According to 'Old Mother Ash's Book of Cloud-telling', this formation is known as 'The Hormed-knight wakes'. It's meant to symbolise a rising will, renewed intent. A refusal to give-up and retreat from the bullying on the world. All-in-all, not a bad nephomantic omen. – Joanna Vickers #VOH

Sometimes you can just tell from the outside which pubs are going to be full of tales of Stay Belows, full of stories about the Empress Eel sightings. I think it is one of accidental the skills you acquire as a folklorist in Hookland. – Dr. M. Benn, 1982

They say Mother Thel had a tongue made of thorns. They say she could tap her fingers against any object and know who made it. They say the trees of the wood would bow as she passed. She has become immortal in the imagination in the way that only folklore bestows. – Dr. M. Benn

To be clear, there is no ethical AI you can use. AI almost always means Arseholes Involved. If you are using AI/LLMs (Likely Lying Machines) to promote your work you are dead to me. Get some respect for the planet, the people whose work was stolen and the power of your own work to promote itself.

Goodnight from David Mason, working out how much he can win at Brighthaven Casino before its bosses discover he’s using his psychic powers. Goodnight from Raven Butcher, trying to remember all of the moves in the dance said to summon the Blood Maiden. Goodnight from Hookland.

I used to be one of those witches who tidied away certain items before non-pagan friends came round. I've grown out of such nonsense. Our magic is in our relationships, including those of our tools. It is a duty to be proud of such things. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #FolkwitchFriday

I look up at transmission towers and wish for The Hum again. I miss connection to the electric ley of the land. I miss following the march of pylons across pathless fields, through bosky woods. Miss the strange enfoldment. – Signal-catcher Rose, ex-Child of The Hum, 1982 #VOH

Goodnight from Pat Wanting, printing yet more pamphlets prophesying coming catastrophes and UFO evacuations on Meon Hill. Goodnight from Jim Wyndle, placing pathmarkers in the lanes so his son’s spirit can find its way home from St. Wulfric’s boneyard. Goodnight from Hookland.

Have just asked the publisher of the first Hookland booklet if they could put the following after the ISBN details: The author of the work would like to give fair warning to anyone intending to pirate this book that they will activate a curse embedded in its text if they do so.

Goodnight from Ray Hood, making a model of his beam trawler the Aurora Rose to put in a bottle for purposes of sympathetic safety upon the waves. Goodnight from Maggie Hayes, wondering just how many drops of blood make a suitable offering to the Witch Twins. Goodnight from Hookland.

In summer's brutal fever, the witch may sit in tree-shade and speak to spirits. Her working is wise, her working is weather-led. She achieves more in cool communion than by any flailing around and summoning of heatstroke. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

It’s my fundamental belief that uncommon things happen to common people. Those that investigate the paranormal and focus on the grand house, the aristocratic ghost, damage the subject. The strange surrounds us all, excluding the working class experience of it is vile and wrongheaded. –#CJosiffe

Goodnight from Edi Stillwell, wondering if it’s true that the windows of St. Modwen’s College are really warded by the porters to prevent boyfriends climbing through them. Goodnight from Susan Brickman, the shade of Mother Thel whispering in her dreams. Goodnight from Hookland.

For there are places that hold not only the old secrets of the land, but its ancient magics. We walk them and are enfolded not only by feral shadows, but palpable sense of a long memory in which we are merely an unfortunate flicker. – #CLNolan

Flat Earthers are amongst the worst numpties. They’ve already proven themselves so susceptible to errant nonsense that cult leaders know they will swallow any old bullshit. Mud flood empires, Nazi-alien hybrids, messiahs needing tailor-made silk suits. – #DICallaghan in conversation with #DSNokes

Goodnight from Sadie Clemens, wondering if she’ll have the dream where she’s a crow with a beakful of corpse-flesh again. Goodnight from Joshua Handford, failing to disguise his voice while phoning in a bomb warning on behalf of the Ghost Preservation Society. Goodnight from Hookland.

