Goodnight from The Ghost Bear’s Bowl pub, where there’s much talk about what the oil extraction company up at Trotton Grove might disturb. Goodnight from Ali Weaver, wishing her mother wouldn’t tell the children stories about the Hairy Pike at bedtime. Goodnight from Hookland.

November’s early darkness enfolds us. The smell of applewood fires and rot is a constant companion at twilight. We hurry between home and evensong, home and pub. Ghosts crowd the lanes, our folklore becomes filled with tales of cold teeth. Winter begins to growl. - #CLNolan

Here’s Sarah of the break-spell Here’s cousin Jem of the curse Give me Bloody Emma who twists the knife and makes it worse - Trad. Hookland witch rhyme

A gentle reminder that this is one of those generational good books which will still being read in 20 years time.

Goodnight from Wiverstone, where the village green firework display has provoked the ire of rudely wakened Moss Maidens. Goodnight from the Egyptian Bingo Hall, where the clinking of lucky charms grows louder as the evening’s grand prize is about to be called. Goodnight from Hookland.

Hookland is closed for the rest of the day due to hospital admission. Don’t worry if there is no goodnight. Don't attempt to talk to the ghosts on Brighthaven Pier till it re-opens. The only thing likely to be on @cultauthor.bsky.social is pictures of wheelchairs and corridors.

Goodnight from Lilly Weyburn, too afraid to find out what’s making moaning sounds in the apple cellar. Goodnight from Kitty Lansbury, wondering why the Victorian sampler hanging in her Nanna’s bedroom appears to have been copied from a grimoire. Goodnight from Hookland.

In November hares come to wood edge. Most say this is for cover, for food. Yet more than one old countryman has told me they come to pay tribute to the wood itself, to have one last dance with the Moss Maidens before their cold sleeping. At twilight they feed and mutter omens. - #CLNolan

Even at the unfashionable end of Ashcourt Necropolis, there are houses of the dead that try to lord it over their neighbours. For all the grand statements made by their stones, they still whisper lonely sorrows. Inequality wins few friends. – #CLNolan

When everything tide-touched becomes property of the King-Under-the-Sea, high tide is a crucial matter. Even more so when it comes to the county's causeway islands. No-one wants to get trapped on Os or Far Gore. No-one wants to spend even an extra hour on Strood. – #MattAdams

#VOH stands for Voices of Hookland, because you can’t tell the truths of anywhere and exclude voices that aren’t the middle class academics, authors and professionals the weird fiction genre relies too heavily upon. Dairy men, shelf stackers, factory workers all sing the strange truths of place.

Goodnight from Rob Eley, sure he can see rough and not entirely human shapes on Salt Tear Marsh. Goodnight from Weychester University Library, where the sound of pages being turned has not stopped even though no living reader is left on the premises. Goodnight from Hookland.

You may want to do this for when Hookland is rude …

The wooden bestiaries of England's churches offer a library of carved folklore. Here a giant wyrm or ghost bear to keep you company as you pray. There a manticore, flown from far Persia, to growl at tedious homilies. – John Betjeman, The English Alphabet , BBC Two, 1972 #Folklore

The year limped on with a malign heart, never quite letting go of its fever. Even as it moved towards the inevitably of ice and long hours of darkness, the village sweated out visions. Evening chatter in both pubs was filled with augury. Ghosts gathered. - #CLNolan, The Growling of the Land, 1912

I like properties where spirits have thrown their ectoplasmic weight around to the point the owners have fled. More so, I adore a property so phantom-plagued no estate agent can find a willing renter. Ghosts that defy the property market are worth studying. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

Rain and mist envelop #Hookland this morning. Field, river and mound emerge for brief moments, then fade back to obscurity. @hookland.bsky.social

Finally have some time to start reading this! Absolute delight so far, feeling the lack of a keyboard I can try to plonk the tunes out with. If I use the clarinet I will be a semitone out on everything though xD

Children leave for school early on November 6th. They want extra time to collect the sticks of fallen rockets. They sit in class comparing numbers, passing around the ones with strongest smell of gunpowder, inhaling as if each whiff contained the memory of its display. - Joanna Vickers #VOH

Goodnight from Gosmer, where the villagers have chosen to burn an effigy of Thatcher the Iron Witch instead of Guy Fawkes. Goodnight from David Appleyard, walking a night filled with bonefire incense and the heady gunpowder smell of exploded fireworks. Goodnight from Hookland.

For the witch, there are times when the river becomes a fluid scrying, a constant flow of omens. It's tutelary spirit whispers wisdom in her ears, its magics ripple across her psychic skin. She becomes one with its shaping song. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Those talking openly about witchery often focus on the active aspects – possibly because they like telling people what to do. There's a neglect of passive enchantments, those parts of witchery where we listen, where we commune with the land. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Goodnight from Tod Loker, making questionable deals outside the back of Haldane Abattoir to get special bait for his Empress Eel hunting. Goodnight from Hugo Wester, furious that his penny-for-the-Guy seems to have woken and absconded from the garden shed. Goodnight from Hookland.

The door to the old bridewell at Moxham village. The gaol has remained locked since 1934 due to the high levels of haunting experienced by villagers walking passed it. Many put this down to the witch spirit of Old Mother Twilling, others to the high number of drunks who died in it across the years.

For the lithic lookouts which adorn the tombs of Ashcourt Necropolis keep not a watch on the coming and goings of the dead, but rather maintain a surveillance of the living. For in those portions of the land ceded to the Breathless Empire, we are the trespassers. – #CLNolan

Goodnight from Cora Hall, dyeing cotton thread with madder root for use in her Wagging Tongue binding. Goodnight from Ray Link, staying up for his Open University broadcast and discovering other errant, alien transmissions can be found in the early hours. Goodnight from Hookland.

