There are days when the rain refuses to take a breath, when the morning mist forgets it bad manners to outstay your welcome. It's then I'm sure the playing fields are haunted. I hear shouts from phantoms teams, invisible crowds watching games where the final whistle never blows. – Tom Foster #VOH

A world of spiteful children in positions of power should long ago ceased to be shocking. We should no longer be the toys they get to smash their oversize dumper trucks into. We must poison their sandpits. Lace their building blocks with psychoactive substances.

There are some doors that you just know open onto secrets. Some doors which can't help but innately signal they are also portals to Otherworlds. 18 Brimsdown Lane is one of them. I ache to know what is behind it. I'm half-convinced it's another universe. – #MattAdams

The sealed doors in those little houses of the dead are pitiful barrier against whispers from beyond. Wandering Ashcourt Necropolis, I am forced to hum and sing old songs such as 'Old Clip Takes A Sip' to ward against their beckonings as there is rarely any good in them. – #CLNolan

For it is one of those pubs that has abandoned its baptismal name and adjusted to its citizens’ title. While the loss of its original moniker – The Prophetic Dolphin – is a blow to this folklorist’s heart, at least The Courtesans’ Rest preserves its history in the prudishness of the now. – #CLNolan

For it is Plough Monday and many a Plough witch is out in the county beer begging. (Text taken from the Hookland Writer's Bible).

Parish gossip remains strong. Folk ask: "If the Mountford chapel has been emptied of bodies, why is it still so ghost-plagued?" No sermon I give quietens it in pew or pub. No words I speak against the phantoms lessens their hold. Rumour possesses people if not actual shades. – Rev. A.G. Bodkin

It's no secret many authors are boneyard loiterers. It's where we go to steal names from tombs and grave markers to clothe our characters. What's less known, is how many of us authors hear certain stones sing their names, whisper their stories. We tend to keep quiet on that. – #CLNolan #Writing

Along the Cut, water folk haul their small boats onto land and tie them to trinket-warded trees. If you ask them why they do this they'll tell you it is to prevent theft. Yet the nature of the apotropaic tokens suggests it's not human hands they're worried about. – #MattAdams

The ivy enfolded grave guardians of Ashcourt necropolis exist in lithic time. We flicker and fizz in their slow seeing. For the most part we hardly register. When we do, we are trespassing ghosts. Edge of eye phantoms moving against the speed of stone. – #CLNolan

There is a Hookland dialect word – stilfer - which means a place that presents as calm, but holds hidden terror. The longer I spend in the county, the better I get at recognising sites of stilfer. Locations that camouflage their terrors with a blanket of false tranquility. – #MattAdams, 1981 #WOTD

The Mordant girls hold to the wall and listen for death The Mordant girls hold to the wall and cease their breath The Mordant girls cling to the wall listening for the dead The Mordant girls! Is it any wonder they’re full of dread? - Trad. Hookland rhyme

Goodnight from Sarah Deyne, certain the Krath Malgav’s teeth grow bigger when she thinks of them at night as opposed to Ms. Vickers storytime. Goodnight from Bostal Woods, where a buried tin of old love letters is singing a song of heartbreak to enfolding roots of oak. Goodnight from Hookland.

An America of Elizabethan piracy, death squads and people in fear. Allying with that is moral poison.

See the reason the Empress Eel never gets caught is because she absorbs the wisdom of every body she nibbles on. She has had enough eel-takers flesh to know all about their horse head bait, their tricks and traps. The Empress is is corpse-wise and you don’t catch the corpse-wise. - Tom Rudd #VOH

It remains unclear why the council has erected giant wooden carving of phantom monks on Mercury Common. Some say it's for tourism, to remind visitors of the ghosts meant to walk there. Others take the view it as an act of public works warding. Municipal apotropaism. – #MattAdams

In that hour when the sky moves from nursery pink and blue to a bruised half-light, spirits wake. They walk towards us down alleys made sodium orange. IA legion of invisible things making themselves known in footsteps, in rough bumpings. – Lou Kemp, Hookland artist, 1982

In the staff room at lunch, we all commented on how the children were happy with the hard frosts and walking to school in the cold. This seemed to be largely down to a belief it was keeping the Wood Sprite known as Gore Knuckles in hibernation. – Joanna Vickers, diary entry January 6th, 1982

You make a Samuel Pepys in-joke and no-one spots it and you don’t care because you are not enough of an arsehole to care about other people noticing the stuff you do for joy. That is the lesson.

All along the cut there are half-sunken boats. Each attracts folklore to itself. Here a cursing, there an attack by Stay Belows. This isn't just speculation by children. The towpath is a territory of rumours. Each lock an exchange of gossip, a fluid network of minor myth. – #MattAdams, 1982

You wouldn’t stand up in a cinema a shout: “I know where that was filmed!” It would be filthy manners. Please don’t do this is Hookland. We respect the fourth wall in the county. My DMs are open if anyone wants ask where a picture was taken. Replies publicly breaking the fourth wall will be hidden.

The Long Neolithic persists in the now. Its stones are engines of mystery. Its stone are engines of connection to a past of dead reverence. We become lithic pilgrims. Unable to deny how they speak to our imaginations, our aching need to wonder. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

I don’t usually do this, but Leigh is good folk and in a bind. I’ve helped out with what I can - which wasn’t much due to circumstances - but if you can help or signal boost, I would be grateful.

