'I think, that if I touched the earth, It would crumble; It is so sad and beautiful, So tremulously like a dream.' ~Dylan Thomas 🎨Christian Schloe #BookWormSat

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane hosts a number of ghosts including music hall act and panto dame Dan Leno and Regency clown Joseph Grimaldi. The Man in Grey, in a cloak and Tricorne hat, haunts the Upper Circle, then moves along the seats and through a wall. 🎨'Hamlyn book of Ghosts' #PhantomsFriday

The lovely rusálki haunt the waterways to lure you into their loving arms. Once tangled in their silky tresses, they will pull you into the watery depths, laughing as you drown. art by Wilhelm Kotarbinski #FolkloreThursday #PhantomsFriday

'... I call to the dwellers along the shore With a voice of gramarye evermore. And if one for love of me Gives to my call an ear, I will woo him and hold him dear, And teach him the way of the sea...' ~From 'The Sea Spirit' by L.M. Montgomery 🎨 Howard Pyle #BookologyThursday #FolkloreThursday

🖼️ Becca Stadtlander

The ceffyl dŵr is a Welsh fairy horse that inhabits mountain pools and waterfalls. In south Wales, it is often benevolent. However, in north Wales, this horse likes to get someone to ride it, fly into the air, and then become mist, so that the rider falls to their death. #FolkloreThursday

“You know me well—from lofty stone My castle gazes deep into the Rhine alone. It grows late, the air turns cold, You’ll never leave this forest old!” (Eichendorff) 🎨 Achenbach (1851) In Eichendorff's 1815 poem, Lorelei is still more witch than river siren. #folklorethursday #bookologythursday

🍃A Lake with Naiads for #FolkloreThursday by Georges Clairin, 1900.

'In Memoriam' by John Anster Fitzgerald #WyrdWednesday

'Love is like the wild rose-briar, Friendship like the holly-tree— The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms But which will bloom most constantly?' ~Emily Brontë 🎨Cicely Mary Barker #BookWormSat

'Wonderland' by Adelaide Claxton #PhantomsFriday

'Sometimes they found forest fairies dancing and singing in the moonlight and joined in their games.' 'Children of the Forest' by Elsa Beskow #WyrdWednesday

When their ferry sunk on Lake Vättern in 1918, drowning artist John Bauer and his family, they said the Sea King had come to take his wife Ester Ellqvist-Bauer, She had modelled as “Agneta and the Merman” for John in 1911… a dark Scandinavian tale. #WyrdWednesday #GoldenAgeofIllustration

'In the middle of the tree there sat a sweet-looking old woman in a very strange dress. It was green, as green as the leaves of the elder tree, and it was trimmed with big white elder blossoms.' ~The Elder-Tree Mother 🖋️Hans Christian Andersen 🎨Arthur Rackham #WyrdWednesday

Fairies travelling in style for today's #OwlishMonday The artist is Amelia Jane Murray (1800-1896)

🍄🌕🍄It was said that if you ran around a Fairy Ring of toadstools nine times on the night of a full moon, you would hear the Fae talking and singing - but if you ran widdershins (anticlockwise) you would fall under their power. #FolkloreThursday #FolkyFriday #FolkloreSunday

“When we see the hazel catkins turn yellow, we know that spring is not far off” Writer: EL Grant Watson Artist: CF Tunnicliffe

'See’st thou yon gray gleaming hall, Where the deep elm-shadows fall? Voices that have left the earth Long ago, Still are murmuring round its hearth, Soft and low.' ~Felicia Dorothea Hemans 🎨John Anster Fitzgerald #PhantomsFriday

'Owl at Home' for #OwlishMonday by Arnold Lobel

Allegory of the month February by Gaspar Camps

'The Demon' by Lionel Lindsay, 1925 #Caturday

Today is Old Wassail and Here's to thee, old apple tree... Some places have very, very old wassailing customs, though, and we go to the West Country on Old Twelvey to witness such a one in our 11th #winterfolklore tale. Read it below. 🎨 Arthur Rackham

Every hour is the witching hour. We are as potent at dawn or noon as we are at the suggested 3am. We flourish during the solar alchemy of twilight. We are creatures of the threshold. The turning of time is a powerful engine of magics. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Bonus for #BookWormSat Emily Dickinson by Edward Gorey for Howard Moss’ book Instant Lives.

'I needed not its breathing To bring such thoughts to me; But still it whispered lowly, How dark the woods will be!' -Emily Brontë 🎨Arthur Rackham #BookWormSat

'My childhood from my life is parted, My footstep from the moss which drew Its fairy circle round: anew The garden is deserted.' ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning 🎨Eugène Grasset #BookWormSat

'Frozen like a thing of stone I sit in thy shadow – but not alone.' 🖋️‘A Silent Wood’ 🎨'The Haunted Wood' Art and poem by Elizabeth Siddal #PhantomsFriday

'Knowing I loved my books, he furnish'd me From mine own library with volumes that I prize above my dukedom.' ~William Shakespeare, 'The Tempest' 🎨Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale #bookologythursday

Advice from a Caterpillar for #WyrdWednesday Illustration by Tove Jansson 'Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland', 1966.

Winter Music, Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946).

‘At the edge of the mere’ Artist: CF Tunnicliffe (What to Look for in Winter, 1959)

Goodnight. ❄️ 'Many a winter's night she flies through the streets and peeps in at the windows, and then the ice freezes on the panes into wonderful patterns like flowers.' Illustration from The Snow Queen, Edmund Dulac. From Stories from Hans Andersen, 1911.

'The First of the Fairies' Illustration by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite #snowdrops

'I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things; That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings. I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do; For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.' ~Joyce Kilmer 🎨G. M. de L'Aubiniere #BookWormSat

The Haunted Park by Richard Doyle (1824-1883) #PhantomsFriday

Artist Jessie M. King (1875-1949), the magical 'Glasgow Girl' who met the fairies. #WyrdWednesday

“If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” (Shelley) 🎨 Wiktor Kriżanowski #wintersky

'It was the Snow Queen' Illustration by Honor C. Appleton

Allegory of the month January by Gaspar Camps ✨Happy New Year✨

Winter Queen's Flowers, Zofia Plewińska-Smidowiczowa (1888-1944).

In ancient Greece, many believed that shooting stars were souls of the dead soaring to the heavens. It was said that if you wished upon the star, the soul would grant your wish. ‘L'étoile filante’ by J.J. Grandville (1849) #wyrdwednesday

'The moonlight fades from flower and tree, And the stars dim one by one; The tale is told, the song is sung, And the Fairy feast is done.' ~Louisa May Alcott ('Fairy Song') 🎨 Dorothy Lathrop #WyrdWednesday

Other work by the Ladybird artists ‘Gusty Twilight’ Artist: CF Tunnicliffe

Nadine Looks into the Future while Holding on to the Past

#Caturday A beautiful illustration from 'The Tomten & The Fox' by Swedish artist, Harald Wiberg (1908-1986)

We wander winter afternoons where the light is too weak to keep the ghosts at bay. Stumble onto paths that can only be haunted. Each footstep scuffs up stories, scuffs up spirits. We walk and leave a wake of whispers. – #DAKilroy, 1982

‘The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow. And the storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go.’ ~ E Brontë #BookWormSat 🖼️ Pekka Halonen

In the rush of early morning, When the red burns through the gray, And the wintry world lies waiting For the glory of the day Louisa May Alcott Lisa Graa Jensen #BookWormSat

Illustration by Charles Robinson 'The Remarkable Rocket', From 'Tales by Oscar Wilde', 1913.

🎄Viggo Johansen