#ghoststories — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #ghoststories, aggregated by home.social.
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The Uncanny Valley: Tales from a Lost Town (The Uncanny Chronicles)
"Thirty-Three Tales. Thirty-Three Tellers. One Lost Town"
Sale: $6.99 to $1.99
by Gregory Miller
Rating: 4.3/5 (1,685 Reviews)
#horror #fiction #books #booksky #thriller #ghoststories #shortstories #creepy #mystery
The Uncanny Valley: Tales from... -
The Uncanny Valley: Tales from a Lost Town (The Uncanny Chronicles)
"Thirty-Three Tales. Thirty-Three Tellers. One Lost Town"
Sale: $6.99 to $1.99
by Gregory Miller
Rating: 4.3/5 (1,685 Reviews)
#horror #fiction #books #booksky #thriller #ghoststories #shortstories #creepy #mystery
The Uncanny Valley: Tales from... -
The Unquiet Hour - No Cost Newsletter
#TheUnquietHour #GhostStories #Folklore #StrangeHistory #Unexplained #Mystery #HauntedPlaces #LocalLegends #Storytelling #CuriousMinds #writing
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The Unquiet Hour - No Cost Newsletter
#TheUnquietHour #GhostStories #Folklore #StrangeHistory #Unexplained #Mystery #HauntedPlaces #LocalLegends #Storytelling #CuriousMinds #writing
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Oh! YES! Another Zackie story!
reynafavis.wordpress.com/2026/07/02/t...
Kinda going back to stories predating the ones so far, does that make it a prequel of sorts? #Zackie #ZackieStories #psychopompZackie #fangirling #mysteries #ghoststories #indieauthors #books #summerreading #faveseries -
Oh! YES! Another Zackie story!
reynafavis.wordpress.com/2026/07/02/t...
Kinda going back to stories predating the ones so far, does that make it a prequel of sorts? #Zackie #ZackieStories #psychopompZackie #fangirling #mysteries #ghoststories #indieauthors #books #summerreading #faveseries -
Why yes, I sure did wear a "I ❤️ Weenies" right before going to grab some pictures of St. Luke's Chapel with these two, and yes, downtown Raleigh was in the middle of a pride celebration. Turns out, a lot of others like weenies as well!
#Skepticism #Paranormal #CriticalThinking #PhantomChoir #GhostStories #Debunked #ParanormalInvestigation
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Why yes, I sure did wear a "I ❤️ Weenies" right before going to grab some pictures of St. Luke's Chapel with these two, and yes, downtown Raleigh was in the middle of a pride celebration. Turns out, a lot of others like weenies as well!
#Skepticism #Paranormal #CriticalThinking #PhantomChoir #GhostStories #Debunked #ParanormalInvestigation
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Stocksbridge Bypass Revisited
There are some stories that refuse to stay buried.
You can examine them, challenge them, investigate them and pull apart every available piece of evidence. You can stand in the places where events allegedly occurred. You can interview witnesses. You can compare accounts and search for inconsistencies. You can spend years trying to separate fact from fiction. Yet somehow the story survives.
The Stocksbridge Bypass is one such story. For many years the road has been described as Britain’s most haunted highway. Tales of phantom monks, ghostly children, strange figures and unexplained encounters have become woven into the folklore of South Yorkshire.
Television programmes have featured the road. Paranormal investigators have visited it. Podcasts continue to discuss it. New generations of ghost hunters discover it every year.
In 2010, alongside my good friend and colleague Steve Mera, I took a critical look at the legend. Together we examined witness accounts, investigated locations, considered alternative explanations and attempted to establish what could actually be known about one of Britain’s most famous hauntings. You can read that report here – Stocksbridge Bypass: A Critical Review
The article generated considerable discussion.
Some readers felt the evidence supported the existence of something genuinely unexplained. Others felt the case demonstrated how easily stories can grow and evolve over time. Others, well… They just thought we were being killjoys. What fascinated me most, however, was not the evidence itself.
It was what happened afterwards. The legend carried on. If anything, it became stronger.
Sixteen years later the monk still walks. The children still play. The stories continue to circulate. And perhaps that tells us something important. Because the real mystery of the Stocksbridge Bypass may not be whether it is haunted. The real mystery may be how modern folklore is created.
To understand that, we need to go back to the beginning.
The bypass opened during the late 1980s, designed to ease traffic congestion around Stocksbridge. It was, by any reasonable measure, a modern road. Unlike ancient lanes and forgotten trackways, it arrived complete with engineers, planning documents and living witnesses. Yet almost from the beginning strange stories began to emerge.
Construction workers reported unusual experiences. Security guards described encounters with mysterious figures. Most famously, stories began circulating about a hooded monk seen near Pearoyd Bridge. Other reports quickly followed. Ghostly children. Shadowy figures. Unexplained feelings of dread. As often happens with folklore, the stories accumulated.
