Overwhelmingly patriotic Dutch family posing for their portrait before the tomb of William the Silent in 1645. By Dirck van Delen, whose day is today.

St Mary Magdalene, Alfrick. #steeplesaturday

No stillness of water erases the liquid paranoia of those Hooklanders soaked in parental scarelore of Stay Belows. There's an ever present tension the surface will be breached, dangling ankles seized by cold, grey hands. The pretty place as trap. – Dr. M. Benn

R is for Resurrection Men is one of the entries brilliantly illustrated by @landisblair.bsky.social in A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death. [Available worldwide] A jump on the body to break its back-bone would double up the corpse so it could be compactly sacked for transport.

Paired. #CemeterySaturday Mt. Olive Cemetery, Chicago, IL ▪️ I just listed this original drawing in my shop. www.etsy.com/listing/4506...

#TheVictorianBookoftheDead Purple moiré and wool half-mourning dress with capelet, c. 1880-85. Moiré was a 2nd mourning fabric, its 'broken' surface pattern was both matte and reflective, transitioning from the dead black of first/deep mourning to more lustrous textiles. Kerry Taylor Auctions

#TheVictorianBookoftheDead Queen Josephine of Sweden's purple silk mourning dress, c. 1860s. Purple might be worn as full or half-mourning by royalty, while it was only worn for half-mourning by ordinary citizens. The bodice's sleeves were shortened. sokisamlingar.sormlandsmuseum.se/objects/c24-...

A musical interlude for #Caturday Brook's Spool Cotton trade card digital.lib.muohio.edu/u?/tradecards,245

#BookWormSat A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all Heaven in a rage. A dove house fill'd with doves and pigeons Shudders Hell thro' all its regions. "Auguries of Innocence," William Blake. Art: Fairies Rescuing a Bird from a Cage, Margaret Tempest, V&A

#BookwormSat 📖 In Appalachian folklore, low-flying crows signal coming illness. A crow calling three times over a house foretells death. 🐦‍⬛Crows singing before other birds means rain. 🎨 Vincent van Gogh – Wheatfield with Crows (1890)

☀️🦅🌙"May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks." 📖J. R. R. Tolkien - The Hobbit. #BookWormSat

‘Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’ Quoth the Raven ‘Nevermore.’ Poe The Raven 1845 #BookWormSat 🖼️ Audubon

“Big Bird looked down Sesame Street. Everything was covered with a thick layer of white snow. Big Bird sighed. It had been a long winter. He was tired of looking at plain white snow.” ~ Big Bird Brings Spring To Sesame Street (1985), Lauren Collier Swindler. #BookWormSat [🎨Marsha Winborn]

RELIGION: A goodly tree, in which all the foul birds of the air have made their nests. - Ambrose Bierce, 'The Devil's Dicionary' #BookWormSat #AmbroseBierce #satire

"Gardening is as good as a smoke screen, and the habit of observing birds through powerful glasses can always be turned to account.” -The Murder at the Vicarage #AgathaChristie #BookWormSat

Athene's small owl is there, perched on a column in ruined Ephesus. 🦉Marjory Bates Pratt #BookWormSat 📷Edmund Fellowes

The owl is happy in his solitude autumn dusk 🦉Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828) #BookWormSat 🎨Yukio Katsuda - Horned Owl and Autumn Colours (1985)

In the owl's opinion everyday is long 🦉 Kobayashi Issa (1763–1828) #BookWormSat 😍Yukio Katsuda (1985)

Goodnight from Ashcourt’s Goslet Road, where bombsite nightmares breach their corrugated iron containment to bleed into the city’s dreaming. Goodnight from Joe Barber, so ale-addled at death his spirit has no idea why the Aelfstone pub crawl mile stretches eternal. Goodnight from Hookland.

Tropoeolum Majus (Octandria Monogynia) / Indian Nasturtium, 1775, by #MaryDelany (English, 1700-1788), who was born #otd, May 14. Held at the British Museum, www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o... #womenartists #artherstory #hernaturalhistory

2/2 As beautiful inside as outside: the Westerkerk, by Hendrick de Keyser, who was born on this day in 1565.

Gettysburg Times 1909 #PhantomsFriday

Even in parks and commons you find Wood Sprites. To be honest, that aren't exactly hard to detect. If you've live in the county for an length of time I think it becomes instinctual. You look at a tree and just know a Wood Sprite lives there. – Becky Roper #VOH

In case you missed it, our latest episode. Fashion and folklore! Special thanks to @earbyfae.bsky.social whose work on magical hats inspired the episode.

Born on this day in 1565, in Utrecht, the great Dutch architect & sculptor Hendrick de Keyser. Here, my own favorite: the Huis met de Hoofden, 1622. Yes, it has heads. How not to love this?

