This Halloween, we're telling you what happened when Mathilda traveled to Venice. When Carnival breaks out there, the dead especially love to slip into the colorful crowds. The ghosts simply find it too tedious to stand around unnoticed all year when, once a year, they can put on a mask and legally pretend to be a rather pale Venetian in costume. A clear mission for Mathilda Friday. Happy Halloween – dead or alive. (Watch our Halloween Video on YouTube)more

There are corners of this world that conceal themselves so stubbornly from ordinary eyes, it is as though they were bound by a secret protective enchantment. Most people would dismiss the tales of them as mere nonsense or childish naivety. Yet, a chosen few know that the veil between our reality and the hidden Otherworld is paper-thin. Tucked away deep within the Ticino mountains of Switzerland lies one such place. - Origlio. When the night grows still and moonlight drapes itself over the old and venerable church of San Giorgio, the very air begins to shimmer. It is the unmistakable sign that one of the hidden gateways to the Otherworld is close at hand. A faint whisper amongst the branches, a deep, murmuring echo in the woods, and a sudden, golden glow… Was that the fleeting glimmer of an elven creature? Or merely a glow-worm...? Amidst the ancient trees, the world seems to awaken. And suddenly, standing upon the stone steps of the church of Santa Maria, is a wondrous old man. His clothes appear old-fashioned and rather worse for wear, yet there is a kindly, unmistakable twinkle in his eyes. He smiles and beckons us forward. And before we know it, wonder triumphs over reason. - We follow him – straight through the invisible portal on an unparalleled journey into the Otherworld of myths and fairy tales. - Be a traveller of the other worlds.more

Every respectable story has the brazen impudence to start right in the very thick of things. A man trips headlong into an adventure, rubs his eyes, casts about, and tries desperately to figure out just how he got mixed up in such a farce in the first place. Before he knows it, he is making the acquaintance of the oddest characters—or worse, creatures that have no business appearing in any sensible book—getting himself hopelessly lost in places no honest man can pronounce, and searching for Lord-knows-what or whom, adrift somewhere between space, time, and his own good sense. Origlio, tucked away in the Swiss mountains of Ticino, is just the sort of patch of earth that folks nowadays like to call a “place of power,” using big, high-flown words. Truth be told, this Italian-speaking slice of Switzerland is a grand piece of country, stuffed to the brim with ancient yarns and a past so deep you can hardly see the bottom of it. To go along with our music video Origlio (Bells of Ticino), we have now pieced together a second bit of screen magic—complete with its own soundtrack and a tale all its own, meant to act as a doorkeeper into the curious otherworld of Origlio. Here, old legends tangle themselves up with the glorious landscape surrounding the little lake of Origlio, Lake Lugano, and Lago Maggiore, brazenly close to the Italian border. If a body can bring himself to wander all the way around the little lake of Origlio, he’ll feel a strange, whimsical sort of magic rising right out of the soil. And who knows—if you happen to amble up toward the church of San Giorgio e Santa Maria Immacolata at dusk, just as the first fireflies start flickering like tiny will-o'-the-wisps among the trees... well, then you’ve likely got one foot firmly planted in the doorway to the otherworld.more