One witness tells a tale. Another adds a detail. A newspaper reports the account. A television programme broadcasts it. A book repeats it. A podcast retells it. Each retelling adds another layer. By the time most people encounter the legend, they are rarely hearing the original story. They are hearing the latest version.
Folklorists have long recognised this process. Traditional folklore was once carried by word of mouth around hearths, pubs and village greens. Today it spreads through websites, social media, documentaries and YouTube channels. The mechanism has changed. Human nature has not.
The Stocksbridge Bypass exists at a fascinating crossroads between traditional folklore and modern media. Had the story emerged a century earlier, it might have remained a local tale known only to nearby communities. Instead it appeared at exactly the right moment. Local newspapers reported it. Television discovered it. Programmes such as Strange But True? introduced it to a national audience and suddenly a South Yorkshire ghost story belonged to the whole country. The monk became a celebrity.
What is particularly interesting is how the various elements of the haunting reflect much older traditions. Take the monk – Please take him. He has a dirty habit(sorry!)- Britain is full of phantom monks. Many appear near ruined abbeys, ancient churches and former religious sites. Some are associated with historical events. Others seem to exist purely because a hooded figure emerging from the darkness is an inherently unsettling image.
The ghost children are equally familiar. Stories of spectral children appear throughout British folklore. Sometimes they are linked to tragedies. Sometimes they seem entirely disconnected from any identifiable historical event. They both occupy a strange place within our collective imagination.The bypass may be modern. Its ghosts are anything but and this raises another intriguing possibility – Perhaps Stocksbridge Bypass did not create new folklore. Perhaps it simply provided a new stage upon which old folklore could perform – After all, roads have always attracted stories. Travellers are vulnerable. They are away from home. They move through unfamiliar landscapes, often at night. The road is a liminal space, neither here nor there. Folklore thrives in such places, from phantom hitchhikers to black dogs, from highwaymen to ghosts, Britain’s roads have never been short of stories. The bypass merely joined a much older tradition.
The surrounding landscape contributes its own atmosphere. This part of South Yorkshire possesses a unique character. The hills rise abruptly above former industrial communities. Woodland presses against roads and reservoirs. Old boundaries blur into newer developments. There is a sense of transition everywhere. The landscape feels ancient and modern simultaneously. On misty evenings the bypass can appear genuinely uncanny, but hat does not prove the existence of ghosts.
It does, however, help explain why ghost stories flourish there. The atmosphere matters, as does landscape and even the place. After all, the most enduring legends are rarely attached to locations that feel ordinary.
So, as the years pass, another process becomes visible.The original witnesses gradually fade from the story. Some have passed away. Others have withdrawn from public discussion. Yet the legend continues independently of them. It no longer requires the original events, it has become self-sustaining and this, perhaps, is the final stage of folklore. A story reaches a point where it no longer belongs to individual witnesses. It belongs to the community. Stocksbridge Bypass has reached that point.
Whether one believes in ghosts or not almost becomes irrelevant. The legend now exists in its own right. Visitors still stop. Investigators still search. Stories continue to be told. And somewhere between the steel towns, the moors and the woodland valleys of South Yorkshire, a hooded figure continues to walk through the public imagination.
My investigation with Steve Mera remains one of the most rewarding pieces of research I have undertaken. Not because we solved a mystery, but because we were able to watch folklore at work. The bypass taught me that legends are living things. They evolve and adapt. They survive criticism. Sometimes they even grow stronger because of it.
The monk may never be conclusively identified, the children may never be explained. But the debate? The debate will undoubtedly continue.
The greatest lesson of the Stocksbridge Bypass investigation for me is that stories have power – not because they are true or because they are false. But because people continue to tell them.
And as long as that happens, the ghost road of South Yorkshire will never truly fall silent.
Further Reading:
David Clarke – articles on contemporary folklore and road ghost traditions
Steve Mera and Kirst Mason D’Raven – Stocksbridge Bypass: A Critical Review
Strange But True? archives
Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud – A Dictionary of English Folklore
Katharine Briggs – British Folk Tales and Legends
Copyright Notice:
© 2026 Mysterious Times. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form without prior written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations used in reviews, research or educational purposes.
#BritainsMostHauntedRoad #ContemporaryLegends #DavidClarke #GhostHunting #ghostStories #HauntedRoads #History #ModernFolklore #paranormalInvestigations #PhantomHitchhiker #Sheffield #SouthYorkshire #SteveMera #StocksbridgeBypass #StocksbridgeBypassGhost #StocksbridgeMonk #YorkshireFolklore -
Stocksbridge Bypass Revisited
There are some stories that refuse to stay buried.
You can examine them, challenge them, investigate them and pull apart every available piece of evidence. You can stand in the places where events allegedly occurred. You can interview witnesses. You can compare accounts and search for inconsistencies. You can spend years trying to separate fact from fiction. Yet somehow the story survives.
