Words I Never Thought I Would Say To A Cat: “Can we stop the dance, you aren’t in fucking Pan’s People.” #Cats

Even of the brightest of days, when the boneyard is dappled and the dead below feel the warming of its soil, we walk its whispers. Shaded voices eager to gossip, eager to tell secret for some brief company. This is a place which refuses to be anything other than unquiet. – #CLNolan

That moment in Yongary Monster From The Deep where he dances to surf rock.

My greatest joy is when #Hookland manifests in the creative work of others. You all own it if you need and want it. It is a pre-enchanted playground to be used. I could never imagine nor produce the county as industrial synthwave artefact, but here it gloriously is as just that.

Everytime Russell Brand searches a Bible, an angel loses its wings.

Hookland talk sold out. Ten thousand words written, slides done. There are times when it feels real and that the work matters. Thank you.

We shouldn't be surprised children brought up on parental scarelore of Stay Belows occasionally report glimpsing one. However, we might want to consider more closely reports made from adults who've who've seen things under interference patterns on the River Stannis. – Brian Danbury, 1982

Signs of life.

The folklore of Hookland swerved 1920s Flower Fairy propaganda. Its depictions of Faeries retains a dark power, a sense of them as engines of fear, engines of sublime terror. The Queen of the Winter Court may be winged, but she carries a string of decapitated heads. – Dr. M. Benn

Today's answer to What is Hookland?

Truly fine folk.

Goodnight from that suburb of tangled streets close to the Weychester Canal known as Jordan, rumour-shivered by the walking of the brass-eyed man. Goodnight from Sarah Padley, making prayers to a box of teeth given pride of place upon her kitchen table. Goodnight from Hookland.

Place is layers of story. No matter how wide the field, how sweeping the sky, it will always ghost-soaked. For this is the inevitability of place and us, we cannot help but plant our ghosts in it. – Dr. M. Benn, presentation at the 1982 Woden College Ghost Conference

Give me a parade of clouds and I shall tell you tomorrow. For I am a witch. Nature gifts me omens and opportunities for augury. I need only the clouded sky for nephonmancy, need only the plants below me for phytognomy. Peeking around the corner of fate is my commonplace. – #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

“Lance took a beating in the Brighthaven ice cream wars and scarpered to London. Still, I reckon hell get revenge as his mother cursed the bastards who did it. They call his mum ‘the Curse Queen of The Ends, so I don’t reckon on them having a happy life.” #OverheardInThePub

Never had #Walthamstow described as the ‘sunlit uplands‘ before.

War criminal in a pub car park …

Going to lie in a bluebell wood and contemplate death. Forty years on and I still have some things in come with 16-year old me.

Fine folk #FF @sebbyb.bsky.social @dirkmaggs.bsky.social @mariastrutz.bsky.social @annodracula.bsky.social @kjsoar.bsky.social @skionar.bsky.social @philh.bsky.social @odavies9.bsky.social @simonguy.bsky.social @stonelands.bsky.social @loreandordure.com @sjfarrer.bsky.social

Goodnight from Sergeant Powers, finishing his boat patrol for Ashcourt River Police somewhat relieved no new Drowned Dead were sighted. Goodnight from Adam Dunford, now regretting camping on Barrowcross Moor for reasons other than the strength of the wind. Goodnight from Hookland.

The creature moved with a sound like dry autumn leaves being crunched by a child out for a walk. It moved with the sound of sticks scraping stone, old trees straining against storm. This was the moment he felt what seasoned occultists call ‘summoning regret’. - #CLNolan, Come Sprite, Come

Oreleton is the oldest of Weychester University's colleges. Not only is it home to Oswald – England's only spectral Dodo and doom omen – it is acknowledged as having educated more infamous necromancers than any other British academic establishment.

Timeline cleanse. #Cats

Some have a kissing tree, some have a thinking tree, some have a tree they tell their secrets to. I am a greedy witch. I've as many trees as lovers and I've performed magic with most of them. My favoured wood is like a party filled with old friends to talk to. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

We must not become less of ourselves in the face of annihilation. We must hold to who we are, hold tight to our joys. i came into this world dead, grey and silent. I shall go out of strange, full of love and wondrous curiosity. I shall go a fully-grown changeling with a kiss of intent on my lips.

The land wakes in green gowning and golden gorse. The land wakes in tangle, scratch and a constancy of call. Woodpecker, blackcap and even the greenfinch’s wheezing song delight the ears. Joy rides the tide of blood. Hope cracks the armoured earth. Spring walks the way. - #EmilyCBanting, 1982

In villages around Long Barton there is always pub discussion about why signposts to it remain broken. Some argue its wartime hangover, artefacts of a desire to disorientate possible Nazi invaders. Others say it's to deter ghost tourism, pokers of phantoms so often being an irksome sort.

