The Great Arctic Basilisk is one of the earth’s natural cooling mechanisms from the days when giant beasts roamed. Beginning from a small egg, the creature grows to an improbable 3000 feet long, absorbing any heat from the environment around it. The basilisk makes its way into the ocean, where it supercools the water, suspending natural currents and halting atmospheric heat transfer. Eventually it lays a clutch of eggs, preserved in a frozen shell that preserves the next generation for millennia. According to fossil records, the creatures last thawed during the extreme warming event at the end of the Cenozoic period, dominating the northern pole and triggering the ice age lasting through the start of the Holocene period. They’re not due for another 6,000 years, but scientists report the timetable may need to be moved up.

The anatomy of the humans that came through the portal was essentially identical to ours, with the exception of what the surviving scientists called a"telepathic spleen."

It's not much bloody use being able to summon a giant mythical river serpent, groused legendary jungle explorer Cade Caldwell immediately before he was devoured by piranhas, if it’s just going to flip over your bloody boat.

The Tucson police all agreed the little carved bird figures he left behind with tied-up criminals were great branding and a super cute touch. But the Revenging Roadrunner quickly realized carrying five or six of them around in his belt pouches while on patrol was just not going to work.

Members of St. Cyril's Polyhedronic Society would from time to time engage in a strange ritual'part initiation and part parlor game'called Breath of the Medusa. The elder deacons would take turns drinking from a ceremonial dram a chartreuse liquid rumored to be ancient blood stolen from the beheaded gorgon. If one was worthy, he would survive the test; if not, he would be petrified from the inside out.

Georgios Psaraupoulous was known to make the best fishing lures in all of Cyprus; how he crafted them to dart and dive through the water as if alive was a mystery. The legend passed down in his family was that they descended from a woman who Poseidon took as a lover, granting them a boon over the creatures of the sea.

It’s now long extinct, but when it thrived in remote parts of the Miocene subpolar rainforest, the Hokus vitriflorus, or Giant Vitrifruit Tree, bore remarkable globelike pods made of hardened clear resin and filled with the sweetest nectar. The pods could be plucked and carried away by early hominids for convenient portable refreshment. Or so amateur paleobotanist Allison Kyzmyrik likes to tell people.

An alarm went up in the halls of Pandemonium; someone had stolen the crest from the palace doors of Hell. Asmodiel knew well the price if he was caught, but he knew better the price it would fetch in the Crooked Market.

In remote mountain towns of Carpathia, children are warned never to pick up dolls they find laying on the sides of lonely paths or abandoned in clearings in the woods. They are a trap laid by the kikimora; she steals the little girl or boy foolish enough to take the doll, and sends home a shambling, hollow-eyed scarecrow in their place.

Research and/or verification in process for this curiosity - check back soon!