You play Carcassonne with one base set. We play it with three. We are not the same.

🎶 He knows if you are sleeping / he knows your welcome mat / he knows if you’ve been bad or good / he’s lobster-riding rat 🎶

The sky above Castle Pieterstein teems with obscure and eldritch energies, making it a home for many unusual beings. This pair of Star Vampires, a common enough sight at this time of year, have been drawn to feed on certain rarified forms of electromagnetism

Delighted to have this published today in the Journal of the British Society for the History of Medicine bshm.org.uk/wp-content/u...

The sky above Castle Pieterstein teems with obscure and eldritch energies, making it a home for many unusual beings. This pair of Star Vampires, a common enough sight at this time of year, have been drawn to feed on certain rarified forms of electromagnetism

One from the understandably locked archives of Castle Pieterstein where I am sporting a thankfully short-lived Jesus And Mary Chain haircut while @anatomicalcat.bsky.social goes full Goblin Mode.

Central belt Scotland is not even that far north but we’ve barely seen sunlight today. That’s largely because I’ve been in the pub all day but solstice vibes whatever.

One thing I’d like for 2026 is an illustration of Castle Pieterstein so putting that idea out into the world in case anyone’s up to it! (Ian Miller illustration as an example)

I got this Tyranid Hive Fleet Capillary Tower painted up in a couple of hours today, which is lightning fast for me. Just need some detailing and the base finishing off.

May I introduce you to the concept of lasaagneer, which is lasagne filled with saag paneer (made by @anatomicalcat.bsky.social) CW: Food

Bloodborne, undeniably. One of my favourite ever games. One of the few I’ve fully completed. SOMA would be a close second, though. Heart-wrenching and bleak, but somehow beautiful.

Happy birthday to Masami Akita, better know as Merzbow, born on this day in 1956.

One thing I do hate about Christmas, tho, is wrapping presents. If I could go back in time and find whoever decided you have to wrap presents then, by jingo, I would beat ten shades of fuck out of them.

Last Christmas playing in the school playground next door and I’ve come to realise that I unironically really like it as a song. Record exec: Hi, George! Have you written the lyrics for that Christmas single yet? George Michael: Yeah, boss. Real gloomy and bitter, like you said.

Spooky Advent Day 17: The Stone Tape by Nigel Kneale. An ancient evil is unleashed by an electronics research team working in a renovated Victorian mansion with much older origins, apparently haunted by a maid falling to her death. Broadcast as BBC Ghost Story for Christmas in 1972.

Karpatski Prijestolonasljednik I Apoteoza Roda Neljudskoga (Talog, 2021) #NowPlaying talog.bandcamp.com/album/karpat...

Overheard a staff member in Tesco explaining how meal deals work (!) to a customer: “So you need to choose three things” “Three sandwi-“ “NO!”

…or sign up for the evening talk here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/death-is-n...

This weekend I’ll be talking about some of my favourite cadaver afterlives for Romancing the Gothic @romgothsam.bsky.social It’s online at 10am and 7pm this Saturday. You can get tickets for the morning edition here: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/death-is-n...

A photo of the skull of Dante Alighieri from Fabio Frassetto’s 1933 book ‘Dantis Ossa’ (Dante’s bones). Since his death in 1321, his remains have been moved, hidden, lost, and examined. That he has had an eventful postmortem life is not unusual - and his is certainly not the strangest story.

Spooky Advent day 15: Martin's Close by M R James. This story of a dead girl haunting her murdererous beau was made into a Ghost Story for Christmas by Mark Gatiss in 2019.

Co-worker: It’s nice to add a bit of colour to your wardrobe in the festive period, isn’t it? Me, smiling awkwardly:

I'm privileged to call Robin a friend, and as such, have seen behind the curtains with what went on with Monkey Cage. When BBC bosses say they don't recognise his version of events, I was being told of them by Robin in real time. This stuff has been going on for YEARS. I'm heartbroken for him.

Control is one of my favourite ever video games so please may I take a moment to say MOTHERFUCKER youtu.be/S3kRcurZv5E

Can’t help but think that this very purple edition of Machiavelli’s classic work The Prince should be sub-titled “When Doges Cry”

Can’t help but think that this very purple edition of Machiavelli’s classic work The Prince should be sub-titled “When Doges Cry”

Six years already since the Kate Bush Symposium here in Edinburgh. A wonderful few days of academic fandom where I spoke about folk horror themes in Kate’s work and, for some reason, how the death of Optimus Prime is an Arthurian myth…

Almost a week until my Horror Films as Therapy workshop! Fighting the urge to just screen Silent Hill in its entirety... Tickets: bit.ly/4j1LWmU Please share Edinburgh folks: @wyrdwordwitch666.bsky.social @pietersender.bsky.social @secretedinburgh.bsky.social @edhorrorfest.bsky.social

The Goldeneye one is particularly bewildering, even for me. Went out drinking in either Portsmouth or Plymouth and then suddenly I’m playing Goldeneye in a flat I’ve never been in with people I’ve never met. The 90s were hell of a time.

Other places I have woken up: - Building site (first floor girder) - A&E - In the middle of a Goldeneye deathmatch - Barbed wire fence - Kebab shop (closed)

In my teenage years I once woke up (or, rather, came to) in the middle of a church where mass was in full swing. I often wonder what the congregation thought was happening.

Chilly studio, haunted prints.

A lovely Hand of Glory cross-stitch, spotted this weekend in Whitby

The storm-wracked shore below the crag of Castle Pieterstein is the grave of sailors now so old that even their ghosts have begun to petrify. Occasionally some ill wind will blow one up onto the beach, a curio for eagle-eyes visitors.

Argonaut are absolutely bang up folk and do huge amounts of work for the local book community. Hopefully this news will help them breathe a bit easier and enjoy the run up to Christmas!

The storm-wracked shore below the crag of Castle Pieterstein is the grave of sailors now so old that even their ghosts have begun to petrify. Occasionally some ill wind will blow one up onto the beach, a curio for eagle-eyes visitors.

Good morning from Coco!

Possessed spotted in the Whitby Bookshop @johnnymains.co.uk

Brutal sass from St Mary’s church in Whitby. THERE ISN’T ONE, SANDRA

Absolute five year old when-I-am-king behaviour. Maybe we should look again at the sexual assault allegations against Lonsdale. To protect the vulnerable.

Portrait of the artist as an old tit

Our night at the Schooner Inn was spectre-free but still weird. The place was patently shut down and it took some door-rattling to get someone to open up for us. We were the only people in the hotel and the desk guy disappeared after giving us his phone number “in case anything…happens”. Great fun.

Spending tonight in the UK’s most haunted hotel, with more than 60 spooks in residence. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow then, as I have long prophesied would happen, I have been strangled off of a ghost.

Someone I tell you will remember us even in another time. Sappho, 6thC BC

What an excellent seasonal gift for the book lover in your life...

We had a trip to Barter Books today where I picked up a treasure and Coco browsed the shelves @theprofrog.bsky.social

Wes Streeting looks like what happens when a witch turns a Minecraft character into a real boy.

Good morning! Today is the publication day of the 1927 occult novel POSSESSED by Rosalie and Edward Synton, discovered by me and reprinted by the British Library for their Tales of the Weird line. There now follows a thread about the authors. If you buy a copy, use the hashtag #SYNTONSPOSSESSED

As someone who’s being told that my office attendance is lacking I can already see that “your AI usage is lacking” is around the corner.

There is a light that only shines through grave stones / a shadow that only calls their bones