“The Wendigo was gaunt to the point of emaciation, its desiccated skin pulled tightly over its bones. With its bones pushing out against its skin, its complexion the ash-gray of death, and its eyes pushed back deep into its sockets, the Wendigo looked like a gaunt skeleton recently disinterred from the grave.” Basil Johnston, Ojibwe… Continue reading Weird World: The Wendigo
Recently I asked some readers whether they had ever experienced anything haunting, otherworldly, or just plain odd. I wasn’t sure whether anyone would respond, but I actually received a surprising number of replies – and some truly odd stories. Here are some of the best… From Kaylor, we have this haunting story: I have had… Continue reading Ghostly Goings-on: Readers Respond
One of the remarkable things about my home country is just how many public houses are said to be haunted (and, indeed, how many opportunities this presents for jokes about spirits). Remarkable, but not altogether surprising: inns and pubs are often the hubs of local life, and so play host to a great deal of… Continue reading The Dark and the Damned: The Skirrid Mountain Inn, Llanfihangel Crucorney, Wales
Do you ever find yourself wondering what’s happening to time? I sometimes swear it’s in a state of constant acceleration, hurtling towards the abyss at breakneck speeds and dragging us with it. It seems like just yesterday that I was tearing all the Christmas decorations down, and now they’re all back up again. Frightening intimations… Continue reading Have Yourself a Creepy Little Christmas
Halloween is a huge festival in the Anglosphere, but have you ever wondered … well, why? Why should one night in late October be dedicated to ghosts, ghouls and things that go bump in the night? Why, on such a night, should kids dress up as vampires and witches and go traipsing around their neighbourhoods… Continue reading Haunting Halloween Countdown: The Origins of Halloween
In the best horror film tradition, the gruesome discovery was made by children. The year was 1990, the place Griswold, Connecticut. A group of local kids were playing near a gravel mine when they came across something that not even the most fertile juvenile imagination might have anticipated: bones, human bones no less, lying just… Continue reading Haunting Halloween Countdown: Vampires in New England
“Some houses are born bad.” So wrote Shirley Jackson in The Haunting of Hill House, and she might have been talking about Borley Rectory, in Essex, England. The house seemed to have a bad reputation from the outset; locals claimed to have heard mysterious footsteps in its echoing corridors from its earliest days, and from… Continue reading Haunting Halloween Countdown: Borley Rectory, the Most Haunted House in England
When the light went out, it was clear that something was wrong. The lighthouse on the tiny island of Eilean Mor in the Outer Hebrides was supposed to shine its guiding light constantly, come what may. It was manned by three people, all of them experienced and conscientious: a head keeper, James Ducat, and two… Continue reading Haunting Halloween Countdown: The Mystery of Eilean Mor
Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice … so said Robert Frost in his poem Fire and Ice. It’s one of his most famous (and certainly most anthologised) poems, and I’m not going to argue with the late, great Mr Frost, but still … when you think about it, there… Continue reading So, Exactly How Will the World End?
I cannot tell why this imagined Despair has fallen on me; The ghost of an ancient legend That will not let me be…
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