The Stocksbridge Bypass is one such story. For many years the road has been described as Britain’s most haunted highway. Tales of phantom monks, ghostly children, strange figures and unexplained encounters have become woven into the folklore of South Yorkshire.
Television programmes have featured the road. Paranormal investigators have visited it. Podcasts continue to discuss it. New generations of ghost hunters discover it every year.
In 2010, alongside my good friend and colleague Steve Mera, I took a critical look at the legend. Together we examined witness accounts, investigated locations, considered alternative explanations and attempted to establish what could actually be known about one of Britain’s most famous hauntings. You can read that report here – Stocksbridge Bypass: A Critical Review
The article generated considerable discussion.
Some readers felt the evidence supported the existence of something genuinely unexplained. Others felt the case demonstrated how easily stories can grow and evolve over time. Others, well… They just thought we were being killjoys. What fascinated me most, however, was not the evidence itself.
It was what happened afterwards. The legend carried on. If anything, it became stronger.
Sixteen years later the monk still walks. The children still play. The stories continue to circulate. And perhaps that tells us something important. Because the real mystery of the Stocksbridge Bypass may not be whether it is haunted. The real mystery may be how modern folklore is created.
To understand that, we need to go back to the beginning.
The bypass opened during the late 1980s, designed to ease traffic congestion around Stocksbridge. It was, by any reasonable measure, a modern road. Unlike ancient lanes and forgotten trackways, it arrived complete with engineers, planning documents and living witnesses. Yet almost from the beginning strange stories began to emerge.
Construction workers reported unusual experiences. Security guards described encounters with mysterious figures. Most famously, stories began circulating about a hooded monk seen near Pearoyd Bridge. Other reports quickly followed. Ghostly children. Shadowy figures. Unexplained feelings of dread. As often happens with folklore, the stories accumulated.
One witness tells a tale. Another adds a detail. A newspaper reports the account. A television programme broadcasts it. A book repeats it. A podcast retells it. Each retelling adds another layer. By the time most people encounter the legend, they are rarely hearing the original story. They are hearing the latest version.
Folklorists have long recognised this process. Traditional folklore was once carried by word of mouth around hearths, pubs and village greens. Today it spreads through websites, social media, documentaries and YouTube channels. The mechanism has changed. Human nature has not.
The Stocksbridge Bypass exists at a fascinating crossroads between traditional folklore and modern media. Had the story emerged a century earlier, it might have remained a local tale known only to nearby communities. Instead it appeared at exactly the right moment. Local newspapers reported it. Television discovered it. Programmes such as Strange But True? introduced it to a national audience and suddenly a South Yorkshire ghost story belonged to the whole country. The monk became a celebrity.
What is particularly interesting is how the various elements of the haunting reflect much older traditions. Take the monk – Please take him. He has a dirty habit(sorry!)- Britain is full of phantom monks. Many appear near ruined abbeys, ancient churches and former religious sites. Some are associated with historical events. Others seem to exist purely because a hooded figure emerging from the darkness is an inherently unsettling image.
The ghost children are equally familiar. Stories of spectral children appear throughout British folklore. Sometimes they are linked to tragedies. Sometimes they seem entirely disconnected from any identifiable historical event. They both occupy a strange place within our collective imagination.The bypass may be modern. Its ghosts are anything but and this raises another intriguing possibility – Perhaps Stocksbridge Bypass did not create new folklore. Perhaps it simply provided a new stage upon which old folklore could perform – After all, roads have always attracted stories. Travellers are vulnerable. They are away from home. They move through unfamiliar landscapes, often at night. The road is a liminal space, neither here nor there. Folklore thrives in such places, from phantom hitchhikers to black dogs, from highwaymen to ghosts, Britain’s roads have never been short of stories. The bypass merely joined a much older tradition.
The surrounding landscape contributes its own atmosphere. This part of South Yorkshire possesses a unique character. The hills rise abruptly above former industrial communities. Woodland presses against roads and reservoirs. Old boundaries blur into newer developments. There is a sense of transition everywhere. The landscape feels ancient and modern simultaneously. On misty evenings the bypass can appear genuinely uncanny, but hat does not prove the existence of ghosts.
It does, however, help explain why ghost stories flourish there. The atmosphere matters, as does landscape and even the place. After all, the most enduring legends are rarely attached to locations that feel ordinary.
So, as the years pass, another process becomes visible.The original witnesses gradually fade from the story. Some have passed away. Others have withdrawn from public discussion. Yet the legend continues independently of them. It no longer requires the original events, it has become self-sustaining and this, perhaps, is the final stage of folklore. A story reaches a point where it no longer belongs to individual witnesses. It belongs to the community. Stocksbridge Bypass has reached that point.
