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 When it stops every single thing in your house has been replaced by an identical object in exactly the same place.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...

all work and no long-form Crowley documentary podcast in a fictional framework makes Jack a very dull boy. check out the kickstarter 👇

“Watch,” he says, and he points a long finger at a lime tree just down the street from you. There’s another tearing of the sky and this time a bang, you’re so dazzled by the white brightness you just see spots in front of your eyes for a moment... substack.com/@mapsofthelo...

Posted about this a few days ago...now it’s live. ⁣ ⁣ Lots on offer, but most of all a chance to fund and have access to a production of a five-part factual account of the life, works & exploits of notorious occultist Aleister Crowley, presented by the hosts of the Lovecraft Investigations.

You can’t drive down a motorway numbered the M72 because there is no M72. You won’t find it on any maps, because it isn’t on any maps, because there is no M72...or at least, that’s how it is after The Event, and no one knows about the event either. (more:) substack.com/profile/8041...

It’s been a fine day but for those on the north-east coast of England there’s a chance of a sea-fret rolling in as the sun goes down. If you wander into the mist, you might hear the calls of birds that do not exist.

Kickstarter for this coming very soon and looks terrific (nothing to do with me, I just love @juliansimpson.bsky.social's work).⁣ ⁣ A factual account of Crowley's life and adventures, presented by the fictional characters from the Lovecraft Investigations.⁣ www.kickstarter.com/projects/cro...

The public information film 'Don't Meddle With the Dark' about the dangers of the occult, some unfortunate set design, and what's lurking out there on YouTube, mostly unwatched. For now. substack.com/profile/8041...

A sticker in a phone box, amidst all the other sex worker stickers, with a phone number on it you should never, ever call. substack.com/profile/8041...

The blank-faced building on the Cornish coast, how GCHQ siphons everything from it, what dark beast twists in pleasure in the rock a thousand feet below feeding on it all, and what one of the six people who knows of its existence intends to do about it.   substack.com/profile/8041...

Every Thursday at 2:19 a.m., your baby monitor picks up the voice of a woman who sounds very very far away reading a list of bird names. In the daytime, your baby spends a lot of time sat in her high chair, just looking out of the window at the trees.

A 70s children's TV show based on local legend, young heroes escaping a marsh as the light fades, menaced by the ghosts of the dead that rise from the reeds like mist. An assistant director who never talks about that episode, as she is the only one who knows what the young cast escaped.

The next Maps newsletter is now out. Lights in the night, names in the moss, echoes of words not said, upcoming Crowley audio delights, and why you should always take advice when it comes to them jibber-jabbers. mapsofthelost.substack.com/p/maps-of-th...

"The child will whistle for the man, or the man will whistle for the child, or the tree will whistle for them both..." All aboard the rural route. substack.com/profile/8041...

The New Folk: "they are not people that you would ever want to meet" Read more at Substack.

He’s unremarkable, a small man in a blue shirt, with black-rimmed glasses, standing a little way behind you, staring off into the distance as if he’s thinking. There he is. There he is. There he is. There he is. substack.com/@mapsofthelo...?

Near Hunstanton, a horse runs around a field as if a storm is coming. There is - a most peculiar storm that you will not see or hear. It will rage around you nonetheless, and you may not survive it if caught out in the open. So let the horse warn you, as he has warned others for eight hundred years.

"The voice tells you to watch out for a red door with a yellow number on it, and tells you to never ever walk through it. Then it fades into static and is gone." Voices on the radio in 'Station to Station' at Maps of the Lost. www.facebook.com/mapsofthelos...

Pay attention in the centre of Richmond. There's a woman you will see there who sometimes talks into a carrier bag that she is holding. Don't be afraid of her. Do be afraid of who she's speaking to, though.