‘It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.’ ~ Tolkien, LOTR. This #BookWormSat is Tolkien’s birthday so we will travel to other worlds and fantasy universes. Come with us.

Thank you for participating in our very last #WyrdWednesday of 2025! We appreciate every one of you Wyrdlings for joining us every Wednesday and hope to see you back in 2026!! Happy New Year!🎊🎊🎊

'There’s no room for whimpers with #WyrdWednesday and for our last session this year, we give you: “Going out with a bang!”' with #cats

#WyrdWednesday “It was the day my grandmother exploded.” Iain Banks - The Crow Road Grandma Margot goes out with a bang when her pacemaker explodes during her cremation ... 🎨1950s Vintage Communist Poster

Happy New Year to everyone who's participated in #WyrdWednesday this year! We appreciate every wyrd one of you! Here's to more wyrd in 2026! @wyrdwednesday.bsky.social

Thanks to #WyrdWednesday for our weekly dose of "something rich and strange" 🫡 A happy new year to all who conjure up the themes and keep the wyrd inspirited

#WyrdWednesday #Celtic: `Celtchar took his dreadful spear and slew the dog, which was a beast bigger than a bull. 1/2

There’s a similar tradition across various parts of the world where banging pits and pans at midnight on New Year’s Eve chases away evil spirits and stops bad luck from entering the new year @wyrdWednesday #wyrdwednesday

Thanks to @wunderkammertales.bsky.social for the last round! @prairiebones.bsky.social is currently retweeting your folklore, art, and stories from deep in the snowy mountains. Let's go!

#WyrdWednesday #JapaneseFolklore

The first biopic ever made was Joan of Arc (1900), directed by French filmmaker Georges Méliès. This 10-minute film begins with her visions of Archangel Michael, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch, then ends with her execution and ascension to heaven. #WyrdWednesday

“Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” (Shirley Jackson) #wyrdwednesday

"[We] built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself in our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth. For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one that is coming to birth." - Arthur O'Shaughnessy, "Ode" #WyrdWednesday #BookChatWeekly

The mighty paladin Roland's end is tragic, a last stand of epic proportions: with his men he holds Roncevaux Pass as Charlemagne's rear guard, and waits until he is the last man standing to blow his elephant tusk horn, to guarantee he is avenged. #WyrdWednesday 🖼️: H.J. Ford

Japanese New Year traditions include a thorough cleaning of the home, putting up decorations, eating soba noodles, visiting a shrine, and taking note of your first dream. I've written all about it here, with lots of #JapaneseArt too. Happy New Year! 🎍 #WyrdWednesday open.substack.com/pub/curiouso...

In 1300, Italian poet Dante Alighieri started writing his famous narrative poem The Divine Comedy. When he died in 1321, the last few pages were missing. His son Jacopo had a dream that his father showed him where they were, and he later found them in a hidden wall compartment. #WyrdWednesday

#WyrdWednesday #Celtic: `Celtchar took a log of alder and made a hollow through it which would just fit his arm, then boiled the log in honey, herbs and grease to make it irresistible. When the great monster dog bite down on the log, its teeth got stuck, letting Celtchar pull its very heart 1/2

“Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.” (Herman Melville) 🎨 Rockwell Kent #wyrdwednesday

Ticking time bomb @wunderkammertales.bsky.social here to explode with you Wyrdlings on a wynderful New Year's Eve #wyrdwednesday like. More stories, please!

Valhalla ends in flames in Max Brückner’s final scene of Götterdämmerung. #wyrdwednesday

#WyrdWednesday #Celtic: `Celtchar had his daughter cast an enchantment of sleeping on her husband, and he gathered a host of men who crept in one moonless night and hammered red-hot iron spikes into the feet of the sleeping Mac Dedad! And that was the end of him.` 1/2

'The moonlight fades from flower and tree, And the stars dim one by one; The tale is told, the song is sung, And the Fairy feast is done.' ~Louisa May Alcott ('Fairy Song') 🎨 Dorothy Lathrop #WyrdWednesday

All surviving Welsh folklore has a sad undercurrent, as it was written down long after the Saxons conquered most of Britain. It describes when the ancestors of the Welsh ruled the island, how King Arthur’s men battled against the Saxon invaders, but the readers know they failed. #WyrdWednesday

In 1970, the Oregon Highway Division attempted to dispose of a whale carcass by blowing it up, and as one might expect, it sent whale guts flying. At least one new car was totaled by a massive chunk, but at least the owner was reimbursed. 2025, I dedicate this exploding whale to you. #WyrdWednesday

Woman In Peril: Hang on, Mildred! It’s almost New Year! Le Petit Journal, 1913 #WyrdWednesday #HappyNewYear

Some of the hydrogen in your body comes from the Big Bang, and when you see a kid walking down the street with a helium balloon, you can say, 'There goes some of the primordial universe.' Jocelyn Bell Burnell 🎨Carlos Viloria #WyrdWednesday

Time's a-chasing and a new year is almost upon us, so here's an early call for #PhantomsFriday since you'll all probably be too bleary-eyed to even glance at a computer screen tomorrow. As always, all #ghost posts welcome, so I shall cheekily tag #WyrdWednesday and the sadly lost #FolkyFriday too!

