"I have seen landscapes, notably in the Mourne Mountains and southwards which under a particular light made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge". CS Lewis describing CO. Down and the Mournes, the inspiration for Narnia. #BookWormSat 📷Nigel Killeen

It’s a valley where you feel completely safe, Moomintroll told her. You feel happy when you wake up and it’s a pleasure to fall asleep at night. There’s a climbing tree where I’m going to build a house and a completely secret place that I shall show you. Comet in Moominland Tove Jansson #BookWormSat

That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith 📷Times Square with Pigeons - Frank Oscar Larson #BookWormSat

On Easter Sunday in England, people once arose early to witness the sun dancing... #EasterSunday #Folklore

In Scottish lore, folk born on Good Friday not only have the ability to see ghosts but to order them about... #PhantomsFriday

A maritime superstition said it was unlucky to “save a stranger from the sea” for “he’ll turn your enemy”. There was a belief that the one who saved the other, would soon be drowned themselves... #MorbidMarch 🎨Niss

Children claim it a Wood Sprite bones. None of them will admit to being afraid of it, but in all their frantic bonefire gathering – Pale Eve, Midsummer and Guy Fawkes – they leave it alone. Even in death, Wood Sprites infest their imaginations, Demand terror tithe. – Joanna Vickers #VOH

Balls of light have been reported hovering over various stretches of water on the Scottish lochs, sometimes stationary, then moving fast and dropping down into the water. In local lore such lights were thought to foretell death, and upon seeing them, fisherman would stay on dry land... #MorbidMarch

Whitby Jet became THE most integral piece of Victorian mourning jewellery. Following the death of Prince Albert 50 jet workshops swelled to 204... #MorbidMarch 🎨Jules Émile Saintin

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies, that’s for thoughts. . . . There’s fennel for you, and columbines. Hamlet, act 4, scene 5. #ShakespeareWeek #BookWormSat 🎨John Everett Millais

‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here.’ ~ The Tempest, William Shakespeare. #BookswormSat 🖼️ Arthur Rackham

'You have witchcraft in your lips.' -Shakespeare 🎨Henrietta Rae (detail) #BookWormSat

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.” ✍️William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream #BookWormSat 🎨Felice Casorati

Tattoos all had symbolic meanings. The swallow represented how many miles the sailor had travelled and, if they drowned, would also fly their soul to heaven. The anchor represented stability, strength and safety... 📸Todd Walker #MorbidMarch

The fantastic legend of The Lady Lovibond is the tale of a ghost ship which reappears every 50 years off the coast of Kent. The ship was said to have been deliberately steered off course by the first mate who was in love with the captain's wife... 🎨Alfred Kubin #MorbidMarch

Inveterate practical joker Charles Vance Millar had weird clauses in his will including leaving a house to three men who hated each other as long as they lived together; and a fortune to the Toronto woman who gave birth to the most children in 10 years - known as The Great Stork Derby! #MorbidMarch

Good Friday and Old Lady Day rarely coincide and 25 March was the day they executed Margaret Clitherow, for harbouring Catholic priests in 1586. When the three dates align something strange happens in York's Shambles. Death and the scent of Daisies. Read more in today's #DarkSpringtide tale below

The aroma of roses repels vampires and the petals burn them like acid. Placing a rose on a grave helps trap a vampire underground... 🎨Munch #WyrdWednesday

Would you like to read your own obituary? PT Barnum did. On his death bed and in a final act of showmanship, he persuaded The Evening Sun in New York to publish his obituary whilst he was still alive. The paper did acknowledge this fact though! #MorbidMarch

In Jamaican folklore when a child lost one of their teeth, the rolling calf would come rattling chains to take the tooth AND the child away! But the clever child would put their tooth into a tin can and shake it. The noise would keep the rolling calf away... #MorbidMarch 🎨Picasso

Sweet basil in Italy was the flower of lovers while in ancient Greece it was an herb of hatred... #MorbidMarch 🎨Isabella and the Pot of Basil - John White Alexander

Cauls (pieces of the birth membrane) were rare and highly prized by mariners who bought them for quite high prices. They were believed to protect the owner from drowning... 🎨Alma-Tadema #MorbidMarch

#BookwormSat In the Saga of Noggin the Nog story about the Ice Dragon, by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, the Nogs pursue Nogbad through the dark forest of Troleskow, where there are no paths as the trees move about when no one is watching them.

“Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees,” said Lucy (though she had not been intending to speak at all). “Oh, Trees, wake, wake, wake. Don't you remember it? Don't you remember me? Dryads and Hamadryads, come out, come out to me.” Prince Caspian - CS Lewis #BookWormSat 🎨 Pauline Baynes

In Scottish lore, the Bean-nighe (Fairy Woman) was found in all the lonely places washing the linen of those about to die. If a person caught her unawares, she would tell them all what would happen after life. But if she saw them first, they lost the power of their limbs... 🎨Brian Froud #MorbidMarch

✨🌱🌞🌱✨ happy spring equinox, like a seed, slowly warm, slowly stretch, slowly step ✨

In Italy & Spain on Mid Lent Sunday there was a Spring custom known as "Segare la vecchia" or sawing the old woman. Boys made an effigy of the oldest woman in the village which represented winter, then sawed it in half. The rasping sound of the saw was said to drive away evil spirits... #MorbidMarch

Parsley germinates so slowly, it was said it visited Satan nine times before appearing! If parsley is transplanted on any day other than Good Friday, a family death especially that of the gardener, was once believed to follow... #FolkloreThursday 🎨Hugo Simberg

Since time immemorial, the new moon has represented new cycles. Traditionally, it was for invocation, planting and building. In East Canada, the third day was for pruning trees. In North Carolina, it was bad luck to see the new moon first through tree branches #FolkloreThursday 1910 Hans Thoma

In art, blanching is when a formerly clear and transparent surface becomes white or opaque... #MorbidMarch 🎨Poliakoff (I think - it was uncredited!)

Marafonas, Portuguese faceless cloth dolls, play an important part during the Festas de Santa Cruz in May. But what if one wakes early, on the eve of the Spring Equinox? We go to the Portugal's Castelo Branco district and find out, in our 19th #darkspringtide tale. Read it below 🎨 bloodborne

In spring, more spiderwebs appear, due to these creatures becoming more active as they prepare for the mating season. Some folklore asserts that the more spiderwebs you see in spring, the luckier you'll be. #FolkloreThursday #Folklore #Mythology

Daisies are protective plants. A child wearing daisy chains was reportedly safe from fairy kidnappings... #FolkloreThursday 🎨Hugh Cameron

The glorious Japanese Spring festival Hina matsuri or Dolls’ Festival, is held on the 3rd March. An urban festival, it derives from a rural ceremony of making coloured paper dolls and setting them adrift on water to carry sickness and evil away... #FolkloreThursday 📷Lam Museum of Anthropology

In Sweden at Easter time, Easter Witches flying to the Blue Hill is a traditional theme. Its history is grim, harkening from the time when people believed in actual witches. Now children dress up as witches and we share cards like these. Take note of her coffee kettle. A must! #FolkloreThursday

Happy Spring #FolkloreThursday 🦋 That was @mythcrafts.bsky.social sharing your posts before the break -- many moons ago! I'm @shanonsinn.bsky.social your final host, for the next one hour 🌞 Today's theme is "Spring, Rebirth, and Renewal” 1919 Clara Miller Burd

In European folklore, the song thrush was believed to be a magical harbinger of spring. The thrush can sing over 59 tunes and their powerful songs were said to ward off evil spirits and summon the changing of the season. art by Edith Holden (1906) #FolkloreThursday

Ares god of war and rage was once chained and trapped in a bronze urn by two young giants who wished to steal power from the gods. They accidentally speared each other when intending to kill Artemis. And Ares festered in that urn for over a year until rescued by Hermes... #MorbidMarch 🎨Velázquez

Goddess Jūratė lived in a golden palace under the sea until she fell in love with a mortal. Jealous god Perkūnas killed her lover, destroyed her palace and chained the goddess to the ruins. And yet to this day, golden debris from the palace floats ashore and is known as amber... #MorbidMarch 🎨Turner

And until Easter comes in the middle of yellow autumn, And the feast day of Patrick a day or two after, Until the white blossom grows through the middle of my narrow coffin, A share of love I never will give to a woman! from "Siúil A Rúin" #MorbidMarch 🎨Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz

A contagious epidemic of dancing swept 14th century Europe. The so-called St. Vitus Dance mania followed the Black Plague and was later blamed on fear, persecution and unrest. Dancers moved with zeal and fury, unable to stop until their bodies were broken and exhausted... #MorbidMarch 🎨Von Dardel

My devil had been long caged, he came out roaring. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson 🖌️Toadstool Nook Tracy Parsons #BookWormSat

"I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past... The house was a sepulchre, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins... I should think of it as it might have been, could I have lived there without fear." —Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier #BookWormSat

“I dreamed of cats, and soft-moving creatures, and the silence of life in a dim muffled world beyond the senses.” (Algernon Blackwood “Ancient Sorceries”) 🎨 Sidney Stanley (1932) #bookwormsat #booksky #bookillustration #catdurday

Cemeteries were often surrounded by iron fences as this was believed to prevent the souls of the dead from leaving and wandering abroad... #MorbidMarch 🎨Franz Skarbina

"It watches," he added suddenly. "The house. It watches every move you make". The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson #BookWormSat 🎨Atkinson-Grimshaw

In response to @ninaantonia13.bsky.social's post, here is 'Spiritism', 1905, by Serafino Macchiato. #PhantomsFriday #spiritualism #occult #artsky

Some say the bogs are haunted at night by the glow of lost souls, will-o’-the-wisps (ignis fatuus) luring unwary travelers to their doom. 🎨Teodoro Wolf Ferrari (1897) #PhantomsFriday

A Ghostly Skeleton Trying to Strangle a Sick Child; Representing Diphtheria by Richard Tennant Cooper #PhantomsFriday