Whether one believes in ghosts or not almost becomes irrelevant. The legend now exists in its own right. Visitors still stop. Investigators still search. Stories continue to be told. And somewhere between the steel towns, the moors and the woodland valleys of South Yorkshire, a hooded figure continues to walk through the public imagination.
My investigation with Steve Mera remains one of the most rewarding pieces of research I have undertaken. Not because we solved a mystery, but because we were able to watch folklore at work. The bypass taught me that legends are living things. They evolve and adapt. They survive criticism. Sometimes they even grow stronger because of it.
The monk may never be conclusively identified, the children may never be explained. But the debate? The debate will undoubtedly continue.
The greatest lesson of the Stocksbridge Bypass investigation for me is that stories have power – not because they are true or because they are false. But because people continue to tell them.
And as long as that happens, the ghost road of South Yorkshire will never truly fall silent.
Further Reading:
David Clarke – articles on contemporary folklore and road ghost traditions
Steve Mera and Kirst Mason D’Raven – Stocksbridge Bypass: A Critical Review
Strange But True? archives
Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud – A Dictionary of English Folklore
Katharine Briggs – British Folk Tales and Legends
Copyright Notice:
© 2026 Mysterious Times. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form without prior written permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations used in reviews, research or educational purposes.
#BritainsMostHauntedRoad #ContemporaryLegends #DavidClarke #GhostHunting #ghostStories #HauntedRoads #History #ModernFolklore #paranormalInvestigations #PhantomHitchhiker #Sheffield #SouthYorkshire #SteveMera #StocksbridgeBypass #StocksbridgeBypassGhost #StocksbridgeMonk #YorkshireFolklore -
I'm reminded, by way of a post from my friend Mark Valentine (https://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-centenary-of-connoisseur-and-other.html), that Walter de la Mare's collection of stories, The Connoisseur and Other Stories, was published a century ago this year. It contains some truly singular ghost stories that are masterpieces of the form: the title story, Mr. Kempe and All Hallows to name but three of them.
I'm also reminded when getting it from the shelf that my copy contains on its front pastedown a lovely bookplate of one Dorothy Nash, about whom I've not been able to find out very much. The age of the plate would seem to be contemporaneous with this 1926 volume. Its motto - “adscriptus glæbe” - means something like tied, or attached, to the soil or the earth. The depiction of an oak sapling sprouting from the acorn might even be a playful nod to the æ ligature also known as an “ash”.
One other book listing online has the same plate which it describes as “Interesting Bookplate of Dorothy Nash (actress.)” IMDB tells me that Ms. Nash is “known for Johnny Ring and the Captain's Sword (1921) and The Stain in the Blood (1916)” but since both of these appear to be US-made films, I think it's unlikely to be our Dorothy…
And finally, right at the bottom of that front pastedown is also a tiny bookseller's label, with gold type on a black background, which reads:
S.W. SIMMS & CO., Booksellers
12 George Street & 8 Bridge Street
BATH.I love that books contains these secrets and avenues for investigation, even before you get to the "true" contents.
#WalterDeLaMare #TheConnoisseurAndOtherStories #ShortStories #GhostStories #StrangeStories #Bookstodon #Bookplates #ExLibris #DorothyNash @bookstodon
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I'm reminded, by way of a post from my friend Mark Valentine (https://wormwoodiana.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-centenary-of-connoisseur-and-other.html), that Walter de la Mare's collection of stories, The Connoisseur and Other Stories, was published a century ago this year. It contains some truly singular ghost stories that are masterpieces of the form: the title story, Mr. Kempe and All Hallows to name but three of them.
I'm also reminded when getting it from the shelf that my copy contains on its front pastedown a lovely bookplate of one Dorothy Nash, about whom I've not been able to find out very much. The age of the plate would seem to be contemporaneous with this 1926 volume. Its motto - “adscriptus glæbe” - means something like tied, or attached, to the soil or the earth. The depiction of an oak sapling sprouting from the acorn might even be a playful nod to the æ ligature also known as an “ash”.
One other book listing online has the same plate which it describes as “Interesting Bookplate of Dorothy Nash (actress.)” IMDB tells me that Ms. Nash is “known for Johnny Ring and the Captain's Sword (1921) and The Stain in the Blood (1916)” but since both of these appear to be US-made films, I think it's unlikely to be our Dorothy…
And finally, right at the bottom of that front pastedown is also a tiny bookseller's label, with gold type on a black background, which reads:
S.W. SIMMS & CO., Booksellers
12 George Street & 8 Bridge Street
BATH.I love that books contains these secrets and avenues for investigation, even before you get to the "true" contents.
#WalterDeLaMare #TheConnoisseurAndOtherStories #ShortStories #GhostStories #StrangeStories #Bookstodon #Bookplates #ExLibris #DorothyNash @bookstodon
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Listening tips: Ghosts and hauntings
There’s something deeply satisfying about listening to ghost stories on a dark, rainy evening. The suspense, the thrill, the fear of the unknown… Regardless of whether you take them seriously or see them as a form of entertainment, ghost stories have been around for a very long time, trigerring something primordial in the human psyche.
