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! 😀🐟

If it’s got goggly eyes, it’s an automatic repost! 👀

Halloween Countdown - it's today! 🎃🧵 I had to go big for Halloween so today's stories are all about the ghostly activity at mysterious Stonehenge. A levitation, a phantom plane, white ladies, strange electrical energy, vanishing campers and even The Great Hurricane of 1987 await you...

Halloween Countdown - Day 2 🎃👻🧵 Avebury Early in the 20th C, Miss Olivier was driving through the stone circle of Avebury when she became aware of a fair being held amongst the stones. She could hear the sounds and see lights but she didn’t investigate. #Folklore #Ghosts #Halloween

Did I tell you I’ve been working with some Wilts College media students on their folklore project? One group chose The Old Bell, Malmesbury and I noticed something in a window. Chances are, it’s a living human. Or is it? It’s a strange photo of a very haunted place... if you use your imagination! 👻

Halloween Countdown - Day 3 🎃 The Freke Arms, Swanborough This 200 yr old pub is haunted by an old landlady. Unexplained footsteps, sudden cold spots, soft murmured voices and sounds from empty rooms are down to her. She appears at the bar with neat, blue ankle boots. Sometimes it’s just boots! 🥾

Here’s the full story of The Tedworth Poltergeist in cartoon! It’s really good and worth a read! 👻👻👻

Halloween Countdown - Day 4 🎃🧵 The Tedworth Drummer The first recorded poltergeist report in British history came from Tidworth. In 1661, a landowner seized a vagrant drummer’s drum for being a nuisance and begging. The drum was taken to the local magistrate’s house, Tedworth House. #Halloween

Halloween Countdown - Day 5 🎃🧵 The Angel, Chippenham Since at least 1613 The Angel, once known as The Bull, has been an important grade II* listed coaching inn on the London to Bristol route. A lot of travellers passing through. Visitors and staff have reported strange noises and footsteps.

Halloween Countdown - Day 6 🎃🧵 The Bell, Malmesbury In the room known as the library, a portrait of a lady is thought to be the melancholy grey lady, but no one knows who she is. Some books say she was a lady forced into an unhappy marriage and she hung herself in the James Ody Room.

Halloween Countdown - Day 7 The Black Dog of Calne Mrs Read told a tale of her grandfather’s. When taking the train to Calne and on to Coate by foot to visit his sickly grandfather, on the path he was met by a large dog with blazing eyes as big as saucers. #Halloween2025 #Halloween #Ghosts

More weird stuff found in Lyme Regis; from the beach this time. A skull stone and a ghost face stone! It must be coming up to Halloween…🎃👻🎃 #halloween #ghosts #skulls #pareidolia

A wax doll! 😱 Yikes. 👹

I’ve been at Arundells this evening, conducting a Weird Wiltshire talk about the ghosts of medieval Salisbury. Doesn’t the cathedral look amazing and suitably atmospheric! 🍁👻🍁

I was just having a little tea-break, 🫖 reading my book, when a tiny, perfect little oak leaf fluttered down on my book! I love autumn! 🍄🍂 🍁🍂🍄 #books #autumn #reading

I’ve been working with some Wiltshire College students on their folklore projects, the best of which I’ll be showcasing over on Weird Wilshire! One of the groups has chosen the death of Rock and Roll legend, Eddie Cochran, who sadly took his last breath in Chippenham in 1960 following a car crash. 🧵

One of my favourite accounts here on Bluesky, from a lovely little farm helping people and animals. ☺️🐴🪿🐔🐱☺️

Junk dinosaur threatening passers-by. 🦖

‘This place? Haunted you say? I don’t believe it.’ 👻 The Shires in Trowbridge may look like a dull, half-empty shopping centre (it is) but the land has quite the history being occupied since the 10th century…👻 weird-wiltshire.co.uk/2025/02/23/t...

Autumn in the woods! 🍁🍂🍄🍂🍁🥰 #autumn #trees #october

I love robins! ☺️

Here’s a new member of the Weird Wiltshire family and I’ve told ‘Patchwork Pete’ we’re off to find an old hill fort at the weekend. He’s ok with that if I provide apples as a snack! 🍎😁

The biggest, scariest month ever of How Haunted? starts tomorrow. Eight massive episodes, and the first one is coming tomorrow as I'm joined in conversation by @stephlay.bsky.social to discuss her spooky Milton Keynes project 👻

Fancy a career change and saving a critically endangered craft or heritage skill from extinction? Have a look at these. I'm currently undecided, but glass eye making and clay pipe making are top of my list! 👁️

4000 year old yew tree here in Wiltshire! So old it’s held together by a concrete block (not the best solution I’m sure). And the ghost of someone peeking around this tree has been spotted. 👻🌲😊