This week, a case of child abuse in Indiana opens the door for lots of Web surfers to explore an unknown culture.

It started on September 13, when a parking lot security camera caught an Indiana woman named Madelyne Gorman Toogood (#43) beating her four-year-old daughter in the back of her car. The story soon became national news, and this tape itself has received plenty of searches on Lycos.

But what seems to have struck Lycos users as more interesting is Toogood's cultural background as one of the Irish Travelers (#10). The Travelers, also known as "White Gypsies," are an ethnically linked group of nomads that have roamed Ireland, and later the United States, supporting themselves as itinerant roofers, painters, and handymen -- and, allegedly, con men. Some Irish Travelers are known for pulling home-improvement scams on the elderly.

Travelers are quite insular, devout Roman Catholics who rarely marry outsiders. They still speak a language known alternately as Shelta or Gammon, which is descended from Gaelic with bits of English, Greek, and Hebrew. Toogood is believed to belong to an Indiana-based Traveler group called the Greenhorn Carrolls.

SCARED ALREADY: You can tell what a big holiday Halloween is in American pop culture by the fact that it has reached #1 on the Lycos 50 a full month early. That's the earliest Halloween has hit the top spot, although in past years it has been kept at #2 due to the Olympics (in 2000) and Osama bin Laden (in 2001).

ALL WET: Lycos users were clearly worried about Tropical Storm Isidore (#7) -- so worried, in fact, that they upgraded the storm to Hurricane Isidore without asking the National Weather Service. Hurricane searches went up 75 percent even though the storm never hit that level, and Hurricane Isidore got far more searches than Tropical Storm Isidore.

MYSTERY TERMS: A couple of Lycos 50 readers have attempted to solve the mysterious recent rises of The Bible (#11) and Apollo 11 (#40). Bruce Lawrence suggests that Bible searches may be on the rise because tensions in the Middle East have curious searchers checking out the Biblical history behind the rivalry of the three western religions. Eli Friedman points out that scientists recently discovered a portion of an Apollo rocket orbiting the Earth. Unfortunately, that was an Apollo 12 rocket, so the rise in Apollo 11 searches is still unexplained.

GAMES ON: Computer game The Sims (#27) is back on the rise thanks to a new expansion, Sims Unleashed... For the first time this week, the upcoming Grand Theft Auto Vice City was responsible for more GTA (#19) searches than the last hit, GTA3... Just missing the Lycos 50 was the new PS2 game Kingdom Hearts, a sword-and-sorcery quest that combines characters from the popular Final Fantasy (#18) series with Disney characters from Donald Duck to Winnie the Pooh.

SHORT SUBJECTS: With school back in session, kids are boosting marijuana (#12) searches again... Golf's intercontinental team tourney, the Ryder Cup (#31) , was popular with online golf fans... After opening high, Survivor Thailand takes a tumble from #10 to #42.

NEW THIS WEEK: Tropical Storm Isidore, Irish Travelers, Ryder Cup, Emmy Awards, Madelyne Gorman Toogood, Elvis Presley, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

DROPOUTS: Fantasy football (after 11 weeks), New York City, Napster, World Trade Center, Tupac Shakur, Powerball, Yom Kippur.

TWO YEARS AGO: Wrestler Chyna was hot thanks to her Playboy pictorial. This week actress Kristy Swanson, the original Buffy from the movie that preceded the TV show, got a hefty number of searches thanks to her appearance in Playboy.

TOMORROW: Inside mortgage searches.