In this post, I’ll share with you some of my favourite podcasts on the subject of ghosts and hauntings (as in real-life experiences, not the literary genre of ghost stories). From whispered accounts of haunted houses to chilling explorations of folklore and paranormal investigations, these shows invite us to lean in and believe—if only for a moment—that the veil between worlds is much thinner than we might think.
Hosted by Danny Robins, this BBC Radio 4 programme is an absolute must. While it also covers other supernatural / paranormal phenomena, such as the UFOs, ghosts feature prominently. Each episode consists of an interview with a witness to an uncanny experience, followed by comments from experts in the field – one of them on Team Believer, the other on Team Skeptic. At the moment of writing, there are close to 100 episodes available, including a recent release of Cold Case episodes, exploring famous and still unexplained mysteries from the earlier centuries.
Jim Harold’s The Paranormal Podcast is one of the longest-running shows dedicated to the supernatural, featuring interviews with leading voices on ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and unexplained phenomena. Since 2005, Harold has built a loyal audience by blending guests, folklore, and chilling accounts into a weekly exploration of the unknown. With over 900 episodes available, you’ll have plenty of listening material!
Similar in scope and concept, Otherworld—hosted by Jack Wagner—presents detailed witness accounts, typically unfolding like a documentary-style investigation, designed to make listeners feel like they’re part of the story. Episodes last from anywhere between a couple of minutes to hour-long features, some of them serialised over several episodes.
This podcast series is rather different, in that it explores the religion of contemporary American spiritualism, from its roots in the 19th century (ever heard of the Fox sisters?) to whatever remains of the once thriving spiritual and social reform movement. The host, Jamie Loftus, guides us through this fascinating history and introduces us to a present-day community of practicing spiritualists.
And if you’re not at all familiar with the history of the spiritualist movement, Season 2 of the Unobscured podcast is a great resource. Presented by veteran podcaster Aaron Mahnke and including interviews with prominent researchers and historians, this series is a wonderful addition to his other very popular podcast, Lore.
There are many more podcasts out there on this (and related) topics, not all of them of great quality. If you have any additional tips and recommendations, do post them in the comments section below!
NOTES
I’m a freelance language tutor (English, Latin, Classical Greek), researcher, and a literary scholar currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.
If you wish to receive new content from my blog – as soon as it’s published – please enter your email address in the subscribe box below.
To support my work, you can send me a donation via PayPal. It would be greatly appreciated!
COVER PHOTO CREDIT
#ghostStories #ghosts #listening #paranormal #podcasts #radio #spiritualism #supernatural -
Listening tips: Ghosts and hauntings
There’s something deeply satisfying about listening to ghost stories on a dark, rainy evening. The suspense, the thrill, the fear of the unknown… Regardless of whether you take them seriously or see them as a form of entertainment, ghost stories have been around for a very long time, trigerring something primordial in the human psyche.
In this post, I’ll share with you some of my favourite podcasts on the subject of ghosts and hauntings (as in real-life experiences, not the literary genre of ghost stories). From whispered accounts of haunted houses to chilling explorations of folklore and paranormal investigations, these shows invite us to lean in and believe—if only for a moment—that the veil between worlds is much thinner than we might think.
Hosted by Danny Robins, this BBC Radio 4 programme is an absolute must. While it also covers other supernatural / paranormal phenomena, such as the UFOs, ghosts feature prominently. Each episode consists of an interview with a witness to an uncanny experience, followed by comments from experts in the field – one of them on Team Believer, the other on Team Skeptic. At the moment of writing, there are close to 100 episodes available, including a recent release of Cold Case episodes, exploring famous and still unexplained mysteries from the earlier centuries.
Jim Harold’s The Paranormal Podcast is one of the longest-running shows dedicated to the supernatural, featuring interviews with leading voices on ghosts, UFOs, cryptids, and unexplained phenomena. Since 2005, Harold has built a loyal audience by blending guests, folklore, and chilling accounts into a weekly exploration of the unknown. With over 900 episodes available, you’ll have plenty of listening material!
Similar in scope and concept, Otherworld—hosted by Jack Wagner—presents detailed witness accounts, typically unfolding like a documentary-style investigation, designed to make listeners feel like they’re part of the story. Episodes last from anywhere between a couple of minutes to hour-long features, some of them serialised over several episodes.
This podcast series is rather different, in that it explores the religion of contemporary American spiritualism, from its roots in the 19th century (ever heard of the Fox sisters?) to whatever remains of the once thriving spiritual and social reform movement. The host, Jamie Loftus, guides us through this fascinating history and introduces us to a present-day community of practicing spiritualists.
