Will I be seeing any of you lovely followers at Conway Hall this Saturday for The Haunted Landscape: Ghosts, Magic and Lore? www.conwayhall.org.uk/whats-on/eve...

ASTRONOMY on CALTON HILL: Saturday 6 December starting at the Portuguese Cannon at 12.45. Please join the Trust and Prof. Andy Lawrence as he tells the history of the Astronomical Institution, Royal Observatory, Henderson & Piazzi Smyth, time ball & time gun, Maria Short, and City Observatory. 1/

I haven’t given one of my talks on the medical history behind Frankenstein for ages - if anyone is interested please get in touch! (While del Toro’s film is set in my city of Edinburgh, this photo was taken in Ingolstadt, where Mary Shelley based her novel)

This mural has gone up in Kingston, ostensibly for Christmas but AI has ensured it's actually to celebrate the return of our dark lord Cthulhu

Made the news! www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Want to make a wish on a shooting star? #DoLookUp! The #Leonids meteor shower is peaking, courtesy of the Earth ploughing through the debris left by Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle. 🔭🧪 1 Get away from streetlights 2 Take blanket ☕ 3 Lie back - 10 mins 👁️ dark adapt 4 🌠Wow www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/me...

I’m on How Haunted again with my pal Rob and this time we covered Berry Pomeroy castle. It’s super haunted. 👻 Have a listen! Or you can read about it and see the ghost photos captured there in my blog: weird-wiltshire.co.uk/2024/11/30/b...

So, the witches in Macbeth may be a later reworking by playwright Thomas Middleton. Someone who attended the play in 1611 described 3 'beautiful' "feiries or Nimiphes," not “filthy hags”. Holinshed's Chronicles, Shakespeare's source, also describes 3 "creatures of the elderwood.. nymphs or fairies"

Happy Exploding Whale Of Oregon Day to all those who celebrate.

Unpack your towel and your Electronic Thumb, we won't be hitching a ride on this one. gizmodo.com/radio-signal...

Tonight!

If you’re in Edinburgh come and join me for an exploration of the Dance of Death. Tomorrow night!

And I'm out! Publicationally speaking. So here's a folklore quiz to celebrate!

Does anyone here have any recommendations for our Berlin December trip? Anything weird, wyrd, spooky, unusual, medieval, pagan etc….

Considered to have protective powers, these skulls are honored throughout the year and on Día de las Ñatitas, every November 8 in La Paz, Bolivia. #Folklore www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/artic...

BBC Archives : 1964 - A Curious Case of Black Magic in Norfolk youtu.be/QWTw3xoGhg4 @folkhorrorrevival.bsky.social

It’s the ghostly part of the year… 16% of people in England today say that they have had an extraordinary experience of some kind, including witnessing the presence of a ghost. Fascinatingly, almost one in five of those people have not shared that experience with anyone, not even family or friends.

The Ling lioness - encounters with pumas on the Norfolk-Suffolk border in the 1990s, with thanks to @edinburghforteansociety.org.uk and Gill Thornton bigcatsofsuffolk.com/the-ling-lio...

Do NOT stick googly eyes on the mythical megafauna, no matter how amusing it might be. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Check out this fine #Pleistocene-themed wall art photographed by my buddy Paul Stewart in Kennington, Oxford

Came across it whilst out for a wander!

If you’re in Edinburgh and want to know more about the Dance of the Death, I’ll be giving a talk on that subject for @edinburghforteansociety.org.uk at the Royal Oak at 7:30pm on Wednesday 12th November. Come along.

Proud to have published 24 of @mikejay.bsky.social's essays - including this one - in "Stranger Than Fiction". Mike is absolutely one of the best writers in the world on the stranger aspects of history and culture. You all should read his stuff, it's wonderful! www.amazon.com/Stranger-Tha...