Rose’s project during the Christmas school holiday has been making papier-mâché representations of Hookland’s most famous witches and their familiars including a Headless Bear. She's set them all on string above her bed like a garland of sorcerous intent. – Helena Lee in a letter to her sister, 1980

I know some people take twilight as a signal to hurry home – especially when their route home crosses an old churchyard – but not me. I love boneyard lingering at twlight. That's when the tombs whisper loudest. That;s when you hear all its best gossip. – Izzie Barber #VOH

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

If you interpret this as new growth, renewal and rebirth of hope, many of the county’s cunning folk would agree with you. Though some will also tell you it speaks of entangling communion with the land, making a more feral navigation towards enchantment. A refusal of crowded, well-trodden ways.

The land has been year-walked. The future has been met in the lanes and ways. The cunning folk have conferred. On the doors of The Raven, The Woodwose's Crown and all the other pubs they use, the proclamation has gone up: 'This is the YEAR OF THE GREEN PATHS.'

Goodnight from Cunning Davey Ash, readying himself to year walk the lanes in search of the new year’s secret name. Goodnight from the revellers at The Bell, waiting for the deer-skulled Lord of the Forest to bring in his blessings at the stroke of midnight. Goodnight from Hookland.

What the cunning folk of Hookland do on #NewYearsEve - year-walking. May your troubles not cross the threshold of midnight. May blessings walk down the lane to meet you in the coming year.

Roast Perry recipe: Perry, use a dry perry like Burridge’s Cunning Hill Some pear brandy, maybe Gentle & Daughters Witch’s Tears Gently heat in a pan, add some brown sugar if you must Add orange zest and spices - cinnamon sticks, nutmeg, cloves Heat for 30 minutes and then give to the Bone Horse.

Right, before the year walking commences, time for a roasted pear cider to warm the cockles and make the necessary libations.

Hooklanders have many names for twilight. Among my favourites are 'the blue hour' – capturing the sky's long-stretching towards bruise – and 'rook rest'. The latter holds part of my practice. I love to stand before wood edge at rook rest and here their gossip of the dying day. – #EmilyCBanting

It isn't hard to spot the tomb of a former member of the Duat Club in Ashcourt Necropolis or any other county boneyard. They all display some form of gaudy Egyptomania. You can't help but wonder if rumours of mummification are true, just what grave goods they hold. – #MattAdams

Those broken-limbed, time-disfigured sentinels above us observe in slow judgement. We rush and flicker in their stare. We see their breaking and they see ours. Sometimes I hold my ear to their walls in hope of hearing whispered memories, unhurried stories. – #CLNolan

Back to thinking on one of my journalism mentors advice: Ask less questions, listen more. When you ask questions, make them better questions from that listening.

From the Hookland A-Z of Influences AKA Growing Up Weird. M is Misty: #Misty #Comics #Hookland

#Folklore obviously.

I hate Christmas, not least because all manner of foolish folk send me cards with robins on them. Hateful birds. Don't they know robins are a death omen? Who in their right minds sends you one of them through the post? The Royal Mail ought to make it illegal. – Shirley Deyne #VOH

There are some horror films with strong cinematography and strong acting performances which are nothing more to tepid vomit thanks to a paint-by-numbers style of direction and storytelling-by-tired-tropes. Goodness me, An American Haunting is a prime example.

There are some properties we pass by and know without entering, that they are haunt homes. We understand this not from perception of grandness nor length of history, but a radiating sense of disquiet. Inside can only be a territory of glimpse and whispers. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

Some fields remember the first turning of the plough, some the swords of battle. All remember the dead buried below. For this is an unquiet land where the ghost soil is deep. Death shouts across time. – #EmilyCBanting from her Misling Mire public lecture

Yes. A Mire Maid thing will be written in 2026.

When The Hum fell silent, many ex-Pylon People took to living on houseboats on the county's canals. No longer marching under their temporary transmission tower temples, they remained somewhat nomadic, often mooring close to a pylon's reflection. – S.P. Gill, 'Ragged Walkers Revisted', 1982

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

On December 27th, walking with a sharper care is common. For the Boxing Day Bounds have been beaten. We all know where our borders are and what lies across them. We feel their threshold spirits as a dream-thrum, as insistent itch of warning when approaching them. – #CLNolan

When Hooklanders talk about the county being haunted by an ‘Iron Witch’, you have a moment of confusion. Do they mean Margaret Thatcher or do they mean some other malevolent entity that is withering the land and stealing hope? – Dr. Michael Benn, 1981

As a child I wondered a lot about the gates in the boneyard wall at St. Wulfram's. Who used them? Were they for the people in the houses behind the wall to visit relaitves or were they for the dead. I could never quite rid myself they were for the convenience of the latter. – Sarah Buckler #VOH

There are two venerated, much feared trees on the edge of Barwell Common. Known as Whip Scar and Tangle Knife, they are home to particularly quarrelsome Wood Sprites. To pass between them has a fearsome terror tithe and even if it's paid, you are still likely to hear them spitting curses.