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  • The Problem with Sea Apes May 24, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary, Modern
    The Problem with Sea Apes

    ***Dedicated to Andy the Mad Monk and Invisible*** Beach has, since the early days of this site, shown a persistent interest in mermaids. It would be outrageous then to pass by the important new documentary coming out (or has it already aired?) on Animal Planet. The following is borrowed from Wikipedia (courtesy of the inestimable […]

    The Great Snake Scare of 1828 May 16, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Great Snake Scare of 1828

    A cute little WtH story from deepest Devon (Tavistock) about a cryptid snake. Beach knows that nineteenth-century newspapers had a great time making up serpents and other monsters, cue ‘the 200-foot-long Hideous Ice Worm‘ with hat tip to Invisible. But in this case local tradition seems to have done the job for them. I think […]

    The Leprechauns of Liverpool and the Bowling Green from Hell May 14, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    The Leprechauns of Liverpool and the Bowling Green from Hell

    Beachcombing has been spending some time in the last few days looking at the fairy lore of Irish immigrants: spurred on by his continuing failure to find the New York changeling case. Not surprisingly the city of Liverpool stuck out: Liverpool was flooded by Irish workers in the nineteenth century, particularly after the horrors of […]

    Hauntings and Technology: the Teflon Effect January 19, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary, Modern
    Hauntings and Technology: the Teflon Effect

    Not a month ago Beachcombing reflected on the strange way that Roman ghosts are a modern invention and the way too that there are apparently fashions in which historical periods haunt and which do not. Beach thought that today he would reflect, instead, on a different but surely related phenomenon, the apparent allergy that new […]

    The Earliest Roman Ghost in Britain January 4, 2012

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    The Earliest Roman Ghost in Britain

    Owen Davies in his fascinating The Haunted: A Social History of Ghosts notes the way that strangely (or obviously if you are a sceptic like Beachcombing) ghosts follow the fashions and interests of their times. Take OD’s thoughts, for example, on Roman ghosts in the UK. The most recent addition to the corpus of heritage […]

    Socrates, Sneezing and Daemons December 31, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Socrates, Sneezing and Daemons

    Socrates is the bedrock on which the western philosophical tradition has been built. You can polish him like Plotinus. You can take your geological hammer and tap gently at his sides in the style of Aristotle (poor dolt). Or you can start smashing bottles of nitric acid on his stone-work as Nietzsche did. The fact […]

    Jung, Active Imagination and the Bicameral Mind December 18, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary
    Jung, Active Imagination and the Bicameral Mind

    The demography of this blog is unusual: it is about 30% history buffs, 30% anomalists/Forteans and 40% hybrid types. Beachcombing belongs very much to the first of these three and he certainly did not plan, when he started, a year and a half ago, to write for anyone but his dry-as-dust friends. He is glad, […]

    Dubious Archaeology September 4, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Ancient, Contemporary, Medieval, Modern
    Dubious Archaeology

    Reading Kenneth Feder’s Encylopedia of Dubious Archaeology Beach was reminded of an adage by Benjamin Franklin. Franklin once said that before you start arguing with someone you need to make a fundamental decision: do you want to change that person’s opinion or do you want to draw blood? It is a frightening question because 90% […]

    William Corliss RIP July 16, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Actualite, Contemporary
    William Corliss RIP

    An email from Moonman brings the sad news that William Corliss passed away 8 July, a month and a half shy of his eighty-fifth year. Corliss, for those who don’t know, was the world’s greatest living anomalist. From 1974 to his death he collected curiosities culled from science magazines and journals. He then took these […]

    Flying/Levitating/Jumping in Modern Tibet July 7, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
    Flying/Levitating/Jumping in Modern Tibet

    Beachcombing knows virtually nothing about Tibet and has rarely visited the country in this blog – though he does have some happy memories of reincarnation and Queen Victoria. However, he recently stumbled on a fascinating account of levitation or flying  in the Himalayas that he could hardly pass by. Our source is a western author, […]

    Lincoln’s Prophetic Dream June 23, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Lincoln's Prophetic Dream

    Beachcombing has been having some troubling dreams of trails of gold sovereigns in the snow and a Babylonian Mother Goddess called Lindsey. This got him thinking of famous historical dreams and he settled, for today’s post, on a classic – Lincoln’s dream of his own death. Now, as all good Americans know, 14 April 1865 […]

    Floating Yogis in the Fourteenth Century March 9, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval
    Floating Yogis in the Fourteenth Century

    Here is a text that has long got on Beachcombing’s nerves. A fourteenth-century Arab traveller finds himself invited to the court of an Indian sultan and there has an encounter with some local yogis. *The Sultan sent for me once when I was with him at Delhi, and on entering I found him in a […]

    The Allendale Wolf January 24, 2011

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Allendale Wolf

    As this has been the season of the werewolf Beachcombing thought that today he would introduce the last English wolf, for yes, unfortunately the British Isles no longer have any of the howling ones. The conventional answer – and Beachcombing, in happier days, planned a book on British Dodos – is that the last English […]

    Aulus Gellius and Antique Forteana December 24, 2010

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Ancient
    Aulus Gellius and Antique Forteana

    Mrs B is incapacitated in the hospital, tiny little Miss B is learning to drink milk and the trusty family au pair is down and out with flu. Beachcombing, thus, has a terrifying day ahead of him alone with Little Miss B who has already made it clear that she objects to her little sister’s […]

    J. Norman Emerson and Intuitive Archeology November 25, 2010

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary, Modern
    J. Norman Emerson and Intuitive Archeology

    You, the archaeologist, are presented with a green hill far away and told to dig. ‘Back in the day’ – Beachcombing is thinking of happy times in the happy nineteenth century – you would have simply hired out a little brawn from a nearby town and blitzed said hillside with spades and picks. No pension contributions, […]