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  • The Dancing Fairies of Sennen Cove: December 12, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Dancing Fairies of Sennen Cove:

    This month Chris and I have been enjoying, on the Boggart and Banshee podcast, a fascinating fairy encounter at Sennen Cove, a hamlet, in Cornwall. In 1888 two young women go out to the well at midnight, up on the hill behind their house. I’ve put on this Victorian OS map a red line for […]

    The Modern Western Ghost and Its Zombie Origins November 1, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
    The Modern Western Ghost and Its Zombie Origins

    This month’s Boggart and Banshee podcast is on ghosts and shrouds (Shrouded in Mystery: The Origins of the Iconic Sheeted Ghost). As often with Chris’s choices I didn’t at first get the point: I can only get so excited about textiles… But my attention picked up as I realised (ever the slow learner) that the […]

    Horse Spirits: Colt-Pixy or Pixy-Colt? October 1, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Horse Spirits: Colt-Pixy or Pixy-Colt?

    The latest episode of Boggart and Banshee is on horse spirits and Chris and I disagree on, well, just about everything… There is also a fun accompanying book with seventeen different tales of horse spirits (UK, US). However, you can listen to the podcast for that. I’ve, instead, been caught up with one very simple […]

    The When of Levitation in the West September 1, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The When of Levitation in the West

    Fun and games on the latest Boggart and Banshee podcast with almost an hour given over to questions of levitation and teleportation. As always when I talk to Chris there were revelations, things I’d not realised before. The point that really blew me away was the chronology of levitation. I had assumed that people had […]

    Immortals and Itinerants July 1, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Immortals and Itinerants

    This month’s Boggart and Banshee Podcast concerns the immortals in our midst: the men and (in some rare cases) the women who are supposed to live for ever. I’ve long been interested in the most famous of these, the Wandering Jew: the individual cursed by Christ who traipsed from place-to-place imparting wisdom or (in some […]

    Devil at the Wedding (Ritual) June 1, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Devil at the Wedding (Ritual)

    Chris twisted my arm this month to do a podcast on wedding superstitions. I was rather pessimistic about how interesting this would be (dresses, jilting…), but after a couple of weeks of reading I’d changed my mind. As one folklorist explained things to me ‘it’s all about sex and death’. Here just to give you […]

    The Voodoo Soldiers of Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh May 1, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Voodoo Soldiers of Arthur’s Seat, Edinburgh

    In 1836 some children discovered a hidden niche on the edge of Arthur’s Seat. In this niche were three shelves, two with eight and one with one miniature coffin and body. Each ‘unit’ had four elements: a coffin, a coffin lid, a doll and clothes. These coffins are the subject of this month’s Boggart and […]

    Pitchforks and Witchcraft in Nineteenth-Century Warwickshire March 1, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Pitchforks and Witchcraft in Nineteenth-Century Warwickshire

    In this month’s podcast we are looking at the last of the American witches. We also talked a good deal though about their British cousins and particularly witch killings. Here is an especially nasty nineteenth-century witch attack where an individual took it upon himself to do away with a neighbour because she had overlooked his […]

    Early New Fairy Wing Reference February 1, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Early New Fairy Wing Reference

    Regular readers will know that I have long had an interest in fairy wings. There have been several posts and even an article in 2019. I have tried to defend a position that fairies get wings i) in Britain; and ii) that this happens in the late eighteenth century. Certainly, when I did my research […]

    Do You Feel Lucky, Historian? January 1, 2023

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    Do You Feel Lucky, Historian?

    I had the great pleasure to start the year with a podcast episode on luck and lucky charms (with Chris Woodyard and her extraordinary free source book). We spoke about the psychology of luck, Italy as the dinosaur valley of fortuna, corpse magic (golly), the Great War and talismans, burying St Joseph to sell your […]

    The Fairy Witch of Carrick-on-Suir: A Nineteenth-Century Fairy Resurrectionist December 1, 2022

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Fairy Witch of Carrick-on-Suir: A Nineteenth-Century Fairy Resurrectionist

    James Hayes in court 2 Sept 1864 : ‘It is not so extraordinary… for persons to be raised from the dead’. Introduction Mary Doheny (1820s-1870s?), the subject of our latest podcast, was a nineteenth-century Irish ‘fairy woman’. She began her career as a herbalist. But Mary had too much talent and too much personality to […]

    The Fewston Witches: A Yorkshire Coven October 1, 2022

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Fewston Witches: A Yorkshire Coven

    The latest episode of the boggart and banshee podcast is on the Fewston Coven; see also the Pwca book of Edward Fairfax’s witch diary, the readalong for the podcast.  In 1621 a coven of six witches in Fewston (in the old West Riding of Yorkshire) decided to persecute a local family, the Fairfaxes. In one […]

    Fairy Fashions: The Three Rules September 1, 2022

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Fairy Fashions: The Three Rules

    Supernatural fashions come and go. One generation ghosts are hopping around in shrouds, then they are carrying their heads under their arms, next we have clanking chains… Fairy fashions, though, as I argue on the latest episode of Boggart and Banshee, are surprisingly constant. I offer here my three fairy fashion rules. Rule 1: ‘Uniform […]

    Victorian Urban Legends: Story-Killers! August 27, 2022

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Victorian Urban Legends: Story-Killers!

    ***I’m putting a series of Victorian Urban Legends posts up to draw the reader’s attention to my just released book: The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends. This legend (with full references) will appear in a second volume. If anyone can fill in missing pieces or offer other sources… I’ll be grateful and you’ll be […]

    Victorian Urban Legends: Coffin Child August 1, 2022

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Victorian Urban Legends: Coffin Child

    ***I’m putting a series of Victorian Urban Legends posts up to draw the reader’s attention to my just released book: The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends. This legend (with full references) will appear in a second volume. If anyone can fill in missing pieces or offer other sources… I’ll be grateful and […]