Latest missive from the lovely people @littletollerbooks.bsky.social distracting me in my inbox… look! Mad Shepherds by L.P.Jacks (rural misfits & their pastoral mysticism) introduced by Mackenzie Crook! And #FutureRural, which is also going to be ace. What treats for this 43rd day of rain!

Wake up call for #PhantomsFriday tomorrow. Feel free to join the feed using that hashtag to post all things #ghost: words, pictures, #folklore, haunted locations etc etc. Looking forward to feeling your unearthly presence then.

I'm super excited to be chatting to The Byron Society about how volcanoes have shaped the Gothic and why Lord Byron was the ultimate 'Volcanic Gothic' celebrity. Featuring cameos from Jo March, Dracula & the Dark Lord Sauron! 📆 26/02/2026 5:30 pm. Online. 🎟️ www.thebyronsociety.com/events/volca...

Goths for breakfast! An amazing day of talks and writing workshops all to raise money for charity @magicbreakfastuk.bsky.social Pop in and out as much as you like. Pick your price based on what you can afford. Online so open to anyone anywhere!

'Tis the season, so I've just read Al Ridenour's follow-up to his brilliant book on Krampus, this time about the darker side of Carnival in Europe and it complements it brilliantly, loads of info on the history and modern manifestations of Carnival and amazing photos. feralhouse.com/season-of-ma...

"Green Noah, demon tree, Evil fingers can't catch me!"

Post a banger that isn't in English? Absolutely has to be this. youtu.be/MwnFX0_H-rA

Fisheries magazine "Land and Water" of September 1877 looks at sea serpent misidentifications including basking sharks. From Sir Richard Owen's sea serpent scrapbook, 📔 @nhm.org Library. Image: Courtesy of Trustees of the Natural History Museum.

THE HOUSE OF STRANGE SECRETS A gothic mystery set on the English moors and published in the last year of the nineteenth century. This first edition has a wonderful bat motif. Gilt lettering on pictorial cloth (London: Sands & Co.1899). #Booksky

According to the Sagas, #Viking ghosts were anything but incorporeal. A 'draugr' could emerge from its tomb and thump on hall doors demanding to join the feast. It could be gigantic, with bluish skin and reek of death, or could take animal forms, such as seals, bulls and cats #PhantomsFriday #legend

Monsters in the Mist.

'The Pig In The Dining-Room' is as bizarre a chapter heading as I'm happy to see. Andrew Lang tells of a dream had by the wife of a 19th C Bishop Of Hereford. She told everybody about it, then they went to prayers. On returning, there it was, snuffling about, having escaped from its sty. #Fortean

Our next online fundraising talk, on Sunday 22nd Feb at 8pm via Zoom looks at the amazing uses of VR to explore the archaeology and heritage of the landscape, with a special look at some amazing finds made on Dartmoor Tickets just £5, including video replay, from bit.ly/flaevents

Born to wander the misty moors, forced to fight fascism (we can do both though, don’t worry)

#WyrdWednesday In his 1555 book 'History of the Northern Peoples' Olaus Magnus describes a giant sea serpent 90m long living in caves & seas around Scandinavia that would attack livestock on land & pluck sailors from their boats. 🎨 Sea Serpent (Sjøormen) by Norwegian artist Theodor Kittelsen, 1892.

Such a cool trick of perspective, looks like an alien world!

Anybody around Whitby on Friday? 'At The Back Of The North Wind' is back in Flowergate Hall, and I'll be discussing the legendary Black Heart of Whorlton Castle before singing a song about my favourite gravestone. Come and join us for a full evening of folky, haunto fun - pay what you fancy.

The deadline for responding to this consultation (about whether we should shovel even greater heaps of bureaucratic misery onto immigrants in the hope of pacifying racists) is midnight on Thursday 12th:

Strange Scandi Stories!” This week’s #WyrdWednesday topic. Surely one of the strangest characters in Norse mythology is Ratatoskr, a squirrel who runs up and down Yggdrasil carrying messages between the eagles perched on top and the dragon Níðhöggr beneath one of the roots.

I find myself in need of £130 to join a trade union with, so here I am, shilling books with a hopeful expression. ko-fi.com/s/7292dd0671

Morning. 🖼️ Cormorant, Ohara Koson.

Come and see our live supernatural storytelling show that takes you on an uncanny journey through an alternate Britain... Landing in Cambridge on February 19th: tickets at www.junction.co.uk

Spring Hare With Daffodils. #Art © Vanessa Bowman

When their ferry sunk on Lake Vättern in 1918, drowning artist John Bauer and his family, they said the Sea King had come to take his wife Ester Ellqvist-Bauer, She had modelled as “Agneta and the Merman” for John in 1911… a dark Scandinavian tale. #WyrdWednesday #GoldenAgeofIllustration

If the below picture gets you thinking stats, classes, campaigns, and the incomparable joy of crit successes then please consider answering this short survey for my Folklore student's research project: forms.office.com/pages/respon...