The Enfield Poltergeist 👻

Plague, plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaague!! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Nobody ever talks about how weird this was

How every history and science textbook should start

Happy Halloween! We recorded the ACTUAL Dance of Death (via music from a #NewberryLibrary book c. 1650) for your listening pleasure! Read all about it while you listen to the recording in my latest blog post! www.newberry.org/blog/spooky-...

If you're looking for a Hallowe'en gift for the witch, warlock or furry familiar in your life, we can wholeheartedly recommend our latest Fortean Times special collection... Available in shops or order online from: shop.forteantimes.com/product/witc...

Be careful if building a bonfire this Halloween and Bonfire Night. Hedgehogs love to hibernate in piles of sticks and branches – so build a bonfire on the same day you plan to burn it, and check it carefully for hiding wildlife. More : littlegreenspace.org.uk/features/nat...

“Are you wearing the-“ “The poorly but enthusiastically sculpted Samhain turnip earrings I made a few years ago? Yeah, I am.”

The camera on my phone can't do justice to the magic in tonight's sky #Shetland #aurora

This Friday, I ruin a perfectly good podcast about rural life by appearing on Absolute Units from @themerl.bsky.social

guys, i'm recording a pilot on the 18th november at monkey barrel in edinburgh on the same night that @eleanormorton.bsky.social is recording her pilot (with another producer, but i'm sure it'll still be excellent). tickets are going to be flying off the shelves for this so get in early

Latest article: This may make me unpopular in the scientific skeptical movement but it should not do... skepticalinquirer.org/2025/10/weir...

The heyday of exchanging halloween postcards was between 1900 and 1920 and the bizarre images often had a folkloric tale to tell. These anthropomorphic cabbages allude to divination recorded in Scotland and Ireland where the shape of a pulled cabbage stalk denoted the figure of your future love!

Next EdFortSoc: 12th Nov 2025, 7.30pm @anatomicalcat.bsky.social will be speaking on: Will You Join The Dance? A brief history of the Danse Macabre Plus! Grand auction of books, etc.! The Royal Oak 1 Infirmary Street Edinburgh 7.30pm, £1

See you next Tuesday for Fortean TV at The Bell, E1 with @stuneville.bsky.social ?

Within the Oxenham Arms in the village of South Zeal, Devon is The ‘Roman Pillar' propping up the roof in the restaurant at the rear of the pub. In the next room is an enormous Menhir built into the fabric of the wall too. One pub - two standing stones.

'Faceless figures and mysterious music: #ghost stories from English Heritage sites'... www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Whoa hold up - new fish species just dropped. The Guayabero River Knifefish is newly discovered. They can swim backwards and forwards thanks to their weird ribbony bodies. Oh, and this is its face.

I probably should have made clear in the thread that the salutes that the Loyal Edinburgh Spearmen used to fire from their cannons from The Mound used live ammunition, fired at the base of the Castle Rock!

The thousand year old sport is kicking it in front the thousand some year old monument. #londonsumo #stonehenge

I'll be at the Edinburgh Book Bonanza next weekend! If you want to grab yourself a signed copy to curl up on the couch with so you can dodge Halloween parties, now would be the perfect time! 😁

Well it's not every day that you get to stand on the site of a brand new Observatory! This is Clatteringshaws loch, in the Galloway Forest #DarkSky Park, home of the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿Scottish Dark Sky Observatory. Construction starts soon and like a phoenix SDSO will rise from the ashes! Re-opening mid-2027. 🥳🔭🧪

Under two weeks to go until @forteantimes.bsky.social own @stuneville.bsky.social tells us about 50+ Years of Fortean TV Tuesday 28 October 2025, The Bell, E1 Tickets and details: forteanlondon.blogspot.com/2025/10/fift...

The word “rock face” is not usually to be taken literally. Yet, around the world, all cultures find familiar-looking forms that appear spontaneously in the mineral masses. sharonahill.com/faces-in-pla...

Ada Lovelace Day has begun! As midnight arrives on Kiritimati Island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, our global celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and maths begins! Join us in celebrating by posting about your fave women in STEM #ALD25!