And if you’re not at all familiar with the history of the spiritualist movement, Season 2 of the Unobscured podcast is a great resource. Presented by veteran podcaster Aaron Mahnke and including interviews with prominent researchers and historians, this series is a wonderful addition to his other very popular podcast, Lore.
There are many more podcasts out there on this (and related) topics, not all of them of great quality. If you have any additional tips and recommendations, do post them in the comments section below!
NOTES
I’m a freelance language tutor (English, Latin, Classical Greek), researcher, and a literary scholar currently based in Belgrade, Serbia.
If you wish to receive new content from my blog – as soon as it’s published – please enter your email address in the subscribe box below.
To support my work, you can send me a donation via PayPal. It would be greatly appreciated!
COVER PHOTO CREDIT
#ghostStories #ghosts #listening #paranormal #podcasts #radio #spiritualism #supernatural -
A new acquisition! #booklovers #ghoststories
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What did Razelle really see #disappear around the side of the house? Was it truly a #ghost or something completely different? #supernatural #ghoststories #testimony
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“Farewell Miss Julie Logan”, by JM Barrie
The tale of an uncanny romance in a remote winter glen, “Farewell Miss Julie Logan” is one of the most unnerving & tenacious examples of Scottish Gothic fiction. Listen to the story online, from Romancing the Gothic
10/10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enjQUoqUpy4
#Scottish #literature #JMBarrie #gothic #Scotland #supernatural #ghosts #ghoststories
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“Farewell Miss Julie Logan”, by JM Barrie
The tale of an uncanny romance in a remote winter glen, “Farewell Miss Julie Logan” is one of the most unnerving & tenacious examples of Scottish Gothic fiction. Listen to the story online, from Romancing the Gothic
10/10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enjQUoqUpy4
#Scottish #literature #JMBarrie #gothic #Scotland #supernatural #ghosts #ghoststories
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My childhood brushes with ghost lore
Despite writing about supernatural folklore, I rarely think about my childhood brushes with ghostly stories. I thought I might rectify that here—by reflecting on two examples of ghost lore I was exposed to in my youth.
Before I begin, I should point out that children’s folklore is just as vital and dynamic a phenomenon as its adult equivalent. Children’s Folklore: A Source Book (1999) is one example of a text that documents the folkloric creativity of children (as opposed to their passive receptivity). The book shows that wherever children come together, they form what folklorists call “folk groups.” The only criteria for the existence of such a group is that “two or more people. . . share something in common—language, occupation, religion, residence”; that they “share ‘traditions'”; and that they have the opportunity to meet face to face.
The Grey Lady
I’ll start with my childhood experience of belonging to a large “folk group” at my prep school, Tockington Manor, in South Gloucestershire. Every child in the school belonged to this folk group, because everyone, at some point, learned about the Grey Lady who haunted the manor’s halls. The boarders at the school were terrified of this lady: they said she wandered the manor at night—the spirit of a nurse who’d fallen from a skylight when the building served as a hospital during the First World War. I don’t remember much about this nighttime revenant, but she’s clearly a variant of a folkloric figure found at boarding schools everywhere: the Grey, White, Black, or Brown Lady.
In my school, older students, already initiated into the ghostly mystery, passed on stories about the drab-colored lady to the younger children, who did the same for the incoming class. I can only assume that telling stories about the Grey Lady allowed us to share anxieties in a fixed, personified form, which helped us adapt to unfamiliar surroundings. It also mythologized the building’s space, especially for boarders—those who couldn’t leave. Separated from their family homes, they created bonds and associations through the emotions that ghost stories evoke.
The story of the Grey Lady may have been one of the most memorable aspects of our folk group. But one story doesn’t create a culture. We also played games like marbles and conkers and had a shared language (words like cave—Latin for “beware”—were used to signal that a teacher was coming). Sometimes we sneaked out of school to gather in an old stone quarry, a place now dense with ivy-covered trees. The aura of this place—which we called simply “Quarry”—will forever remind me of the childhood capacity to create mythological worlds in spaces dominated by adults.
The Yellow Lady
The second example of supernatural storytelling from my childhood occurred during a trip to a Catholic boys’ camp in the summer of 1991. There too the sharing of ghostly legends created belonging among the boys. Despite sharing a tent with my brother, a cousin, and members of my cousin’s family, I felt unsettled in my new surroundings, and I remember how powerfully the nighttime telling of ghost stories allowed us to bond through fear.
The only story I remember clearly (because it terrified me) was inspired by a local landmark. Visible from the camp was a house that glowed an eerie yellow at night. The sight of this building alone would be enough to inspire a haunted house tale. But in our case, the color became detached from the building, and we gave it to a supernatural figure who roamed the grounds at night. Apparently, a mysterious revenant called the Yellow Lady haunted that house, and she visited the meadow where we slept. Pricking up her disturbingly large ears to listen for wakeful boys, the Yellow Lady prowled the rows of tents, determined to steal a child.
