VICTORIAN BIRD WOMEN draw on stories of demonic #Sirens and #Harpies. Waterhouse depicted seven sweet-voiced, deadly & grotesque bird women in 1891 inspired by the myth of Ulysses & the Sirens. Prophetic bird women, Sirin & Alkonost, feature in mythical art by Viktor Vasnetsov 1896 #FolkloreSunday

TIBETAN GHOST BEATING FESTIVAL at the Lama Temple or Yonghegong in Beijing China. The symbolic ritual involves wonderfully elaborate costumes & the beating away of spirits of troublesome #ghosts with sticks.

WITCH BOATS & EGG SHELLS According to A Discoverie of Witchcraft 1584, witches like to 'saile in an egge shell, a cockle or muscle shell, through the tempestuous seas'. It was traditional to crush the broken egg shells so they were not stolen by witches 🎨Charles Turner 1807

BOOK OF SHADOWS A guide for #witches containing beliefs, symbols, rituals, lore, incantations, spells, divination methods, sabbat rites etc. Gerald B. Gardner, father of modern Witchcraft, claimed to have inherited a fragmentary book of shadows in 1939 #BookologyThursday

GHOSTLY & VAMPIRIC BRIDES image from La morte amoureuse (The Deathly Lover), 1836; Mihály Zichy - A kísértetek órája (The Ghost Hour), 1880 #GothicSpring

UNDEAD WEDDNG In 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' (1992) Lucy Westenra is buried in her bridal gown; thus she undergoes a death wedding awakening as the bride of Dracula; the Victorian mourning gown itself uncannily resembled a bridal dress in reverse, complete with veil #GothicSpring

BOOK PRIZE 📢 Thrilled to announce that The Legacy of John Polidori: The Romantic Vampire and its Progeny has made the longlist for this year’s International Gothic Association Book Prize @IGA_Goths. Congratulations to all nominated authors and editors; a fantastic recognition of our work!

WITCHES & JUNIPER Juniper acts as a witch stopper in folklore; they will be compelled to count its myriad of tiny leaves before progressing. Vintage witch cover for The Witch of the Juniper Walk by Mrs May 1895 #FairytaleTuesday

FLOWER FABLES (1854) by the author of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (she also wrote on mummies). Alcott only received $35 from her Boston publisher for this unusual book, full of #fairy enchantment and wonder. It has recently been republished by Rizzoli, 2026 #botanicalgothic #FairytaleTuesday

GHOULISH GARDENS Step inside a 500 year old gothic garden via the mouth of a mythical #monster reclaimed by nature. The Garden of Bomarzo, or The Villa of Wonders is in Viterbo, Lazio; created in the 1600s in the valley below the Castle of Orsini #GothicSpring

ARE BEES FAIRIES? A belief exists that #bees are fairies, who are in turn souls, connecting fairyland & the land of the dead (Lady Wilde 1887). Wirt Sikes also speaks of 'swarms of bees, which are supposed to be fairies in disguise' (1880) 🎨Rackham

This will now take place on 20 May at 1.30. You can still find details on the site below!

FAIRY BRIDE In 1915 Frances Evering & Dotty Buchanan married in full fairy garb. A decadent nod to the power of the fae #GothicSpring #FairytaleTuesday

GOTHIC MARIONETTES 'Hell is empty, all the devils are here'; aren't they glorious! Prague Marionette Theatre's Folk Devil, Faust, Dracula, Devil for #WorldPuppetDay

LITERATURE RESEARCH SEMINAR SERIES Join me for a free online talk on 25 March at 1.30 ‘The Luck of the Ningyō: Japanese human-fish Yokai and the rise of the fake museum mermaid’ Abstract & joining instructions below. All welcome. www.opengravesopenminds.com/events/liter...

THE DUSKY BLUEBELLS In and out the dusky bluebells I am your master Bluebell woods are hazardous and full of fairy woven spells. You may be pixy-led or may never come out again. Is there not something sinister in the words of this Scottish singing game about bluebells? #GothicSpring 🎨Froud; Rheam

BEAUTIFUL IRISH FAIRY TALE BOOKS Irish Fairy and Folk Tales, ed. by W. B. Yeats (A. L. Burt Co. c.1905); Joseph Jacobs, Celtic Fairy Tales, illustrated by John Batten (A. L. Burt Co. 1899); The Irish Fairy Book. Illustrated by George Denham (Fisher Unwin, 1909). #FairyTaleTuesday #StPatricksDay

IRISH VAMPIRE KING In Glenullin, is a stone which marks the grave of ABHARTACH, an ancient #vampire. Slain with a Yew sword, he was buried upright with his feet towards the sky & a large stone cross & thorns were placed on the grave to hinder his return #MythologyMonday

WILD HUNT My favourite mythical haunting. In Celtic & Germanic folklore a furious bunch of #ghosts of the restless dead ride through the sky on their phantom horses accompanied by spectral hounds shrieking & making wild noises🎨Haynes 1874; Dore’ 1865 #FolkloreSunday

EVERY WITCH WAY spotted on my walk to Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, UK. as if to welcome me to goth land!

THE GREAT MOON HOAX was published in a New York newspaper, August 25, 1835, it claimed the discovery of life & civilization on the Moon and featured an illustration of lunar bat people #baturday #GothicSpring

WITCHY CAT NAMES PYEWACKET is the name of a witch's familiar found by witchfinder general Matthew Hopkins, 1644. GRIMALKIN another witchy name derives from 'grim' grey, 'malkin', a hare or spinster; Graymalkin is the witches' familiar in Shakespeare's Macbeth #Caturday

I love the name of this symposium. Definitely going to recommend it to my PhD students....

An exciting development!