Looking through the archives you discover Hookland has suffered falls of glass, falls of fish and even falls of toads. There have been several rains of blood and showers of nails. Being a county metrologist seems an exciting profession, but one which should involve danger money. – #MattAdams

I know Hookland is working when people dream of it.

Goodnight from Seth Rushton, wondering who’s cursed him so he barks like a fox every time he steps across the threshold of The Burnished Head pub. Goodnight from Little Wanting, where old shame haunts as discarnate leper bells ring the way to Weychester. Goodnight from Hookland.

Yesterday, @regretteruane.bsky.social compared me favourably to Bagpuss – it is true I am old, saggy and a bit loose at the seams – and then shared this stab of beauty.

#SundayAfternoonCallaghan in which a cult is explained to Detective Sergeant Nokes and certain dark truths about humanity are shared.

We cross the threshold of a stone circle and are engulfed by a sense of ongoing ritual. Engulfed by a sense of intimate lithic conversations, power dynamics unfolding across slow centuries. The Long Neolithic is palpable. The Long Neolithic is living. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

Goodnight from Dan Meeks and his pet rat Arthur, bombsite camping in Ashcourt’s deepest crater as they watch the fire for fates in the flames. Goodnight from Jen Sykes, unable to dismiss the feeling everyone at the party is looking at her newly webbed fingers. Goodnight from Hookland.

The English country pub is akin to a good ghost anthology by diverse authors. Within its walls, a dozen spectral stories. For the price of pint, you can hear tales that will trouble for decades. Old Ash on the counting child, Young Adam telling of the Blood Maiden's tongue. – #CLNolan

That collection of villages known as the Barrows – High Barrow, Stagden Barrow, Good Barrow and Greenfold Barrow – have other names among those with reason to visit them – the Silent Villages, the Sorrows. For they do not talk of their grievances and ghosts to outsiders. – #CLNolan

Given the first recorded trainspotter in 1861 was a girl called Fanny Johnson, we shouldn't be surprised many sprectral trainspotters reported at stations and alongside tracks, are female. Mislabelling as something other than trainspotters due to gender is a crime against ghosts. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

The ship in a bottle is often an act of sympathetic magic. Mariners make models of their ships to safely voyage a still sea of glass, place them on even shelves. In this act of folk magic is hope both vessels become entangled, that the bottled craft will lend safety to its counterpart. – Dr. M. Benn

America has its Men In Black, but this is England. We have politely stern chaps in navy suits waving RAF papers to advise those who’ve seen UFOs best keep mum. The Men In Black drive Cadillacs, the Chaps In Navy arrive in Rover P5s and are much more odd. – Sean York

Goodnight from Rod Hadfield, regretting getting ‘The Wadlow Malevolence’ as his evening’s viewing from the video van. Goodnight from Vickie Barrett, her semi-drunken window-shopping for dresses disrupted by glimpse of mannequin movement. Goodnight from Hookland.

@alexlangstone.bsky.social So good to see you here.

@hntdove.bsky.social Had a lovely moment yesterday discussing Three Miles Down in my postage stamp of a garden. Being able to say: “Yep. He’s on social media and he’s lovely” is a nice thing. Discovering that a dear friend likes the same fiction is a wonderful, connective bonus.

Fabulous folk: @sebbyb.bsky.social @stonelands.bsky.social @unlikelyworlds.bsky.social @pjrobichaud.bsky.social @angryrobotbooks.bsky.social @johnreppion.bsky.social @jwomack.bsky.social @chriswoodyard.bsky.social @archaeoborders.bsky.social @sardonicus.eu @0tralala.bsky.social #FF

For those who know, for those who follow: May all the ways be open, may all the paths you tread be blessed.

Goodnight from Guy Tovey, desperately flicking through the Yellow Pages in hope of finding a 24-hour spirit banishing service. Goodnight from Wendy Cooper, hoping her new witchcraft correspondence course will include sections on anti-landlord magic. Goodnight from Hookland.