Although I remember thinking at the time that the Yellow Lady must have been a ghost, she differs in one important way from the Grey Lady mentioned earlier. While the latter was merely a scary presence that never interacted with students, the Yellow Lady was relational, embodying the discipline of the adult world (“no talking after lights out”). Her eerie color and super-sensory abilities—a result of her inhumanly large ears—suggest that she was a kind of supernatural bogeywoman, perhaps even close to a fairy.
The extreme effectiveness of this Yellow Lady legend meant that all of us had trouble sleeping that night. The next day we rushed to mass, hoping to find protection in proximity to a sacred ritual. The impulse was in keeping with much ghost lore, where holy symbols ward off supernatural threats.
Interestingly, while researching “Yellow Lady” stories (to see how commonplace they are), I came across a blog post in which the writer talks about a Yellow Lady story he learned at a camp run by monks. He then turns the tale into a literary short story—an embellishment, perhaps, of a fragmentary tale like mine. It seems to me that the writer’s camp may even have been the one I attended. Either that or the Yellow Lady haunts a number of such camps.
Haunted houses and witch houses
Besides my encounters with the Grey and Yellow Ladies, the only other ghost lore I can remember from my childhood are stories about haunted houses. These were always abandoned homes in the neighborhood, their shattered windows revealing darkness inside, the absence of family life. Repeating things we’d heard or inventing stories on the spot, we called these houses “haunted” or the former resort of “witches”—words that described the rupture in our sense of what a home should look like. One of these houses sat at the corner of Charborough Road and Dunkeld Avenue in Filton, Bristol (I can still picture its dilapidated state). Another was on a road branching off from Charborough Road: they said that if you looked into its broken, upstairs window, you might see a witch looking back. (The latter is a vague memory that may even have been my own thought.)
Considering all this lore, it seems to me that ghosts fill the gaps where social meaning decays, whether through separation from home, abandonment of a home, or maladjustment in a place that’s not yet fully home. When I consider these crucial functions, I understand why empirical approaches to ghostly “phenomena” bore me: they arguably fail to understand ghosts at all.
Read about more ghost lore here.
#books #england #EnglishFolklore #fiction #Filton #folklore #ghost #ghostLore #ghostStories #ghostStory #Gloucestershire #GreyLady #hauntedHouse #history #horror #TockingtonManor #witches #writing #YellowLady -
My childhood brushes with ghost lore
Despite writing about supernatural folklore, I rarely think about my childhood brushes with ghostly stories. I thought I might rectify that here—by reflecting on two examples of ghost lore I was exposed to in my youth.
Before I begin, I should point out that children’s folklore is just as vital and dynamic a phenomenon as its adult equivalent. Children’s Folklore: A Source Book (1999) is one example of a text that documents the folkloric creativity of children (as opposed to their passive receptivity). The book shows that wherever children come together, they form what folklorists call “folk groups.” The only criteria for the existence of such a group is that “two or more people. . . share something in common—language, occupation, religion, residence”; that they “share ‘traditions'”; and that they have the opportunity to meet face to face.
The Grey Lady
I’ll start with my childhood experience of belonging to a large “folk group” at my prep school, Tockington Manor, in South Gloucestershire. Every child in the school belonged to this folk group, because everyone, at some point, learned about the Grey Lady who haunted the manor’s halls. The boarders at the school were terrified of this lady: they said she wandered the manor at night—the spirit of a nurse who’d fallen from a skylight when the building served as a hospital during the First World War. I don’t remember much about this nighttime revenant, but she’s clearly a variant of a folkloric figure found at boarding schools everywhere: the Grey, White, Black, or Brown Lady.
In my school, older students, already initiated into the ghostly mystery, passed on stories about the drab-colored lady to the younger children, who did the same for the incoming class. I can only assume that telling stories about the Grey Lady allowed us to share anxieties in a fixed, personified form, which helped us adapt to unfamiliar surroundings. It also mythologized the building’s space, especially for boarders—those who couldn’t leave. Separated from their family homes, they created bonds and associations through the emotions that ghost stories evoke.
The story of the Grey Lady may have been one of the most memorable aspects of our folk group. But one story doesn’t create a culture. We also played games like marbles and conkers and had a shared language (words like cave—Latin for “beware”—were used to signal that a teacher was coming). Sometimes we sneaked out of school to gather in an old stone quarry, a place now dense with ivy-covered trees. The aura of this place—which we called simply “Quarry”—will forever remind me of the childhood capacity to create mythological worlds in spaces dominated by adults.
The Yellow Lady
The second example of supernatural storytelling from my childhood occurred during a trip to a Catholic boys’ camp in the summer of 1991. There too the sharing of ghostly legends created belonging among the boys. Despite sharing a tent with my brother, a cousin, and members of my cousin’s family, I felt unsettled in my new surroundings, and I remember how powerfully the nighttime telling of ghost stories allowed us to bond through fear.
