Hookland: Folklore, Landscape Punk and Psychogeography
While landscape changes and stories decay, the marriage of the two – folklore – remains the constant dance in our collective memory.
The Soul that Swam: Yet More Stories My Parents Tell Me
My parents tell me a few last family legends, and I contemplate on how these stories might change in the telling. “This happened to your lolo [my paternal grandfather] as a young man, before he got married,” Dad said. “It was when he was in Cagayan de Oro.” My grandfather was a priest with the […]
Folk Healing & Hypnotism: Arthur Spray, ‘The Mysterious Cobbler’ of Bexhill
Arthur Spray, known as ‘The Mysterious Cobbler of Bexhill’, wrote an autobiography in 1935 which detailed his famed powers in healing and hypnotism.
The Two-headed Ghost That Terrorised a Welsh Community
The Victorian newspaper archives are full of unusual ghost sightings, but there aren’t many as unique, or with a more gruesome origin story, than the Welsh spectre which gained a second head.
Can Belief in Slender Man Make Him Real?
Slender Man was created in 2009 in the Something Awful forum by user Victor Surge (real name: Eric Knudson) in response to a challenge to “make something creepy.”