It is International Day of Women in Science! For this ocassion, a thread on influential women that illustrate prehistoric life🧵 Marta Szubert. Creator of one of the first to-scale feathered dinosar models (1997). If you've been to Poland or Slovakia, you've probably seen her models on display.

A not-completely-exhaustive illustration of our winter shorebirds, but these are the species that you’re most likely to see during winter around Teesmouth (northeast England). 🐡🪶 #birdingNortheast

According to the 'Orkneyinga Saga' (c. 1200), a snowstorm forced Earl Harald Maddadsson and his men to spend a night in the Maeshowe chambered cairn on Orkney; we are not told what happened there, but when they emerged in the morning, two of the men had gone insane. #WyrdWednesday 📷 Sigurd Towie

1/2 @wyrdwednesday.bsky.social #WyrdWednesday Näcken is mostly known for luring people into the water with his sexy appeal and gorgeous violin music. But earlier in our Swedish history, he looked very different and didn't always play violin. In 1599 Pastor Klint made a report and drew this.

Scandinavian mermaids, called havfrue, sjörå, and other names, are harbingers of storms and are seen as fatal omens, sometimes even kidnapping sailors: better to avoid them at all costs, and avert ye eyes. #WyrdWednesday #LegendaryWednesday 🖼️: E. Jerichau-Baumann

In the 13th-century Old Norse poem Völsunga Saga, the hero Sigmund and his son Sinfjötli find magic wolf pelts that transform people into wolves for ten days. They wear the pelts and go on a violent rampage, which ends with Sigmund nearly killing Sinfjötli. #WyrdWednesday

Wouldn't be a #WyrdWednesday without Necropants! Need money? Icelandic tradition would advise (though I would not) you dig up a dead man and make from his skin Nábrók, Death Underpants. They're not stylish, but when you've got money, you set the style, right?

LEGENDS OF ICELAND Jón Árnason 1962 Frontispiece by J. B. Zwecker for edition translated George E. J. Powell and Eiríkur Magnússon 1864 #wyrdwednesday #illustration

“Owls are howling, loons are crying. Ghosts haunt the land. Ghosts haunt the sea, moaning and sighing, weeping and keening.” (From “Svartedauden”, Black Death - 🎨&✍🏻 Theodor Kittelsen, 1900) #wyrdwednesday #goldenageofillustration #bookillustration #booksky

#WyrdWednesday "Att ana ugglor i mossen" is a Swedish saying which translates as "Sensing owls in the bog", meaning that there's something suspicious afoot. 🎨 "The Pond" by Alfred Kubin

#WyrdWednesday Eerie nocturnal cries of shearwaters nesting on Scottish and Scandinavian islands were once thought to be made by trolls who inhabited the cliffs. Conservationists have used such tales of haunted cliffs to help locate breeding sites of rare species to aid their conservation.

Owls rule. This one decorated a marble seat. It was found on the acropolis in Athens, likely dating to the 4th century BCE. Possibly from the Odeion of Pericles. Now in the Acropolis Museum, Athens. Photo my own. #SuperbOwlSunday

Three days to go till our Folk Horror show comes to Leeds! Me and @bobfischer.bsky.social will be at the brilliant @oldwoollen.bsky.social What links Play School and Witchcraft? Find out on Thursday! Tickets are selling fast for this one... Box office: bit.ly/483H8JA

Adapted from Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr

Enter The Woods With Care. #Art © Jackie Morris

Johan Christian Dahl, 1825. “Megalith Grave near Vordingborg in Winter” #painting #1820s #JohanChristianDahl #megalith

“February. Another cold, dead month, or so it seems. The elms are bare against the sky, the plough-ground is naked and wet, and still as brown as the sodden leaves. Yet the world is waking up”. Artists: Edith Hilder, Rowland Hilder (ShellGuide, 1955)

Look what's coming to THE CELLAR CLUB - Channel Premiere series SUPERNATURAL (1977) beginning Friday 13th February at 9pm! Featuring #RobertHardy #BillieWhitelaw #JeremyBrett #DenholmElliott #GordonJackson and many more! #TPTVsubtitles

“Heavy rains that often fall in February have flooded the low-lying meadows in the broad valley.” ‘What to Look for in Winter’, 1959 Artist: CF Tunnicliffe Writer: EL Grant Watson

More folk horror on the horizon, and this time we're beaming it right to you with our online STRANGE AS FOLK event this May! www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/strange-as... #folkhorror #folklore #horror #horrorfiction #horrorwriting #writing #writers #authors #events #onlineevents

I’ve heard it’s #SuperbOwlSunday.

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