State of play: With spooky season still lingering on the lawn, we went in search of some of the weird, witchy and wonderful classes available at Virginia's four-year universities.

What we found: Colleges in the Old Dominion are packed with magnificently specific courses that prove there's academic credit for just about every curiosity.

Zoom in: Here are a few of our faves:

👽 Radford: Bigfoot Stole My UFO!: Critically Engaging with Science, Pseudoscience, and the Paranormal — three credits on Bigfoot, UFOs, Chupacabra, psychic powers, ancient aliens and how to evaluate paranormal claims scientifically.

🧙 University of Richmond: Occult America and Witchcraft and Its Interpreters — two religious studies courses exploring witchcraft, hauntings, spirit possession, magic and the Salem witch trials.

🧛 University of Richmond: Vampires in Literature and Film — the lit course you didn't know you needed explores vampires from the 16th century through modern TV and film.

Zoom out: Not every wonderfully weird course involves the paranormal or occult.

🐉 UVA: The Ethics of Dungeons & Dragons — a fall 2026 course using D&D to examine race, power, colonialism and ethics.

🚀 UVA: Decolonize Mars — an ethics course built around colonization and space exploration, focused on Mars as humanity's "natural next step," per the course description.

🐝 Virginia Tech: Bees and Beekeeping, plus a separate lab, introduces students to honey bee biology — complete with actual beekeeping.

🎧 VCU: Code Beats With Python — a one-credit course that teaches Python by having students create hip-hop beats.

🛶 VCU: Footprints on the James — students paddle, camp and study their way down the James River watershed for six credits in this summertime course.

The bottom line: You can go to college in Virginia to study accounting, engineering or biology.

• Or you can go looking for Bigfoot.