The Night Walkers
E12830
"The Night Walkers" is an essay by Carl Sagan that explores the science, psychology, and cultural significance of human fear and fascination with the dark and the unknown.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| The Night Walkers canonical | 2 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T81724 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Night Walkers Context triple: [Broca's Brain, notableEssay, The Night Walkers]
-
A.
The Backbone of Night
"The Backbone of Night" is an episode of the science documentary series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" in which Carl Sagan explores humanity’s evolving understanding of the Milky Way and our place in the universe.
-
B.
In the Shadow of Man
In the Shadow of Man is Jane Goodall’s influential 1971 book that chronicles her pioneering field research on wild chimpanzees in Tanzania and helped transform our understanding of primate behavior and human evolution.
-
C.
Wonders of the Invisible World
Wonders of the Invisible World is a 1693 book by Puritan minister Cotton Mather defending the Salem witch trials and describing alleged cases of witchcraft in New England.
-
D.
The Light We Carry
The Light We Carry is a 2022 nonfiction book by Michelle Obama that offers personal reflections and practical wisdom on resilience, hope, and navigating uncertainty.
-
E.
The Mysterious Mother
The Mysterious Mother is a 1768 Gothic verse drama by Horace Walpole that explores dark themes of incest, guilt, and religious anxiety within an aristocratic family.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: The Night Walkers Target entity description: "The Night Walkers" is an essay by Carl Sagan that explores the science, psychology, and cultural significance of human fear and fascination with the dark and the unknown.
-
A.
The Backbone of Night
"The Backbone of Night" is an episode of the science documentary series "Cosmos: A Personal Voyage" in which Carl Sagan explores humanity’s evolving understanding of the Milky Way and our place in the universe.
-
B.
In the Shadow of Man
In the Shadow of Man is Jane Goodall’s influential 1971 book that chronicles her pioneering field research on wild chimpanzees in Tanzania and helped transform our understanding of primate behavior and human evolution.
-
C.
Wonders of the Invisible World
Wonders of the Invisible World is a 1693 book by Puritan minister Cotton Mather defending the Salem witch trials and describing alleged cases of witchcraft in New England.
-
D.
The Light We Carry
The Light We Carry is a 2022 nonfiction book by Michelle Obama that offers personal reflections and practical wisdom on resilience, hope, and navigating uncertainty.
-
E.
The Mysterious Mother
The Mysterious Mother is a 1768 Gothic verse drama by Horace Walpole that explores dark themes of incest, guilt, and religious anxiety within an aristocratic family.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (32)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
essay
ⓘ
literaryWork ⓘ |
| addresses |
fear of the dark in children and adults
ⓘ
how culture shapes fear of nighttime ⓘ role of the unknown in generating fear ⓘ |
| aimsTo |
demystify fear of the dark
ⓘ
encourage rational thinking about unexplained experiences ⓘ |
| author | Carl Sagan ⓘ |
| authorOf | The Night Walkers self-linksurface differs ⓘ |
| explores |
cultural narratives about the night
ⓘ
how darkness influences human psychology ⓘ how humans interpret unexplained events ⓘ scientific explanations for fearful experiences ⓘ |
| genre | popular science essay ⓘ |
| hasPerspective |
humanistic
ⓘ
scientific ⓘ skeptical ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| mainTheme |
cultural attitudes toward darkness
ⓘ
fascination with the unknown ⓘ human fear of the dark ⓘ psychology of fear ⓘ relationship between science and superstition ⓘ |
| relatedTo |
cultural studies of myth and folklore
ⓘ
psychology of perception ⓘ science communication ⓘ |
| topic |
evolutionary origins of fear
ⓘ
myths and folklore about the night ⓘ nighttime and human imagination ⓘ science of fear ⓘ unknown phenomena and human perception ⓘ |
| workOf | Carl Sagan ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: The Night Walkers Description of subject: "The Night Walkers" is an essay by Carl Sagan that explores the science, psychology, and cultural significance of human fear and fascination with the dark and the unknown.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
subject surface form:
Carl Sagan