tales.

In the initial story, with chapters posted on Fridays (photos on Wednesdays), and in other stories, there are references to other investigations, hidden pasts, dark deeds referenced only in passing, and secret organizations. I shall do my best to fill in the blanks where possible, but those secrets might be hidden away in other crates, perhaps to be unveiled at a later date.

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8

Chapter 8
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Written on the back of a photo found in the mysterious crate: “My friends celebrate a victory.” Other references refer to Beau Jackson as having volunteered to fight for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War in 1936.

Ghoulville?

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — Some Leavenworth residents have been unknowingly walking around above an underground city, and no one seems to know who created it or why.

Windows, doors and narrow paths beneath a title company at South Fourth and Delaware streets lead to storefronts stretching several city blocks and perhaps beyond.

snip

Some speculate the underground town was created in the 1800s and could have been used during slavery or for fugitives.

“We know that it was pretty secretive, whatever it was that was down here, because not too many people know anything about it,” Lemons said.

Your lying eyes are to blame.

The Glenn Miller Orchestra: Moonlight Serenade (1938)