I was just wondering where little Bingo was when I spotted two tiny paws. He was tucked up warm in my bed! 🥰

No wonder the Quality Street only lasts one night in our house and you need two Yorkies. 😳 Cheeky sods! #shrinkflation

🧵Today I visited soggy Savernake Forest, deep in the heart of Wiltshire. It was to record Open Country, a Radio 4 programme. 🌳 My segment, well it was the forest ghostlore of course! 👻 And there’s plenty of stories in those dark and ancient woods. Blog coming soon. Here’s a preview thread…🧵

👻🧵 I'm looking out of the window and it's raining again! The 36th day on the trot in the South West of England. With that in mind, I thought I'd send you a double-whammy of weird tales today to give you plenty to read while you stay warm and dry indoors. Spooky thread to follow... 👻

May your Monday be filled with horses under a rainbow and stuff like that! 🌈 🦄

I feel it! Spring is coming. 🌞

Yesterday the yellow globe in the sky made a rare appearance so I guided @ricrawlins.bsky.social up to the woods to find the Four Witches trees for a project he is working on. 🌞🌳 It always good to see the trees, even if the woods gave off their usual sinister vibes! 🌚

I bought a new knick knack for Weird Wiltshire HQ! £2 from Vinted! Bargain. 🌚⭐️😁⭐️🌚 #moon

Nooooooo! Imagine the horror. 😵‍💫Sometimes life is just an eggy mess. 🍳🥚🍳

It’s Groundhog Day! It seems the winter cold for a while yet, at least in the US where Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow. I love this little winter folklorish ritual. And I love the film of course! 🦫 #groundhogday

🧵Once a year, today, on the 31st January, beware of the headless horseman who haunts Sloane Track, which leads from Penselwood to Stourton. A black dog follows the horseman. According to the legend, a man made a wager he could get from Wincanton Market to Stourton in seven minutes flat. 👻🧵

In Wiltshire farmer's lore, if you meet a loaded haycart coming towards you, it was considered lucky, particularly if drawn by a white horse. Make a wish on seeing it and your wish will come true. ⭐ But if you spot the back of the cart first, look away and do not watch it because that is unlucky! 🌾🐴

Soggy skeletons here today as parts of Wessex go underwater. 💀 #flooding #floods

Let's get Monday off to a spooky start...👻🧵👻 Toothill Farm in Swindon dates back to the early 1600’s. In the 1919 it was purchased by Wiltshire Council to be used as allotments for returning WW1 soldiers. Now it is a community centre.

A pensive summer tree face, standing guard over the round barrows of Stonehenge. 🌳🌝🌳 #stonehenge

‘Is the north or south of England more haunted?’ Rob from How Haunted asked a bunch of us ghostlorists. No prizes for guessing what I said?! It’s the south of course. Wiltshire in particular. Not everyone agrees though! 😂👻👻👻

It's officially Blue Monday folks. The most depressing and gloomiest day of the year. 😖 I can confirm, having been out and about this morning, it is very grey, very gloomy and quite miserable. Even the stones were more grey than usual! #stonehenge #bluemonday

It’s been ages since I revisited this lockdown blog about the ghosts of The Sign of the Angel in Lacock, Wiltshire. 👻 Then an email popped in my inbox from Paul Lee - he’s been chatting to the staff. New stories have been added here if you fancy a read! weird-wiltshire.co.uk/2021/01/30/s...

I miss you Summer! 🌞 It’s when the fairies come to visit. 🧚🏻‍♂️ Do you see the little fairy special effect captured on The Gower in Wales? 🌼🌝🌼

Big Bellied Oak sits on the side of the road passing through Savernake Forest, Wiltshire. It has been there for around 1000 years, since the time of William the Conqueror. Run around it 7 times at midnight and you will summon the Devil. 👹And watch out for ghostly monks that sit beneath the tree. 🌳

I had plans to go exploring over the festive season but the infernal cold has kept me at home. 🥶 Still, I wanted to create something to get the year off to a spooky start. Here are some short tales from around Wiltshire to start four more seasons of weirdness.👻 weird-wiltshire.co.uk/2026/01/04/w...

🧵🐰First rabbit hole of 2026 and three hours later... Is the 18th century Wiltshire cottage in this charming painting (Wick Cottage) by Victorian artist Helen Allingham still standing? I love this artist, famed for her rural cottage paintings. 🧵

Mario is a bit deflated about the end of the Christmas holidays! 🎄 😂🎄

The sweet peas in my garden started growing in December. 😞 For anyone who still doubts the climate is changing (i suspect here I am preaching to the converted), go spend some time in nature. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Another year nearly done and dusted! I never post family piccies but we headed out for a leg stretch this morning and the light was something else. A magical morning! 🧚🏻‍♂️🌞🥶🌞🧚🏻‍♂️

This strange, waiting-for-something time of year is known by me as ‘the inbetween’. It’s a time for both kicking back and relaxing but also a time for annoying jobs I’ve been meaning to do for ages. Today - sort the electric fencing out and hoover my car! What inbetween jobs are you up to?! 😁

