Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Wow…

This is a lovely tale. An elderly chap meets a young man in a tram car who confesses that he was once a pickpocket. He gives the story of his conversion. I was lounging about, when in came a gentleman with a long basket. It was the most curious basket I had ever seen, with two […]

Beach wants to induct E. E. Evans-Pritchard into his Rogue Researchers club for an experience that befell the great British anthropologist during his field work in Africa. This passage comes from his famous first chapter in Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937). The experience is probably from 1925 or 1926: I have only […]

Allegedly Titanic lifeboats…

Truman: ‘what have I got myself into here?’

Bill Schutt, Cannibalism Always try and keep up with men eating men.

This story has haunted Beach more than any other in the last month. Is it true, fiction or an inspired urban legend? In either case it would be a brilliant detective story. Beach was reminded of Sherlock Holmes and the Engineer’s Thumb (pub 1892). It appeared in 1894 in the Wicklow People (11 Aug). Enjoy […]

Dear Reader, Sad month, the suicide, on another continent, of one of Beachcombing’s old and beloved aupairs: she sat in a car and gassed herself. No words. You haven’t lived in the twenty-first-century until you’ve read a memorial board on Facebook. ‘I once met ‘Jenny’ for an hour in a youth hostel in Paris…’ The […]

***Solved after quite a wait by Peter G: scroll down for the answer*** The Index Biography is a quiz pioneered by this blog and introduced in a previous post. The creator must find a biography of a famous individual from history, they must turn to the index and write down eight peripheral facts about the individual’s […]

Such a nice young fellow.

Beach has noted before on this site the way that in the enlightenment there is an ‘anomaly gap’. It becomes, from about 1700 to 1800, unfashionable to speak about the paranormal, even in jesting terms. Actually this is a very approximate rule. In Beach’s experience some forms of the supernatural are acceptable. For instance, ghosts […]

The horror…

We looked recently at the phenomenon of ghost larks, young men and women, pretending to be ghosts for various motives. On that occasion the sub category of nude ghosts were missed out entirely, but as bizarre history is an exercise in completion here goes. An interesting number of ‘ghosts’ turned out to be local streakers. […]

St John (right) peers into the future…

Lots of supernatural creatures from the Green Knight to aliens are green: and the general, though by no means universal opinion of folklorists has been that green is for vegetation. Here is one reference from the late 17C* that has  confused Beach. We are in Westmorland in north-west England and this is from a one […]