Death

Suspected witch Mary Sutton is “swum” in a Bedfordshire millpond in 1612, as shown in a contemporary illustration. (Picture by Getty Images)

Witchfinding: what drove the hunters’ cruel crusade and what methods did they use?.

Shakespearean deaths: swordfights, snakebites & poison.

A lobbycard for the 1923 film Is Conan Doyle Right? (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

The supernatural interests of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Outbreak of dance mania

The medieval dancing plague: what caused people to dance themselves to death?

Froissart illustration of Hugh Despenser the Younger's execution by being hanged, drawn and quartered. Despenser is on a ladder, as a man beside him disembowels him and tosses his entrails into a fire

‘Godly butchery’: the horrifying history of hanging, drawing and quartering

Searching for WW1’s fallen soldiers.

Ghosts, necromancy & the underworld in ancient Mesopotamia.

Anne Boleyn, who was executed by beheading on 19 May 1536 after being found guilty of high treason, was said to have had "much joy and pleasure in death". (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)

The final days of Anne Boleyn: why did she die?

Bog bodies: what can they teach us?.

Women 'take the air' in an attempt to ward off the Spanish Flu

"Far too little, too late": what happened when Spanish Flu hit Britain?.

Dr Jenna Dittmar, who has been studying medieval skeletons, reveals what her findings can tell us about injuries and violence in the era. (Image by Getty Images)

Fatal accidents and violent injuries in the Middle Ages.

Victorian pet cemeteries: animals in the afterlife.

Why Charles I had to die.

Illustration of a mummy with mask

How to make an Egyptian mummy in 6 steps.

Queen Victoria

The final days and death of Queen Victoria

The decline and death of Henry VIII.

Thomas Becket: from murder to martyrdom.

Workers repair Fleet sewer in 1854. London’s creaking sewer network sparked anxieties over what lay beneath the sprawling capital. (Photo by Guildhall Library & Art Gallery/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Living in fear: the dangers of Victorian London.

Vahalla is depicted as a round-topped building in this funerary stone from 8th-century Sweden

Valhalla: fighting and feasting in the Viking warrior afterlife

This engraving by William Hogarth shows the final instalment of a sequence of artworks called 'The Four Stages of Cruelty' (1751). In it, the fictional Tom Nero is being dissected for anatomical studies at Cutlerian theatre near Newgate prison after being hanged for murder. Nero looks like the Dead-Alive, as though he can see and smell his own executed body on the dissection table. The chief physician sits in the centre on a high-backed chair, resembling a high court judge. He is surrounded by various medical men, including penal surgeons, who did gallows work. The skeletons of dissected criminals were usually refused a Christian burial and so were displayed as specimens, as can be seen top left and top right. (Photo by Guildhall Library/Getty Images)

Surviving the gallows: the Georgian hangings that didn't go to plan.

Women in black: the surprising history of widows.

The White Ship disaster

The White Ship disaster"The most disastrous moment in British maritime history".

The White Ship: a medieval royal tragedy.

Anne Boleyn

Anne Boleyn’s final battle: Tracy Borman reveals Henry VIII's final 'kindness'.

Rescue workers at the scene of the wrecked Pantglas Junior School at Aberfan, South Wales. (Getty Images)

Death under the black mountain: surviving the 1966 Aberfan disaster

Q&A: Why and how did the Aztecs practise human sacrifice?

King George VI and his eldest daughter, Elizabeth

The death of King George VI: what happened?

Alexander the Great

Where is Alexander the Great buried? And other questions about his death…

A portrait of Thomas Cromwell.

The downfall of Thomas Cromwell

Illustration from Dante's ‘Inferno', depicting thieves tormented in hell by serpents.

General ancient history

A brief history of the afterlife