“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
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
I cannot tell why this imagined Despair has fallen on me; The ghost of an ancient legend That will not let me be…
The modern world is responsible for some curious contrasts. Go to any town centre or industrial area, and you’ll be caught up in the noise and bustle that characterises modern urban life. Walk or drive just a short distance from that same urban sprawl, however, and you might find something older, odder, and infinitely more… Continue reading The Dark and the Damned: St Ann’s Well Gardens, Brighton & Hove
Join me as I travel to Brighton, where I find that sometimes you don’t come for the ghosts, but the ghosts come for you… And what a post this is. I can truthfully report that I have finally experienced something genuinely creepy – something that was, if not quite inexplicable, at least a little odd… Continue reading The Dark and the Damned: The Bath Arms, Brighton
The first in an occasional series in which I explore reputedly haunted places… High in the mountains north of Lecco, tucked away by the side of a little-travelled road, there is a house. If you drove past at speed, you might not notice it at all. If you did see it, you’d probably dismiss it… Continue reading The Dark and the Damned: Villa De Vecchi, Cortenova, Italy
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