FAIRY DOUBLES Robert Kirk's The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and #Fairies (published 1815) argues that we may each have a #fairy counterpart, haunting us like a shadow. This is both terrifying and delightful for fairy scholars!

VICTORIAN SONNET & VAMPIRE STORY ‘The dead abide with us though stark and cold Earth seems to grip them, they are with us still’. Stylish vampire story LET LOOSE by Mary Cholmondeley (1890) takes these lines as its starting point. This little-known fiction predates Dracula by 7 years!!

LIGHTS, CAMERA, GHOSTS: On the trail of the first ever film version of #WutheringHeights at East Riddlesden Hall, Yorkshire, UK. Read all about my gothic pilgrimage #EmilyBronte

WUTHERING HEIGHTS SCREENPLAY 1920 Yesterday I explored the magnificent gothic pile that is East Riddlesden Hall. It's the setting for the first ever film adaptation of #WutheringHeights. The screenplay by Eliot Stannard was remarkable to read and the setting perfect in its gothic gloom. Wow!

BRONTE GRAVEYARD, HAWORTH, UK "Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?" Heathcliff to Catherine, Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847. Photos from my visit this weekend.

GIRLS WHO MARRIED SNAKES 'As soon as the snake saw Grannonia, it wound its tail round her & kissed her. Then leading her into a room, it shut the door', 'The Enchanted Snake', Green Fairy Book, 1892 illustrated by H. J. Ford & 'King Lindworm', Pink Fairy Book, 1897. #FairyTaleTuesday

TIME IN FAIRYLAND In fairyland time passes at a very arbitrary rate. Sometimes a year is really a thousand years, sometimes a night is twenty years, sometimes a few minutes play takes a hundred years or more; but this timeless fairyland is somehow interlocked with mortal time. 🎨Max Pirner, 1888

YEATS & VAMPIRES (1933) In tombs of gold and lapis lazuli Bodies of holy men and women exude Miraculous oil, odour of violet. But under heavy loads of trampled clay Lie bodies of the #vampires full of blood; Their shrouds are bloody and their lips are wet.

SWAN SONG In the Greek tradition, the #swan is enchanted and is often pictured singing to a lyre. This finds its way into fairy tales alongside its association with love and Venus, which comes from Roman myth. #FairyTaleTuesday🎨 swan & lyre; C14th singing swans

THE WILD SWANS Fairy tale by Hans Andersen, 1838. An evil queen turns her eleven stepsons into #swans and forces them to fly away; they're allowed to become human again by night. A possible influence on Swan Lake #FairyTaleTuesday🎨Anadezhda Illarionova; Marcia Brown

Book Cover of the Day:

This is a fantastic library in a sensational gothic building well worth a visit if you can get there!

"Jewels in the Wash" 🎨 A. Duncan Carse (1875-1938) #GoldenAgeOfIllustration

LOVE SONG FOR A REVENANT Softly as brown-eyed Angels rove I will return to thy alcove, And glide upon the night to thee, Treading the shadows silently 'The Revenant' Charles Baudelaire Image: Abbott Thyer, 1903

THE GREAT MOON HOAX was published in a New York newspaper, August 25, 1835, it claimed the discovery of life & civilization on the Moon and featured an illustration of lunar bat people #baturday #GothicSpring

VAMPIRE TEETH 'The young lady at your right has the sharpest tooth, long thin, pointed like a needle' (Carmilla, 1872). Carmilla is outed as a #vampire by a hunchback mountebank carrying a magic lantern, a boxed salamander, a mandrake & a file for her teeth #mythologymonday

THE DEATH COACH or Cóiste Bodhar is said to appear after a BANSHEE attack. It Looks like a funeral coach drawn by black horses & is driven by a vampiric fairy spirit who collects the soul of the victim, without making a sound (Wentz, 1911) #GothicFolklore

WUTHERING HEIGHTS The 1847 edition of the only novel Emily Bronte published was released under the male alias Ellis Bell as a three-volume set less than two years before she died in 1848, aged just 30. Rarer and more poignant than any #WutheringHeightsMovie - only 250 copies were ever printed.

ST VALENTINE is the holy guardian of lovers but not many people know that after death his skull became a decorated floral relic, one of the most gothic items to be found in a Roman reliquary. Shown here in the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin #ValentinesDay

GOTHIC #VALENTINES Mary Shelley is rumoured to have kept Percy Shelley's heart in a silken shroud, carrying it with her for years (his remains were in Rome). After she died the heart was found in her desk wrapped in his poems. It's hard to out goth that! 🎨Embalmed hearts

VAMPIRE FAIRY TALE Marusia is in love with a young man who she later sees eating a corpse laid out in the church. Falling victim to the #vampire she's buried at a crossroad & blooms again as a flower. Afanasev, Tales 1855-67 #FairyTaleTuesday

FAIRIES IN A BIRD'S NEST J.A. Fitzgerald (1819-1906) Fairies inhabit a stolen nest; a grotesque being is hatching from an egg. The painting retains its original gothic frame, its uncanny twiggy forms echoing the tangled, forbidden forest #MythologyMonday

ST VALENTINE is the holy guardian of lovers but not many people know that after death his skull became a decorated floral relic, one of the most gothic items to be found in a Roman reliquary. Shown here in the Basilica di Santa Maria in Cosmedin #ValentinesDay

THE GWYLLION The hill fairies of Wales. Thought to be forbidding and malignant. They can visit houses and must be received cordially (if you do not want to risk their mischief). You can read about them in Wirt Sikes, British Goblins, 1880 #FolkloreSunday

SNAPDRAGON SKULLS Did you know snapdragon seed heads resemble tiny skulls? Just found the ones I saved in the autumn. Perfect for #gothicspring #botanicalgothic

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