Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Beach has recently been looking for 19C images of vampires and strayed across this extremely unpleasant image. Unpleasant because it is based on a real life episode, the exploit of the Iowa vampire. A wealthy rancher named Converse met a horrible death at Sioux City, Woodbury co. Iowa on Wednesday [pub Sat 25 Apr 1895, Illustrated Police […]

What is a fairy tree? By rights a fairy tree should be where fairies gather to dance or perhaps to dwell: fairies it will be remembered have a special place particularly in Irish legend. However, Beach has recently started to run across curious late nineteenth-century reference to fairy trees of a decidedly none traditional sort. […]

  This is a delightful piece on a Calabrian werewolf from Norman Douglas: we are in deepest southern Italy, 1907-1911. In some senses it is a massive anti-climax, but perhaps that is the point… At last we started, and I began to slumber once more. The carriage seemed to be going down a steep incline; […]

Here is a bit of gossip that span through the European press in 1852, a good twenty years before Darwin wrote his Insectivorous Plants. According to some Italian journals, a new organised being has been discovered in the interior of Africa, which seems to form an immediate link between vegetable and animal life. This singular […]

In early October 1811 two young Scots in Argyll claimed to see mermaids: one aged twenty-three, the other aged eight. That is interesting enough, but what is fascinating for the historian is how this news fed through into the wider world. In early November the two witnesses and the eight-year-old’s father were deposed, in other […]

This story is haunting and involves ice: so December fare. In 1844 young man left a village near Chamouny [Chamonix], on pilgrimage to the Convent St. Bernard, in consequence of a vow made before gaining the belle of the village. After leaving the convent, he went to several places and bought some linen, with the […]

This story appeared in Table Talk in 1870. Not having easy access it is taken here from the British press. Was it true or wasn’t it? When in India with my regiment, we were, at one time, quartered at a place where there was a missionary station. Some of the officers (as was frequently the […]

A busy day today, but ran cross this ‘charming’ sea tale about a ghost wreck: we’ll get to the monkeys shortly. There is a book to be filled with supernatural stories at sea: perhaps it already exists. This deserves, in any case, to be jammed respectfully into a footnote somewhere. The British sailing ship Glooscap, […]

We are in Orkney 1898. The people of Staxigoe, a village about two miles from Wick, were much excited on Saturday when they discovered that a mermaid had been washed ashore. The head was wanting, but what remained left no doubt in the good folks’ minds that a genuine mermaid lay stretched before them. Body […]

Had something stolen? A close friend has been murdered? Or has there been a kidnapping in the family? Help unfortunately is not at hand. The FBI are busy with the Patriot Act, the A Team are lost in the Los Angeles Underground and Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin is regrettably fictional. However, do not despair for […]

This is a well known urban legend, but what is of great interest here is the documented splash it made in the UK and particularly at English dinner parties. We are in 1913 so not really Victorian England, but surely the content justifies its inclusion in the series? The tale, at least this variant of […]

On this site we have frequently examined how fairies have changed through the generations. For example, the way that fairy wings have gone from being a minority convention in art to being practically de rigueur for the fay; or the way that the size of fairies has changed. However, these are superficial baubles in the […]

Nice mermaid story from 1886 (anon). A young man comes across a mermaid in Aberdeen harbour. Interestingly the experience ended in a police court. The latest ‘mermaid’ story is a local one. It evolved itself in the Aberdeen Police Court on Monday this wise: About seven o’clock Sunday a young son of the sea who […]

This story came out in the Pall Mall Gazette, in early January 1885. It has that sharp cordite smell of urban legend and is, truly, as the journalist says, ‘an amusing story’. Massive kudos to anyone who can send in other nineteenth or twentieth century examples: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com An amusing story reaches us […]

Beach is happy to announce that just two days ago Gibson Square released Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies (a topic close to the heart of many readers of this blog). The book is choc full of fairy experts and includes three chapters on European emigrant fairies in the New World. The authors are: Magical […]