"Forest Ghost" – Alfred Kubin

It’s Monday.

In 'Wide World' in 1900 Wilhelm Kulmann told of his escape from cannibals in the Congo Basin. He claimed his colleague, with whom he had travelled in search of fashionable fancy feathers, was eaten. Sounds unlikely but might just be true. Whichever, Paul Hardy's illustration is splendid. #Victorian

'Removal Of The Trolls' by Artus Scheiner. #fairy #fairies #faerie #trolls #gnomes #folklore #legend #artsky

Charles Keeping illustration for 'Dracula'. #CharlesKeeping #Dracula #vampire #vampires #Gothic #horror #gothichorror

Sinister goings-on in 'The Whisper In The Trees' by the prolific writing team of L T Meade & Robert Eustace, who provided a great deal of #weird fiction for the popular magazines (this one is from Pearson's Magazine, 1906). Turns out the heroine is being terrorised by men on stilts! #mystery #horror

‘Mysterious’ glowing spiral appears in sky – near where possible UFO was spotted in 2024 www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-... #UFO #UFOs #ufosky #UFOSightings #UAPs #UAP #Aliens #paranormal

Deep in the Appalachian wilderness, the Hidebehind is a predator you will never see. It is perfectly adapted to concealment, slimming its body to hide behind even the narrowest tree trunk, waiting for a hiker to turn their back. #Folklore #Appalachia

The outlier of the Nine Stones in the #PeakDistrict. It stands between the main circle, on their shallow mound, and Robin Hood's Stride, an oddly shaped outcrop that may have inspired the building of the circle. (Scanned from a photo I took in 2002.) #StandingStoneSunday #stonecircles #Derbyshire

One of Virgil Finlay's very best illustrations in my opinion. It's for Robert E Howard's 'Skull Face'. The silhouette in the skull's eye socket is a masterpiece, as is - as always - his mastery of light and shade. #VirgilFinlay #RobertEHoward #WeirdTales #weirdart #illustration #artsky

A detail of 'Christ With a Child' In St Tysilio's Church, Bryneglwys, #Denbighshire. The glass was given in about 1896 to the memory of John Yale, by his parents. John died aged 31, but choosing to use a portrait of him as a child is really affecting, I think. #StainedGlassSunday

"How do you know but every bird That cuts the airy way Is an immense world of delight Closed by your senses five?" - William Blake, 'The Marriage of Heaven and Hell' (Picture is the title page from the 1790 edition) #BookWormSat #WilliamBlake

Welcome to new mutuals! If it might interest anyone reading, I'm creating three feeds: 1) Goth 2) Halloween Fiends 3) Gothic Gardening More later, including dark art, horror films & books, and gothic literature (among others). Comment to be added! We need co-admins; feel free to sign up. 🖤🦇🎃🥀🌱

Let's check back in a year's time and see if any were ticked off. Please feel free to add any more of your paranormal bingo suggestions...

17 Forbidden Medieval Superstitions and Practices www.medievalists.net/2025/01/17-f... #medieval

One for @chriswoodyard.bsky.social methinks! #Gothic #Victorian

Fu¢k 2025 ⚰️ #Art by Sam Heimer

Along alleys, wyndes and neglected cobbles, we find ghosts. Not grand names made spectre, not phantoms of infamous murderers, but ghosts none the less. The shades of ratcatchers, laundry workers, gin-soaked spirits on way home from the pub. Ghosts taking the shortcuts they knew in life. – #CJosiffe

Rev Robert Kirk was a pioneering folklorist who studied #fairy beliefs around his home at Aberfoyle. #Sterling. In 1691 he wrote 'The Secret Commonwealth Of Fairies', an almost hallucinatory account which led some to believe he was able to actually visit fairyland to gain his info. [1/2 #BookWormSat

Like the ghosts of Blandy Castle, #PhantomsFriday drifts elegantly away into the bright moonlit night. Many thanks to all the contributors to the feed: another rewarding day of fascinating, startling and varied posts. Nice to welcome a new contributor, too.

La Alfaguara Sanatorium 20 minutes by car from the city of Granada, this building was constructed as a hospital for tuberculosis patients. During the Civil War, the building was used as a field hospital, and many soldiers died in its rooms. 1/2 #PhantomsFriday #folklore #horror #ghosts

“The raising of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfilment of which I most eagerly sought;”   (Mary Shelley)   🎨 Angela Barrett “A story of Mary Shelley”   #PhantomsFriday

Stiles are often haunted in #folklore because they are liminal -neither one place nor another. Folklorist Marie Trevelyan recorded a weird example, the 'Big Man's Stile' in the Vale of #Glamorgan. Its #ghost was described as 'gigantic, swarthy, with coal-black hair and fiery eyes'. #PhantomsFriday

Boggart is Cumbrian dialect for ghost. In West Cumbria, Muncaster Castle’s boggart is a white lady apparition. She is said to be the ghost of murdered local, Mary Bragg, seeking revenge or recognition of her demise. #PhantomsFriday #ghosts #dialect #Cumbria

Japanese ghost stories often have elaborate meals where a hapless human returns home to a spouse whom they wronged, and are offered a feast. If anything, this is a bridge to the conceit: the wronged are long dead and want revenge, or a yōkai seeks to avenge them. #PhantomsFriday