“The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most; we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.” (Shakespeare) 🎨 John Yunge-Bateman #wyrdwednesday

A book, too, can be a star, ‘explosive material, capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly,’ a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe. ~Madeleine L'Engle #WyrdWednesday

#WyrdWednesday #Celtic: Aoife‘s wrath had cost her only son‘s life in a fight to the death with his father. That way she had lost her son Connla and her lover #CúChulainn both forever because of her desire for vengeance. Source: emeraldisle.ie/cuchu...

In Passiliran, an ancient burial rite for a newborn baby in Tana Toraja, South Sulawesi, "the end" for a baby means returning to the place of safety and comfort. A tarra tree served as the grave, symbolizing the return of the baby's soul into a safe womb, with the sap as milk. 🧵1/3 #WyrdWednesday

The Rooster of the Deep can be heard crowing when another settlement has sunk beneath the ground. #wyrdwednesday https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/The_Rooster_of_the_Deep

The seanchaí (traditional Irish storyteller) will often end a tale by claiming to be a witness to events. This 'proves' narratorial reliability, while knowingly revealing the opposite: "I myself was at the wedding, and I got nothing except paper shoes and thick milk socks!" #WyrdWednesday #endings

In China bats are used to represent the Wufu, the "Five Blessings": long life, wealth, good health, virtuous nature, and a peaceful death in the end. This often contrasts with their dark reception in other cultures around the world. #WyrdWednesday

"New-Year's Eve In Edinburgh." The Illustrated London News 30.12.1876. #WyrdWednesday #NewYear #1870s

Even at the End, in Ragnarok, when not just one but the Nine Worlds will be destroyed in fire, there is hope: two humans will survive, and with them a small group of gods. Leading them will be Baldr and Hodr, twins of light and dark, into a new era. #WyrdWednesday 🖼 Doepler

#WyrdWednesday #Celtic: Rath na Tarbh means ‘Fort of the bulls’. It is traditionally the site of the fight between the bulls #DonnCuailnge and #Finnbennach at the end of the epic #TáinBóCúailnge. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wik...

""Do the wild Kerry mountains still echo the cry of anguish with which I burst from Harry's side and flung myself into the lake!" A Strange Warning. - Drawn By F. A. Fraser." The Illustrated London News, Christmas Number 1874. #WyrdWednesday

Morte… morte… Bruges-la-Morte… — the cadences of the last bells, weary and slow, little, worn-out old bells which seemed to be shedding petals — was it on the town? Was it on a grave? -Georges Rodenbach 🎨Fernand Khnopff #WyrdWednesday

#WyrdWednesday Endings Nyarlathotep heralds the end of humankind in the 1920 short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Art credit in alt text.

#WyrdWednesday 27 Dec. 1897 After the wake for his father, a man died after drinking embalming fluid, "composed of corrosive sublimate and arsenious acid in dilute alcohol," left at the house by the undertaker in a bottle labeled "Champagne." thevictorianbookofthedead.wordpress.com/2018/05/16/p...

""The Lovers Leap." Drawn By Marcus Stone." The Illustrated London News 13.12.1873. #WyrdWednesday

A ship is sure to come to a bad end if its ship spirits leaves. #wyrdwednesday https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/The_Klabautermann

"Phlegethon has changed his course and mingled Styx with Theban streams..." - Oedipus, by Seneca the Younger #WyrdWednesday

#wyrdwednesday For optimists New Year's Eve was a time to keep the hearth fire burning day & night to ensure the sun's return & brighter days. For pessimists, the image is of a mysterious burning torch that fell from the heavens in 1009 as a precursor to misfortune.

An Irish tradition on #NewYearsEve that says you should open the back door to let the old year out & when midnight strikes, open the front door to let the new year in! Happy New Year ♡ #legendarywednesday #wyrdwednesday #irishfolklore #Ireland #traditions #customs #beliefs Photo: Co. Cork

In the geologically accurate (not) 'Thames Valley Catastrophe' by Grant Allen ('The Strand', 1896), the huge volcano which, as we all know, lurks beneath #Berkshire, finally erupts, causing death and destruction which Martians (who invaded the same year) could only dream of. #WyrdWednesday #sci-fi

A squire's attempts to cuckold his lord only earned him a gruesome death. #wyrdwednesday https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/A_Horrible_Death_Sentence

"She may swear that on her knees to the holy cross upon her necklace till she’s hoarse, but it won’t be true!” said Arabella. “She’s never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she’s as he is now!” (Thomas Hardy "Jude the Obscure") 🎨 Agnes Miller Parker #wyrdwednesday

The village of Allendale, Northumberland sees out the old year and welcomes the new by singing songs and carrying 45 lit tar whisky barrels through the town before lighting a huge bonfire. #wyrdWednesday @wyrdWednesday