For those who missed my recent talk at the wonderful London Fortean Society, you might be pleased to know that it is going to be published alongside some additional Hookland material in a small booklet. I will update across the next few weeks.

The humble phone box has assumed an important position in Hookland folklore. Aliens and computers from the future ring them from high orbit. Both the recent and long dead leave messages for the living via them. They are deliverers of omen, disruptors of the everyday.– Dr. M. Benn

Before the skies of Hookland became crowded with UFOs – all saucers, black cubes, spiked spheres and green pyramids – reports were made of flying sailboats. These cloud-cleaving vessels so numerous they were known to county folklore as Doom Ships or Faery Barges. – Brian Danbury

Goodnight from Meg Bale, now in no doubt that while she can’t see her daughter’s invisible friend, she can certainly hear him laughing. Goodnight from Charlie Blake, considering whether it’s worth the effort to try and wake the thousand-year-old toad of Canon’s Pool Goodnight from Hookland.

For a witch, a path may not be important due to its destination, but rather for the quality of spirits she talks to whilst upon it. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

The threshold is an engine of magics. The threshold is a temporary temple. As a world-stepper, the witch knows this territory as her own. Where others find only the uncertainty of transition, she knows power of possibility. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

It is not only those limbs made phantom by Dr. Beeching that twitch and thrum with temporal shades. The railway is a vast ghost machine Even its obsolete signal boxes hold watching spectres that itch to pull levers long disconnected. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

What are we to make of tale that a plane somewhat resembling the twin-boomed Lockheed P-38 landed in farmer George Holt’s fields and when Mr. Holt went forth to remonstrate, was told by the pilot that we a member of the Most Serene Republic of Venice’s air force? – Brian Danbury

Goodnight from Paul Hayes, the valves of his radio set-up glowing in anticipation of capturing transmissions from ghost cosmonauts. Goodnight from Appledown Farm, its sleepers dream-shivered as one of the Folk Without Shadows glides the lane. Goodnight from Hookland.

Raindrops race the glass. Pylons march the land. The Hum throbs. Minute by minute, the world beyond the pane feels stranger. An enfolding sense of the future echoing back into the now. Some great, unknowable transformation is happening, All we can do is wait upon it. – #DAKilroy

The shores is superstition. A territory of tide tithes, tide terrors. Here lives the taboo word, the first offering to the waves. This is the place where no-one but the fool whistles and everything is possible omen. For places of peril demand protective ritual. – Dr. M. Benn #Folklore

Absurdity is the enemy of Fortean research. Absurdity is the enemy of investigation into high strangeness. I and all those other brave explorers of mystery must disregard that obscene word as we ride forth into the territory of the unexplained. – Brian Danbury ‘The Fingerprints of the Devil’, 1976

Goodnight from Aubrey Weg, wishing they didn’t have the last outside toilet on the Clay End estate what with all the recent Children-Made-of-Thorns sightings. Goodnight from the hopelessly underpowered panda cars chasing UFOs on the Marshwood Road. Goodnight from Hookland.

Folk call the River Stannis ill-lucked, drowning-hungry. They say its spirits scream all the way to the salt of the sea. It attracts fewer anglers than its waters warrant and this if nothing else, is measure of the seriousness in which its superstitions are taken. – #CLNolan

Every boneyard has at least one grave capturing the imagination of children. Memento mori skull becomes marker to pirate treasure. Obelisks become spirit traps. An overly large marker of once-wealth is transformed into a stone box for undead survival. – Joanna Vickers #VOH

If you listen to Old Biddy Burke you’ll hear that Riddle Tump was once a place of someone she calls ‘the Red Queen’. Then again, Old Biddy Burke will also tell you that you can walk the tunnels to St. Martin’s Land if you know where the doors in the Meon Hills are. – Jane Fawley #VOH