1/2 Periwinkle has been known as 'sorcerer's violet', 'fairy paintbrush' or 'flower of death'. It is evergreen, so was associated with immortality and said to calm restless ghosts. 🎨John William Waterhouse www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/3360... #art #fineart #folklore #PhantomsFriday #giftidea

In Pearson's Magazine in 1907, J A Middleton also wrote about Glamis Castle, #Angus, which surely must have more #ghost traditions attached to it than any other house in #Scotland. All the charming (and cruelly uncredited) illustrations follow, plus one from Harmondsworth's Magazine. #PhantomsFriday

Part of a letter we received in 1998. Glovers Farm, Sidley, Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex. #PhantomsFriday

Beadle’s Half‑Dime Library, #19, circa Oct 1877 The Phantom Spy; or, The Pilot of the Prairie "Far out upon the prairie and plainly visible in the moonlight, was what appeared to be a specter horse and rider... she seemed to urge her steed on by a mere exertion of her will." #PhantomsFriday

#PhantomsFriday 1906, Cambridge, MA: 3-year-old Walter Landry said that his mother appeared before him, spoke his name and held out her arms to him--just as she was being buried in a cemetery several miles away. The little boy didn't know she was dead; his father had wanted to (briefly) spare him.

An illustration of a spectre in a marsh by Irving Montagu (1893). Terrifying!😱 #PhantomsFriday

In J A Middleton's 'Grey Ghost Book' she tells of a ghost monk who clearly had none of my charm. It was variously described as 'awful', 'diabolical', 'malicious', 'the most evil thing I ever saw' and looking like 'a pig's face in a pillow case'. It resisted two exorcisms... [1/2 #PhantomsFriday

Aberglasney House and Gardens Llangathen, Carmarthanshire One day in the 1630’s, a housekeeper saw five disembodied candles, floating around the house's newly plastered "blue room. The next morning, five maidservants were found dead in their beds there. 1/2 #phantomsfriday

All that remains of Over Court, just north of Bristol, is the Gothic arch to the right in this engraving. The site is associated with a white lady haunting, notably witnessed by carollers in 1937. Through the entrance arch they saw a bright white figure floating above the ground… #PhantomsFriday

“The fox knows many things” (Archilochus) 🎨 Kat Philbin “Ghost Stories Told By Foxes” #PhantomsFriday

To fully appreciate the ghosts in this book remember to wear your 3-D glasses. 'The House of Terror 3-D' #1, was printed in 1953 by St John Publishing. #PhantomsFriday #50s

"My hair stood on end with horror. I writhed, I struggled, I broke through the bonds of sleep, and I burst with a shriek into my own life and found myself lying shivering with terror in the huge library, with the moonlight flooding through the window." #ConanDoyle, The Leather Funnel #PhantomsFriday

so haunted at moonlight with bat and owl and ghostly moth #PhantomsFriday #illustration Elizabeth Shippen Green for An Old Country House by Richard Le Gallienne 1902

Near Bath there is a road which many locals are reluctant to drive down - especially at night. It is known locally as Sally in the Wood. The road cuts through Brown’s Folly, a patch of woodland supposedly haunted by the ghost of a murdered girl. #phantomsfriday

The haunted Brushmaker's Arms in Hampshire. Like many places, the landlady was very happy to chat over the phone but noted that activity had scaled back since she took over 6 years prior to our conversation. This is a common trait these days. #phantomsfriday #ghosts #hauntings

Written exactly 112 years ago today and appearing in the UK Times newspaper 3 days later, one of the first mentions of the Stone Tape idea in print. #phantomsfriday #ghost #haunt #boxingday

"The Manor House Ghost. A Play In One Act, by Mark N. du Mont." The Christmas Number of the Bexhill Observer 14.12.1912. #PhantomsFriday #Bexhill #Sussex #History #1910s

Happy New Year everyone! Out with the old, in with the new.

Time's a-chasing and a new year is almost upon us, so here's an early call for #PhantomsFriday since you'll all probably be too bleary-eyed to even glance at a computer screen tomorrow. As always, all #ghost posts welcome, so I shall cheekily tag #WyrdWednesday and the sadly lost #FolkyFriday too!

#WyrdWednesday 27 Dec. 1897 After the wake for his father, a man died after drinking embalming fluid, "composed of corrosive sublimate and arsenious acid in dilute alcohol," left at the house by the undertaker in a bottle labeled "Champagne." thevictorianbookofthedead.wordpress.com/2018/05/16/p...

""Do the wild Kerry mountains still echo the cry of anguish with which I burst from Harry's side and flung myself into the lake!" A Strange Warning. - Drawn By F. A. Fraser." The Illustrated London News, Christmas Number 1874. #WyrdWednesday

In the geologically accurate (not) 'Thames Valley Catastrophe' by Grant Allen ('The Strand', 1896), the huge volcano which, as we all know, lurks beneath #Berkshire, finally erupts, causing death and destruction which Martians (who invaded the same year) could only dream of. #WyrdWednesday #sci-fi

For #WordlessWednesday

In 'Bleak House' by #Dickens (the first 2 volumes of which are among the most boring books I've ever read, btw) a note of true bizarreness is added when the horrible alcoholic landlord Krook dies of Spontaneous Human Combustion. I must cut down on the cider and crisps! #WyrdWednesday #CharlesDickens

If you're wondering what to do with that spare skeleton hanging about the place, Gustave Dore has the answer. #GustaveDore #gothic #skeleton #Victorian