I’ve assembled a little portfolio website for my eldritch photography; if you enjoy churches and graveyards, folklore, folk horror, witchcraft, ruins, and other such things, it might be your bag: cursedaperture.squarespace.com

slightly obsessed about the end of this lady's effigy tomb with the voluminous folds of her dress and petite heeled shoes

my mac doing its best to telephone a seventeenth century ecclesiastical record 🗃️

The Haunted Bridge. A mystery to solve ... I have this postcard called "The Haunted Bridge" but cannot identify it. It's described as a British beauty spot. The card was posted from Nottingham, early 20thc.

The historie of serpents… Edward Topsell, 1608.

THREAD. A collection of photos I have taken of scarecrows I have stumbled across during walks in the British countryside over the last fifteen years.

Just removed the date label from an old book and discovered that someone has drawn a design for a teapot that can serve either tea or poison how's your day going?

The witch trials of 1612 still cast a long shadow.

It was built round so that the DEVIL could not hide in the corners.

In the death registers of early modern Venice, marginalia often marks the cause of death: drawings of daggers for murders, for instance. In 1696, Giovanni Battista Rinaldi was killed by a dog. This is the drawing by his entry.

🎤Welcome to the Cardiff Witch Memorial Map Project! Our aim is to locate memorials, museums, and significant sites related to #earlymodern witch hunts globally and share them with the public. Please follow us for updates on our research - we've found more than 100 so far! #history #witchtrials

Our Rings of Saturn film has been in production for about a year but has now finally arrived. Beautifully narrated by @simoninsuffolk.bsky.social and scored by @dukether.bsky.social 👇 youtu.be/hELnfok0BzI?...

Wardsend Cemetery, Sheffield (April 2025).

Sundown at St Andrew, Aldborough, North Yorkshire (February 2021).

- where the light breaks -

If M.R. James wrote safety signage

My funky shots of the Rollright Stones taken on Saturday on my 1950s medium format camera with turquoise colour negative film! #stoneclubchallenge

Registration is now open for our ghost conference at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick this June! If you'd like to come along and listen to our wonderful line up of talks please sign up below - note that we are an in-person only event. www.eventbrite.ie/e/ghosts-in-...

Bookended by an exceptionally pleasing ruin.

Give way to toads. 🐸

Holy Cross, Whorlton, North Yorkshire.

Medieval rock cut graves at St Patrick, Heysham, Lancashire.

All Saints, Bakewell, Derbyshire.

Spotted on Google Maps, from a folkloric perspective this seems unwise…

For this first of May, here's a recycled thread of the time a couple of years back I made a trip to Dumfries & Galloway on the hunt for locations from The Wicker Man...

Currently developing a website for my eldritch photography and have been reminded of this utterly gorgeous dachshund on a bench end (from St Margaret, South Elmham, Suffolk).

In which the Waits of London get a pay rise in 1600 'because their musick is extraordinary' cc @passamezzo.bsky.social

Little pathway from Loddon churchyard in Norfolk; A1 portalling (love it so much it’s my banner pic).

Jean Marsh has died at the age of 90. Brian Shuel's 1961 photograph of the actor hangs in London's National Portrait Gallery and is one of the most striking images in the collection

Highly erotic.

Around this time yesterday I stopped at St. Katharine’s Chapel in Limehouse to check out their 14th century misericords. Thankfully it was otherwise empty of visitors, I had to lie flat on my back and shimmy underneath a big chair to photograph the hidden demon and its brides in the fourth image...

A thread of interdimensional portals I've found on walks in the British countryside.

My all-time favourite witch-related landscape legend, the witch’s leg (aka the witch’s finger) in East Somerton, Norfolk; a giant oak tree growing through the woodland ruins of St Mary’s church, it’s said to have sprouted from the wooden leg of a witch who was buried there. #FolkloreThursday

UK universities are in crisis. Dave Hitchcock (@davehitchcock.bsky.social) on how the sector became 'broken' and why it must be approached as an interdependent system. www.historyworkshop....

🥁 Announcing the Public Domain Image Archive! 🥁 We are v excited to share our new sister-project, the Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA), a curated collection of 10k+ out-of-copyright historical images, all free to explore and reuse: pdimagearchive.org @pdimagearchive

Inevitably, I've made a Drinking Studies Network starter pack based on the DSN's members list (drinkingstudies.wordpress.com/members-2/) If you don't want to be included, or if you see people I've missed and could add, please let me know! go.bsky.app/4zgBneK

🚨Introducing "Cardiff Supernatural" 🚨 Our new student blog "Cardiff Supernatural" went LIVE today, with two Halloween themed posts on witchy walking tours and comparative werewolfery. Please check it out! 🗃️ blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/cardiff-supe...

Found a book dedicated to me! Rachel B Herrman’s No useless mouth #earlymodern

When you’re innocently researching 17th-century troop movements and you come across this hot mess in the calendar of state papers

Delighted to announce that Charlotte-Rose Millar, Andrew Sneddon and I are co-organising a conference in MIC Limerick next June on historical representations of ghosts 👻. CFP below: make sure and let us know of any questions!

‘What does the joy of research *do*?’ Some attempts to think about historical detective work, feelings, and an anonymised case of murder, magic, and madness. 🗃️ williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2024/09/05/v...

Anyway, nicer things. I bought a box of glass plates in a junk shop at some point last year, I’d forgotten – because stuff. Look at this moment frozen in silver halide about 120 years ago. Isn’t it just the best thing.

📢EXCELLENT RESOURCE KLAXON📢 warwick.ac.uk/cwad V. Hitchman & teams' #EarlyModern parish data inc. 🗃️ 1) Spreadsheet listing ALL parishes in England and Wales, with maps showing them 2) individual spreadsheets for all counties, showing survival/finding info for churchwarden accounts

Ice cream vans. As summer finally arrives in the UK why not have a read of this FREE article exploring the history & folklore of ice cream vans - their chimes, ice cream & urban legends! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The recording of this event from @ihr.bsky.social and Curtis Brown Books is now available online - a real must for anyone thinking of #trade #history #publishing. www.history.ac.uk/whats/ihr-ev...

ok the blog is long but it does inc some tips that i wish someone had told me when i started: -take pics of the physical finding aid (if allowed) -make sure the first pic of any archive doc inc the call no./ref -when all is lost, have lunch williamgpooley.wordpress.com/2024/02/19/d... 🗃️

I think this was a thread over in The Other Place, but can any historians (#earlymodern and beyond!) recommend pieces on how we encounter the physicality of the archive? Am thinking about how I can write about an encounter with the cloth here ...

📣This morning we are delighted to share our new Leverhulme Trust project website!   Find out more about the team, how we plan to transcribe 25,000 wills in collaboration with the public & our research questions: sites.exeter.ac.uk/materialcult... 🗃️ #History #EarlyModern

*Everyone* interested in early modern ballads: 100 Ballads Has Gone Live!! 100ballads.org

When you see a sketch of a person hanging on the gallows in the margin, you know you're about to read a grim set of thirteenth-century legal cases! (Worcestershire Eyre, 1275: TNA, JUST 1/1028, m.4)