When you're growing up, there's always a house in the village you like. A house you tell yourself one day you'll buy. In my case, even before brute economics kicked in my dreams, learning that No. 10 was haunted by a burning child put me completely off owning it. – Tess Goss #VOH #Ghosts

At the edge of the Restal Waste salt marsh you navigate by the observation towers of the Marsh Ape Research Society (MARS). Become thankful for firm paths that skirt pools flickering with the memories of all the things they've drowned. Folklore howls here. – Dr. M. Benn

Currently bed bound so to have this wonderful book by @odavies9.bsky.social and @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social turn up in the post is a double joy. Accessible, erudite and insightful as you would expect, but also gloriously entertaining and engaging.

You tell kids not to uncork anything that washes up on the banks of the Stannis, but they don't listen. They think it's going to be the fun of finding messages in the bottle. They never consider they are releasing curses or spirits. It's a hard lesson to learn. – Tony Dobbs #VOH

Goodnight from the unofficial floating market on the canal by The Hairy Pike pub, where Pru Hood is doing surprising brisk business in St. Anthony bells. Goodnight from Elizabeth Charnock, putting down an extra plate of Sunday lunch leftovers just for the ghost cats. Goodnight from Hookland.

Parental scarelore has probably saved as many lives as it's claimed Stay Belows take. Children given a healthy terror of pools and rivers not through fear of flow and depth, but the seizing of hands and ankles from under the surface. – Joanna Vickers #VOH #FolkloreSunday

When we cross into a stone circle, we not only journey into the Long Neolithic, we walk into ritual, into a continuing sense of sacred. We mustn't look at it as a completed story. It is ongoing. Our being there only adds a new chapter to it. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

Time to annoy the ghost of Thomas Nashe again.

Goodnight from the Marland Tobacco Factory, where some workers are ending their shift with an impromptu séance to contact Pete Bridge’s troubled spirit. Goodnight from Miranda Weyburn, making camp beside the River Casta so her swan-self can glide the night. Goodnight from Hookland.

We would wake from having slept under our transmission tower temples, our breath transformed into dragon mist as we shivered into November dawns. All of us eager to march on, to share vivid memories of dreams implanted by The Hum. – Tattoo Labyrinth Dave, ex-Pylon Person #VOH

At the midpoint of Hallowtide, I often reflect on the things I am grateful for in the last year. One of them was working with @lunatraktors.bsky.social to pass on this traditional Hookland song.

Goodnight from Jonathan Dinmel, wishing his route across Northmoor didn’t take him passed the Devil’s Spire. Goodnight from the children of Woodend village, tramping its surrounding lanes in delight at being equipped with mangelwurzel lanterns and spirit whips. Goodnight from Hookland.

Hookand is gothic and a conversation with the ghost soil of place 365 days of the year. Halloween and the whole season of the dead is sacred, intimate and primarily focussed on listening for me. So, apologies if you expect movie recommendations and a big event, a Hookland Halloween isn’t that way.

An old tradition ... Fine Folk or Follow Friday #FF: @treadwells-books.bsky.social @kirkdalebooks.bsky.social @sebbyb.bsky.social @philh.bsky.social @odavies9.bsky.social @regretteruane.bsky.social @julianneregan.bsky.social @mjpcuervo.bsky.social @lazaruscorporation.co.uk @edkarshner.bsky.social

Goodnight from Ruby Lumb, hoping her dreams will let her look in the mirrors of the witch twins Bright Bertha and Dark Peggy. Goodnight from Ashcourt Necropolis, where all the remaining grave bells make tintinnabulation despite harsh rust and an absence of breeze. Goodnight from Hookland.

Children have an innate sense of which trees are possessed by Wood Sprites. It's a faculty not ever adult loses. Some of us still hear trees whisper with withered bark voices in our minds. Still see their wooden bones as alphabet. We know they watch. – Joanna Vickers #VOH

America can be pernicious. Most kids don't want turnip and mangelwurzel lanterns anymore. No, they want pumpkins and exotic squashes. You try and tell them to stick to mangels, but they just think grandad is a fool. At least they are still guising. – Ed Nazey, 1982 #VOH #FolkloreThursday

For folklore is a lens of wonder. I shall never tire of peering through it. – #CLNolan #FolkloreThursday

Le Guin, as ever, worth listening to here.

Goodnight from Lizzie Foster, starting to doubt the wisdom of listening to her dolls when they asked her to take them out for a midnight picnic in Toft Woods. Goodnight from Chris Downs, freaked out by spotting a door in his house that wasn’t there yesterday. Goodnight from Hookland.

Every threshold is an engine of magics, every place permits and suggests sorceries. When gifted reflection, we are also offered opportunity for scrying. Others call it pareidolia, witches call it being fluent in the fluid language of omens. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

The witch's arts include an ability to listen. To find spaces where the voice of the land is loud enough to hear. Whether wood clearing, hollow in hill or turn in the stream, she should hearken to the genii locorum. In their words, a living wisdom. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Goodnight from Pris Hasard, sharpening her spindle wood stakes just in case certain corpses wake. Goodnight from the Honeybone Allotments, where a pile of autumn leaves, moss and twigs has decided to animate itself as it doesn’t fancy being burnt at the weekend. Goodnight from Hookland.

The goodnight from Hookland may be about an hour late tonight as I have been trying to end my ****y hedgehog phase of the last few years. Apologies for any inconvenience.