The only story I remember clearly (because it terrified me) was inspired by a local landmark. Visible from the camp was a house that glowed an eerie yellow at night. The sight of this building alone would be enough to inspire a haunted house tale. But in our case, the color became detached from the building, and we gave it to a supernatural figure who roamed the grounds at night. Apparently, a mysterious revenant called the Yellow Lady haunted that house, and she visited the meadow where we slept. Pricking up her disturbingly large ears to listen for wakeful boys, the Yellow Lady prowled the rows of tents, determined to steal a child.
Although I remember thinking at the time that the Yellow Lady must have been a ghost, she differs in one important way from the Grey Lady mentioned earlier. While the latter was merely a scary presence that never interacted with students, the Yellow Lady was relational, embodying the discipline of the adult world (“no talking after lights out”). Her eerie color and super-sensory abilities—a result of her inhumanly large ears—suggest that she was a kind of supernatural bogeywoman, perhaps even close to a fairy.
The extreme effectiveness of this Yellow Lady legend meant that all of us had trouble sleeping that night. The next day we rushed to mass, hoping to find protection in proximity to a sacred ritual. The impulse was in keeping with much ghost lore, where holy symbols ward off supernatural threats.
Interestingly, while researching “Yellow Lady” stories (to see how commonplace they are), I came across a blog post in which the writer talks about a Yellow Lady story he learned at a camp run by monks. He then turns the tale into a literary short story—an embellishment, perhaps, of a fragmentary tale like mine. It seems to me that the writer’s camp may even have been the one I attended. Either that or the Yellow Lady haunts a number of such camps.
Haunted houses and witch houses
Besides my encounters with the Grey and Yellow Ladies, the only other ghost lore I can remember from my childhood are stories about haunted houses. These were always abandoned homes in the neighborhood, their shattered windows revealing darkness inside, the absence of family life. Repeating things we’d heard or inventing stories on the spot, we called these houses “haunted” or the former resort of “witches”—words that described the rupture in our sense of what a home should look like. One of these houses sat at the corner of Charborough Road and Dunkeld Avenue in Filton, Bristol (I can still picture its dilapidated state). Another was on a road branching off from Charborough Road: they said that if you looked into its broken, upstairs window, you might see a witch looking back. (The latter is a vague memory that may even have been my own thought.)
Considering all this lore, it seems to me that ghosts fill the gaps where social meaning decays, whether through separation from home, abandonment of a home, or maladjustment in a place that’s not yet fully home. When I consider these crucial functions, I understand why empirical approaches to ghostly “phenomena” bore me: they arguably fail to understand ghosts at all.
Read about more ghost lore here.
#books #england #EnglishFolklore #fiction #Filton #folklore #ghost #ghostLore #ghostStories #ghostStory #Gloucestershire #GreyLady #hauntedHouse #history #horror #TockingtonManor #witches #writing #YellowLady -
He hadn't been seen for weeks. Then one night, he took the stage.
The Fiddler's Dram — a Tennessee folktale about the greatest fiddler in Weakley County — is the new episode of The Moonlit Road. Out now: https://www.themoonlitroad.com/fiddlers-dram-a-strange-tennessee-folktale/
Storyteller: David Hirt. Soundtrack by bluegrass legend Randall Franks.
🎻 Music: Mississippi Sawyer — Don Richardson (1916) | Public Domain | via https://archive.org
#SouthernFolklore #GhostStories #TennesseeFolklore #Paranormal #TheMoonlitRoad #randallfranks
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In GHOST The Lingering Spirits Of North Devon , mother and daughter share their personal experiences, dispelling the belief that spirits are to be feared. #Devon #GhostStories #BookLovers #weekendreads
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Who you gonna call? (Sorry, couldn't help it...) It's time to introduce our very own Writing the Occult ghost hunter: author and paranormal enthusiast Rosie O'Carroll will join the seekers on 30 May to tell us the "how" and "why" of going on a ghost investigation 👻
Tickets for Writing the Occult: Seekers are now on sale, with more speaker announcements to come.
writingtheoccult.carrd.co
Meet Rosie🧵⬇️
#ghosts #paranormal #paranormalinvestigation #occult #writers #writing #ghoststories
-
Who you gonna call? (Sorry, couldn't help it...) It's time to introduce our very own Writing the Occult ghost hunter: author and paranormal enthusiast Rosie O'Carroll will join the seekers on 30 May to tell us the "how" and "why" of going on a ghost investigation 👻
Tickets for Writing the Occult: Seekers are now on sale, with more speaker announcements to come.
writingtheoccult.carrd.co
Meet Rosie🧵⬇️
#ghosts #paranormal #paranormalinvestigation #occult #writers #writing #ghoststories