Reading and watching over the last week, and up next for this weekend, The Turn Of The Screw/The Innocents, The Haunting Of Hill House/The Haunting. Up next for tomorrow, The Uninvited. Got to say though, Henry James, end a sentence once in a while, PLEASE. Shirley Jackson’s prose though 😘

Not long to go now - the UK GHOST STORY FESTIVAL ONLINE starts on Friday 6th Feb, with three days of talks, interviews, workshops and more! www.ticketsource.co.uk/ukghoststory... #ghost #ghosts #ghoststories #ghoststory #writing #writers #authors #darkfiction #supernaturalfiction

When I wrote this a year ago I had no idea how bad things would get. Today, eight years after she left us, I'm trying to follow Ursula's advice: write and worry. Write and act. Worry and keep writing. lithub.com/the-way-of-w...

Three weeks to go until we present a packed line-up of ghost story goodness, all happening online so you can join us from the comfort of your own home! And some line-up we have incoming too... www.ticketsource.co.uk/ukghoststory... #onlineevent #onlineevents #onlinefestival #onlinefestivals

A footpath best left alone, directions to places that don’t exist, gifts from birds who know too much, a man with far too many names, books that aren’t ghosts but haunt you anyway, a ghost story festival, and why you never want to meet Ash Francis. mapsofthelost.substack.com/p/maps-of-th...

Spooky season will be going into overtime in 2026, with the UK GHOST STORY FESTIVAL ONLINE running from the weekend of 6th-8th February! Let us bring the hauntings to you for the weekend... www.ticketsource.co.uk/ukghoststory... #ghosts #ghoststory #ghoststories #hauntings #gothic #gothicfiction

Avebury Cove stones from a frosty tree. #StandingStoneSunday

Dressing Up Dogs: https://www.cartoongravity.com/dressing-up-dogs/

Very much looking forward to going to this at the end of February. www.ukghoststoryfestival.co.uk

'SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES' CLOCK Huge thanks for all of yesterday's orders for our new 'Schools and Colleges' clock. Last few available in the shop for shipping in February. hiddenbritain.bigcartel.com/product/scho...

Timeline Cleanse: Please enjoy this photo of a praying mantis that was sitting on top of my car windshield, but the angling and lighting were so weird it looks like a giant praying mantis wandering a corn field in Iowa.

Excavations at the Roman fort at Reculver found a number of skeletons of babies within the foundations and the walls. Local legend has it that the fort is haunted by the sounds of a crying baby. If you visit on the right night, you might hear it. (🧵1/2)

The last Maps of the Lost newsletter of the year is out. Clouds showing you the way, evil on the 8:14, the edge of the map in a cul-de-sac, two great podcasts, getting more lost than lost can be, avoidance of the Christmas Bone Man and more. mapsofthelost.substack.com/p/maps-of-th...

Pay attention if wandering around Richmond. You might see a woman, in her early thirties. She wears a raincoat no matter what the weather, and has a frizz of blonde hair as if it has been raised by static. (🧵1/2)

New Maps newsletter out now.⁣ ⁣ Why audio tape's buried under standing stones, thoughts on disappearances, a little man with a whistle, wrap yourself up in the Discomfort Blanket, the Ooser’s holiday, and red twine hung and an innocent woman hanged.⁣ mapsofthelost.substack.com/p/maps-of-th...

A woman in Skelmersdale has seen a vision of the end of the world. She cannot tell when it will happen, but her vision of how it will happen is the truth.

Sometimes there is a shimmering. When it stops every single thing in your house has been replaced by an identical object in exactly the same place. Apart from one, which is not. If you look at it closely it might show you what's on the other side of the shimmering. Good luck finding it.

Well, this is nice.

Our anthology call-out for writers in the North of England is open. We're delighted to have received a few submissions already! There's plenty of time to submit until the deadline at the end of September, so get scribbling - we'd love to read your words.

a missing page in every book, a corridor with yellowing white walls, a light in the night, wet footprints and the seventh heron. New stories and old in Maps newsletter 27.

In a coastal village on the east coast of Scotland, the windows of one cottage sometimes look out on weather that is not what you would see and feel if you step out of the door. You’ll see snow on a sunny day, rain sliding down the window in the middle of a dry spell, (1/2)

A group of small children can be found in an alley in Doncaster, playing an elaborate game with pebbles, spirals chalked on concrete, and strings criss-crossing the alley. If asked they'll say if you interrupt the game, the king of all the birds dies. No one else knows what that means. But they do.

There’s a dip in Rathcarbery Road as it runs through the Armagh countryside, and after heavy rain its lowest point is a shallow, dark pool. If you are walking along the road, shuffling along the verge to avoid the puddle, keep your gaze on the hedges. Look into the pool and you will see (1/1)

In a supermarket car park in Lincolnshire, on the 15th May 1995 at 2pm, the radio in every parked car turned on and loudly recited five words, five times, and then fell silent.

voices on a radio station that doesn’t exist, bright torches in dark woods, the wriggle of a finger, the magic of the gaps, moss on your wheels, the ninth church, and a troubling car journey. This and more in the latest Maps of the Lost newsletter

(you can read the story in the alt text if the image text is too small, or you use a screen reader)

...If you hang around the pretty village green for a while, you will see that none of the locals sit there, and that no matter what time of day it is, the bench always appears to be in shadow... substack.com/@mapsofthelo...?

Read on, at Substack. substack.com/profile/8041...

It was on a train the other way, from Manchester to Swansea, crammed in a 1970s bus welded to rail dollies, that I gradually realised that the woman talking on her phone opposite me was busy chatting about her career as an...exorcist. Simultaneously the best and worst of train journeys.

Ah, but we know though, don’t we.

New Maps of the Lost substack/email newsletter out. The strangest weather on the radio, broken veils and dark forests, what sees you through puddes and the night market you can’t remember, and more. (Including news on a Maps-ish novel underway.) If you read it and enjoy it, do share it.

You struggle a breath in, blink, but nothing changes except a low buzzing and crackling that seems to come from the air itself. The seagull hangs there, frozen in flight, its wings out stiff, the left lower than the right as it had started its bank towards the water. substack.com/@mapsofthelo...

"Orchestral music, ghosting in and out, voices in languages you couldn’t understand. In those early hours in those confused, painful years, you took comfort in this world outside the boredom of your home, the confinement of your village, the horrors of your school." substack.com/profile/8041...