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.
Spring-heeled Jack: The Terror of Victorian England
In 1838, the year Queen Victoria came to the throne, London was bedevilled by a clawed, fire-breathing, shape-shifting demon popularly known as Spring-heeled Jack. A rather haphazard creation of local gossip, newspaper reports, and penny dreadful fiction, this urban legend, once largely forgotten, is now being revived through a contemporary interest in steampunk and reimagined […]
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.
Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange by Adam Scovell, a Review
G. H. Finn reviews Adam Scovell’s excellent new book: Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange.
Myth and the Urban Landscape
Myth is folklore writ large, or to turn that phrase around, folklore is myth with a specific sense of local place, a
particular piece of landscape.