The word "siren" means two things in our modern culture: a loud, wailing, warning sound, like you might find on an ambulance or firetruck, or a sexy lady mermaid who lures sailors to a watery grave.

Long before Disney introduced the family-friendly Ariel, mermaids were used in fantasy fiction as a safe representation of female sexuality, apropos for even the most puritanical of societies. But in ...

Contrary to what the Disney movie would have you believe, mermaids are more often associated with bad luck and tragedy than with romance and fabulous red hair. In legends and folklore about the ...

In ancient times, sailors once lashed themselves to their masts to avoid being lured to their deaths by seductive mermaids known as sirens. Today, on the sun-kissed western shores of Italy, mermaids ...

When the sirens called to Odysseus he was zigzagging through the mushroom-shaped turf sea stacks rising between Santo Stefano and Ventotene’s Cala Nave beach. Under the thatched roof at Mast’Aniello’s ...