In 1587, over 100 settlers built a colony on Roanoke Island, North Carolina. When their governor returned years later, the town was gone—no bodies, no signs of a fight. The only clue was a single word carved into a tree: CROATOAN. Historians point to drought, starvation, or that the settlers joined local tribes. But folklore tells a darker story… that the colony was cursed. Some whispered of witchcraft, rituals, or dark forces tied to the land itself. No bones. No graves. Just silence. To this d

If ants could speak, the tunnels of some colonies would echo with cries of, “The queen is dead, long live the queen!” Utterly devoted to their matriarchs, these social insects sometimes go through regime change, when a usurper infiltrates an established ant colony, kills the host queen, and persuades the resident workers to serve her instead. But as scientists report in Current Biology, some of these so-called parasitic queens employ an even more devious strategy, one that seems lifted straight