“The nudity of flesh will blush though tameless, The extreme nudity of bone grins shameless, The unsexed skeleton mocks shroud and pall.” - James Thomson #PhantomsFriday #Gothic #skeleton #poetry #poetrysky

The magnificent Ludlow Castle, #Shropshire, has a White Lady grimmer than most. When her clandestine affair with a Welsh knight (in the 1200s) was discovered, she slew him with his own sword and then threw herself off the battlements! A weird 'wheezing' noise has also been reported. #PhantomsFriday

A dramatic nighttime scene with camellias and bamboo leaves produces a visually captivating and atmospheric composition on this woman's haori. 1926-1940, Japan

"'Perhaps,' he said, “you first transgressed The laws of hospitality: All Ghosts instinctively detest The Man that fails to treat his guest With proper cordiality'." The painfully corporeal consequences of ignoring spectral etiquette. ✍🏻 Lewis Carroll's "Phantasmagoria" #PhantomsFriday

Memories. #grickledoodle #vampire #nintendo #animalcrossing #horror #sad #cartoon #dracula #art #drawing #funny #humor

#PhantomsFriday Haunted Schoolgirls! Doom in the Dorm! Headless Teacher!

'Look, he's digging up our pots', James Bentley Some benevolent revenants for #PhantomsFriday

‘Oh whence do you come, my dear friend, to me, With your golden hair all fallen below your knee, And your face as white as snowdrops on the lea, And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?’ -The Poor Ghost, Christina Rossetti www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/3538... #art #PhantomsFriday #poetry #literature

OK, a long feed but bear with me - it's a goody for more than one reason. It involves a Mod group, the Peter B's, who saw a bizarre and frightening phantom at 2am in November 1965 as they were in their van returning from a gig. The figure was beside the A3 near Cobham, #Surrey. #PhantomsFriday #Mods

#PhantomsFriday Spook, Alfred Kubin, 1900 Go to sleep--there's nothing under your bed.... www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

#ForteanFriday A Family Bewitched: In 1871 the David Hoffman family of Wooster was haunted and tortured by an entity they called “IT.” The poltergeist stole money, food, and seemed to have a special hatred for clothing, which it slashed and shredded. [From The Face in the Window] #PhantomsFriday

Graveyard Ghost, 1892 Hans Baluschek (German, 1870-1935) #PhantomsFriday

The Ghost Convertible, cover art by either Theo Thomas or Rudolf Sieber Lonati (1978) #PhantomsFriday

A headless phantom roamed the Lord Leycester Hospital, Warwick, a building which dates back to the 14th C. It may be connected to a headless armour-clad skeleton found in a wall cavity during repairs to the adjoining chapel of St James. #PhantomsFriday

'The Ghost In The Wine Cellar' by Thomas Rowlandson, 1812. I wouldn't care much for its chances if it stood between me and my Malbec. #PhantomsFriday #Gothic

Saint Gertrude of Nivelles and an Augustinian Canoness c. 1525, Unknown Artist. She died on 17 March , 659 - and so shares a feast with St. Patrick (Art Institute Chicago) Her Life notes that she made #Irish monks especially welcome at the abbey she founded with her mother Itta

“Life, however, does not follow a novelist’s discipline. Fiction, one suspects, is tamer than life” writes pulitzer prize winner @appletwigli.bsky.social in her beautiful and emotive memoir on the deaths of her two sons. 📚💙 Read my blog here: deadgoodreading.com/things-in-na...

#FridayFrocks This evening gown, c.1927–28, is heavily decorated with #Beadwork, making a dazzling overall impression. Loose lines of bugle beads have been caught in at regular intervals to create a tiered, festooned effect. #ArtDeco #1920s

Goodnight from Barry Sumpter, not pleased to have been a called a vexation on the spirit and cursed in front of all the drinkers at The Red Lion. Goodnight from PC Bell, wondering both how and why a double bend ahead road sign on the A3606 is glowing red hot. Goodnight from Hookland.

I’m delighted to say that I’ve just signed a contract with @hurstpublishers.bsky.social to write ‘The Church’s Youngest Daughter’, which will be a complete history of Christianity in Lithuania ✝️ 🇱🇹 drfrancisyoung.com/2026/05/14/c...

A windmill from the sketch book of Nicholaes Berchem c. 1645 - 1646 (British Museum)

LITERATURE SEMINAR SERIES #FairytaleTuesday Join me for a FREE online talk on 20 May at 1.30 ‘The Luck of the Ningyo: Japanese human-fish Yokai and the rise of the fake museum #mermaid’ All welcome - booking via Ticket Press below

The abandoned military batteries on coast of Hookland hold their ghosts. Rememberings of war in brick and concrete cicatrix sheltering spectres we'd never charge with dereliction of duty. Spirits still standing watch, still gathering for a brew, a smoke, a natter. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

The toys queuing for interment at the Doll's Graveyard at Rockwood all seem to share a certain aspect in their faces. Bewilderment at their abandonment. Bitter anger. A desire to revenge their fate. None looks ready for burial. None of them seems at peace. – Diana Sears

#TheVictorianBookoftheDead 1907 mourning gown, Sweden. Curiously, over half of the skirt is covered in crape [the most usual 19th and early 20th c spelling for the mourning fabric] while there are lapels of black floral lace. Usually lace was not worn with crape. emuseumplus.lsh.se/eMuseumPlus?...