There are paths around White Leaf where shadows move against the sun, dance to something other than the breeze. Paths where you risk walking out of time's normal flow. Mystically aligned say the ley hunters. Faery-bordered say the locals. A statistical anomaly for missing persons say the police.

Midsummer Owl, surrounded by and made up of St. John's Wort 🧡🌀🌕 #OwlishMonday

Fairy transport for #OwlishMonday by Amelia Jane Murray (1800-1896)

Illustration by Mervyn Peake 'Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There' by Lewis Carroll "Why, it’s turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It’ll be easy enough to get through." #BookWormSat

When the land sighs with the heat, releases shimmering visions, the witch knows the places of spiritual shade. Knows where to find cool, green communion. For the song of the land will always lead her to where she needs to be. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #FolkWitchFriday

Yorkshire artist Atkinson Grimshaw's atmospheric nocturnes have graced many a ghost book (and #PhantomsFriday post). His home city of #Leeds is very haunted - its Town Hall, Courthouse, a library, a museum and two theatres are all said to have their ghosts. And in #Scarborough [Cont: #art #landscape

#PhantomsFriday A rather dreamy apparition. Jaroslav Spillar. 1898. According to folklorist William Hazlitt, ghosts are more visible the closer they are to their grave.

Forest Ghost by László Mednyánszky #PhantomsFriday

Conjuring Flora

🌿The Larkspur Fairy by Margaret Tarrant #July

#WyrdWednesday Because the sun was considered divine, it was thought to be unlucky to point at it. In Hungary, if a girl threw sweepings in the sun's direction, she would never marry. In Cornwall, it was believed that a perjuror cannot see the sunlight or feel its warmth. (image Artus Scheiner)

✨Midsummer Eve by Edward Robert Hughes

🌿Summer by Walter Crane

Summer by Alphonse Mucha #summersolstice

'Gather to your fairy piper When he pipes his magic tune' ~Robert Graves 🎨Dorothy Lathrop #BookWormSat

‘Он! fairest of the viewless powers That guide the fairy fall of night, The last and loveliest of the hours That blush away the lingering light.’ ~ L.E.L, The Vow of the Peacock, Second Canto. Goodnight. 🖼️ A New Constellation - Sewell Collins magazine cover, 1910.

Woman with a cat on her shoulder by Auguste Danse #Caturday

In those semi-swallowed, feral churches of the county, ghost congregations gather for Evensong. An observation of twilight vespers. All phantom psalms and half-heretical green canticles. It's hard to know whether the Preces are said to the Almighty or the land itself. Maybe there's no difference.

I saw pale kings and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci Thee hath in thrall!’ I saw their starved lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gapèd wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill’s side. Keats La Belle Dame #BookWormSat

“yance gane, ae gane, and niver saw mair o’ them” the 'last fairies in Cumbria' were seen dancing on Sandwick Rigg in 1850 before climbing a ladder into a cloud and vanishing! more in: "Folklore of the Lake District" #bookwormsat #lakedistrict art: detail from Dancing Fairies by August Malmström

'Pixies dancing in a Ring by the Firelight' by William Bell Scott The setting for this painting was described by the artist as ‘a Haunted House on Midsummer’s Eve.’ #PhantomsFriday

'...I look at you, heart of silver, White heart-flame of polished silver, Burning beneath the blue steeples of the larkspur, And I long to kneel instantly at your feet, While all about us peal the loud, sweet Te Deums of the Canterbury bells.' ~Amy Lowell 🎨Charles Courtney Curran #BookWormSat

Owl and Dominoes by Gertrude Abercrombie #OwlishMonday

Windowbox

UNVEILING NEW ACCOUNT If you were following my Coffin Boffin account on Twitter @drsamgeorge1 please follow this bsky account. I can't make the transition easily as I have 35K followers on there and only 700+ on here. I am posting on the same themes of Gothic Enchantment and Dark Folklore!!

"What hast thou found within the pool of dreams, Where roses of a thousand summers blow? What strange and lovely thing of opal gleams, Secrets and tears and hopes of long ago?" 'The Crystal Gazer' 🎨 Ida Rentoul Outhwaite 🖋️Annie R Rentoul

'I passed from the familiar room, I who from love had passed away, Like the remembrance of a guest That tarrieth but a day.' ~Christina Rossetti Illustration by Florence Harrison #PhantomsFriday

'The Veairies' by Warwick Goble Illustration for the poem by William Barnes 'The Book of Fairy Poetry' (Dora Owen, 1920)

When Jane Morris cast off her corset in favour of loose, romantic clothing, and lived an unconventional lifestyle with Rossetti, she was following a trend set by the artists and intellectuals of 19th century Paris, known as “bohémiens” D G Rossetti #WyrdWednesday

In the Shelter of the Mother Tree, Piia Lehti, 2013.

Owl's Consort by Kenojuak Ashevak #OwlishMonday

Happy June all, may the sun shine for us. At a tolerable and reasonable temperature. 🖼️ June, Eugène Grasset, 1896.

Alice and the White Rabbit by Margaret Tarrant

“After a few more words they flew away.” (from G.E. Walsh’s “Twilight Animals” series, 1917) 🎨 Edwin John Prittie #owlishmonday

Fairy of the Night, by artist Sidney Blue

June From 'The Months' by Alphonse Mucha, 1899

'The Stolen Child' by George William Russell (Æ)

'Look At Those Flitting Ghosts' illustration by John Leech #PhantomsFriday

'I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.' ~W.B. Yeats 🎨'The Silver Apples of the Moon' Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh #BookWormSat

rabbit spirit #joncarling #drawing #art

"... and whatever walked there, walked alone.” (Shirley Jackson) 🎨 Aleksandra Devic #phantomsfriday

Takato Yamamoto, Picture of a ghost, Chilling loneliness in the dead of night, 2020 #PhantomsFriday

In #JapaneseFolklore there is a strange tale of a ghostly sake drinking binge. One day an antique dealer discovered a very realistic painting of a ghost. That very day a customer agreed to buy it for ten times what he had paid, saying he would return the next day with the money. #PhantomsFriday 1/6

Gloriously #Gothic view of the ruins of Tintern Abbey, #Monmouthshire, by Cotman (early 19th C). Here in 1895 a lady visitor said she made contact with the #ghost of a Saxon soldier who'd died nearby fighting for Henry II without receiving a proper burial. [1/2 #PhantomsFriday #NationalGothDay

'O’er all there hung the shadow of a fear, A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, The place is haunted.' ~Thomas Hood 🎨'The Palace of the Spirits' by Romolo Tessari #PhantomsFriday

The Forest Fairies by William M. Timlin

ARE BEES FAIRIES? In Ireland a belief exists that #bees are fairies, who are in turn souls, making connections between fairyland & the land of the dead (Lady Wilde 1887). Wirt Sikes also speaks of 'swarms of bees, which are supposed to be fairies in disguise' (1880) #WorldBeeDay Image: Rackham

🖼️ Dick Twinney

Richly and gorgeously purple, an embellished dress that is beginning to show the signs of transition towards the silhouettes of the #1910s. Art nouveau influences appear in the decorative details #palazzopitti #FashionHistory 🗃️🪡

Illustration by Henry C. Pitz to accompany the poem 'Faery Magic', 1921.