Sometimes you don't have to search for an answer as to why certain doorways are sealed. Instinctually you know. It's to stop something terrible getting out. When you run your hands across them you can feel invisible lines of warding. Sigils set in the stone. – Vicky Pender #VOH

A coven can take many forms. None need perpetuate hierarchical pisspuffinry. I am fond of the guerrilla coven called for single purpose. I am fond of my stitch, bitch and witch meetings where more than sorceries are swapped. A coven is not an excuse for grand titles. - #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

There will be disappearing dolphins (@iansimmons1960.bsky.social take note); naked amnesiacs; daylight vanishings; UFO cults; black dogs; cunning folk and even a mention of Spring-heeled Jack. There might even be some free Hookland fudge.

If you have ever wanted to hear me talk about folklore, Forteana and Hookland in an East End pub, this is your chance.

Within days of the 'Blue Man' sightings, Ashcourt's walls were crowded with stylised depictions. The distance between high strangeness, addition to local folkloric canon and feral art grows ever shorter. – Sophie Morley of Woden College's Graffiti Research and Formalisation Team (GRAFT), 1983

Some scientists have blamed the haunting of the Ashcourt Docks foot tunnel on infrasound. Vibrations causing visual distortions, auditory phenomena. This is of little comfort for those engulfed by dread when walking it – especially if they remember those scientists blame everything on infrasound.

If we wish to hunt ghosts, we needn't travel to stately homes, necropoli or abandoned abbeys. The ghost is amongst us. It's where we work, where we socialise, where we live. You'll likely find more phantoms on an unassuming terrace than castle ruin for spectres are a side-effect of life. – #CJosiffe

In my wooden temple, I can hear the land singing its songs of renewal as the trees pull on their green gowns again. In dappled kiss across my skin, growing hope of magics yet to come. This is a time when witchery is fierce bliss. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky #Spring

Sometimes when you climb Stepstone Hill it's hard not to imagine that you are on an island. You look down and can feel an incoming ghost tide. Waves of phantoms coming across the fields below. Spectre surrounded, a sense of being above time. – Frances Tailwood #VOH

Give me a sky with clouds for nephomancy, a tangled field edge for phytognomy and I shall tell you tomorrow. For nature gifts every tool needed to look around the corner of time. The witch does not want for signs. Any walking brings a cascade of omens. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

You'll come across practitioners who will play hierarchical status games by telling you that your cauldron is cringey. These are the same people who will judge you on their continuity fantasies with no historical basis. Forget them. Witchcraft is what works. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

What of those White Tower ghosts that walk mid-air? Their walls ruin-reduced, they still stride as if stones were still at apogee. Are these temporal echoes or spirits with no knowledge of the now? Wither way, we must allow their observers an extra portion of discombobulation. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

Everyone has their own intimate telling of spring's arrival – colt's foot sighting, ash growth, crab apple blossom. For the children in my class it seems to be the first reliable report from a classmate that a Stay Below has been spotted in Thornley Pool. – Joanna Vickers, 1982 #VOH

My brother has caught Gef.

There are a whole generation of kids who grew up on Len Deighton and from him learnt five-sense writing, using a city as a character and the joys of economy. He will be missed for teaching all of that and for being a working class kid who showed us we too just might be able to be writers.

Gravity is a warping nostalgia. Resurrections rarely deliver.

We risk the road. We risk its ghosts, its possibility of timeslips. We travel in the knowledge that we may be lost beyond easy return. For this is Hookland. Its hodology is haunted. Its navigations rarely bypass the strange. – #DAKilroy, 1982

Today I learnt my uncle sometimes dresses as a priest and goes into betting shops shouting: “My God has forsaken me. Why the fuck won’t God let my horse win?” He has also gone into Iceland dressed as a priest shouting: “God, where are the fucking chips? Show me the chips oh Lord, show me the chips!”

Arcane disputes in the hovel 193: “David Bowie was a big fan of A Country Practice, doesn’t mean he wanted to guest star.” “The world has changed since then. If he was alive now he would guest star.”

The threshold sings a song of seduction. Shoreline. Riverbank. Wood edge. The witch hears it as summoning, as a promise of magics. It is a kiss in her ear, a pull upon her her bones. The witch is one who answers the call of wonder. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

A big ask for my #Letterpress friends! I would like to ask a few working printers (amateur or pro, different experience levels welcome) to share their thoughts about the current state of the craft with a particular emphasis on their feelings about deep impression / debossing as … 1/2

Atlantic City is a zombie song. You will not convince me otherwise.

Most people blame it on the boogie. Mrs. S. is blaming it on Ms. Marple.