It’s been 60 years since the first appearance of ‘The Warminster Thing’ on Christmas Day; frightening UFO phenomenon and mystery that lasted a decade in this little Wiltshire town. 🎄 In honour of the anniversary there’s a newish mural in the town. Links to my two-part series are in this thread. 🛸👽🛸

Every day on the way to do horse duties I see this little stick guy with his spindly fingers waving from the road side. I always give him a wave back! And now I’ve given him some googly eyes so he’s even better! #pareidolia

Following on from this, last night I was again reading in bed. An alarm sounded in the house. We went to investigate. It was the radio again! I didn’t even know it had an alarm. Guess what the time was? Yup, bang on midnight! Boxing Day! Weird! 👻🎄👻

I was just reading my book late on Christmas Eve in bed. We heard the radio turn on in the kitchen. Only once before has it turned itself on, again in the night. We turned it off at the wall and I looked at the clock. Bang on midnight and officially Christmas Day! Sometimes we get visitors! 🎄👻🎄

Happy Winter Solstice from Stonehenge! Here’s to the days getting longer again. 🍻🌞🍻 P.S. This photo was from 2023. I didn’t make it this year- horse duties instead!

The ghost oak of Atworth! 👻🌳👻

Quite a lot of folklore surrounds the humble mince pie. My biggest takeaway- eat 12 mince pies on different days, in different houses throughout December. Each pie provides a month of good luck for the following year! I need to eat eight more… 🎄🎄🎄 #christmas #mincepie

Those old iron cages you occasionally see covering an old grave are known as mortsafes. There's only one left in the whole of Wiltshire. I decided my mission, one gloomy autumnal afternoon, was to find that lonesome mortsafe. Find out more here: ⛪💀 weird-wiltshire.co.uk/2025/12/15/b... #history

Here’s some giant Cerne Abbas energy for you to get your day going!! 😁

As the weekend kicks off, some of you may be considering a trip to a theme park or fair. Spare a thought for leisure seakers of the last century... The entrance to a circus attraction from France, 1920. A kind of weird, creepy catterpillar ride. I'm intrigued but I wouldn't go in! 🐛 #nothanks

All Cannings 🧵👻 Campfield House In September 1972, Miss Marjorie Ashbery lived at Campfield House. Alone in the house except, for her dog and cat, one night she saw the figure of a youngish, fair-haired woman in a green dress in a corner of her bedroom. #ghosts #wiltshire

Toy blast from the past! I had a Jem doll. I’d forgotten about her until I came across a ‘toys of the 70s/ 80s’ thread! I also had an Etch a Sketch and a Space Hooper!! 😁😁😁

At dawn on the 26 Jan 1969 a very large panda head appeared on a chalk hillside in Laverstock near Salisbury. For years whoever carved it remained a mystery. Eventually some university students owned up to the stunt. Having fallen into disrepair, the fading features are being overtaken by nature.🐼

This is the oldest known family photo taken at Stonehenge. c 1865, back when you could picnic on the great sarsens themselves. The original photo is owned by Queen Guitarist Brian May! #stonehenge #wiltshire #stonecircle

Cappy Mould, a Wiltshire postman with the BEST NAME EVER! To be remembered forever thanks to stonemason James Rixon. Read all about how Cappy came to end up on a cottage wall here! weird-wiltshire.co.uk/2022/07/20/t... #wiltshire #grotesques

Fire spirit! 🔥

Not to be confused in West Country lore is hinky punks and hunky punks! Allow me to enlighten you. 🧚‍♂️ Beware the dangerous Hinky-punk. A type of fairy, will-o-the-wisp lives on the Somerset/Devon borders. With one leg and a light it leads travellers into bogs. It's also a fav old kids show of mine!

I went in search of Wiltshire's last mortsafe. It's in Sutton Veny in the graveyard of St Leonard's church ruins. But, did it stop 18th & 19th century body snatchers or was it to stop the dead from returning? 🧟 Personally I like the idea that it is keeping a vampire hostage! 🧛‍♂️ #wiltshire #churches

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...

Why might Blind Lane, Ansty, be called so? Well I found out (from my new haul of folklorish stuff) that it is because the spring there was thought, in days gone by, to cure blindness in babies. I went to find the spring on Blind Lane. I think this is it!

I have scored the mother lode of local history/ folklore stuff! Huzzah! 🥳 Found in a little secondhand book shop, which is rarely open, this stash is golden. And all for £20. Result! 🤩

While this is certainly my fav time of year, Bonfire Night is definitely a ghoulish English celebration! It always strikes me as bizarre that we 'still' burn Guy Fawkes, one of the Catholic plotters who tried to blow up the House of Lords and King James in 1605. 🤔🎆 #bonfirenight #guyfawkes

I'm working on a new business idea since copywriting has died a death this last couple of years (thanks to AI). Keeping positive and everything crossed the new biz works. It involves old buildings and gargoyles. I'll say no more for now but leave you with a fab gargoyle from Salisbury Cathedral! ⛪

I do not need anything else to 'look after' but this little underwater world I spotted at the local fish keeping shop is so appealing. I want one! 😀🐟