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  • The Tower Monster #10: Cobblers July 24, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Tower Monster #10: Cobblers

    This wrap-up post looks at some of the modern accounts of the cylinder/bear ghost and particularly their inaccuracies. This is not done in a condescending way or with spite: this blogger makes factual mistake after factual mistake as his readers constantly remind him. It is, instead, to show again how we, with paranormal sources, where […]

    The Tower Monster #9: The Sexual Predator Ghost July 23, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Tower Monster #9: The Sexual Predator Ghost

    Chris from Haunted Ohio Books a world authority on ghosts (and urban legends, and fairies and…) has written in with an extract from a book entitled Familiar Spirits: Sexual Hauntings Through the Ages, Colin Waters, Robert Hale,1993, (for pdf extract click here) sexual hauntings. CW reviews the evidence but then reveals a new source ‘another nineteenth century […]

    The Tower Monster #6: Shoe Polish Devil at the Tower July 20, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Tower Monster #6: Shoe Polish Devil at the Tower

    This poem appears as part of the Tower Ghost series. It appeared in an Irish paper in 1825 and was an advert for Warren’s shoe Blacking! Beach includes it because it looks very much like an outer ripple from the events of 1816. The problem is the story, which has escaped this careful reader. A […]

    The Tower Monster #5: Another Sentry July 19, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Tower Monster #5: Another Sentry

    This letter appeared in The Spectator, the British magazine, 21 August 1897. As it involves a sentinel at the Tower of London becoming ill on sighting a ghost it seems worth putting in this series. Some thirty years ago one of my brothers was quartered at the Tower with a detachment of his regiment, the […]

    The Tower Monster #4: A Short Story July 18, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Tower Monster #4: A Short Story

    This is a further source for the Tower monster. It was taken from the Western Gazette, 28 Dec 1888, but the WG in turn had taken and abridged it from the Vanity Fair Christmas Supplement. Can anyone get the original and any letters from the January editions? drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com The introduction makes […]

    The Tower Monster #3: A Magnetism Account July 17, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Tower Monster #3: A Magnetism Account

    This account of the Tower Monster comes from an enthusiast for magnetism, William Gregory and was published in 1851, almost a decade before the Notes and Queries material. At the trial of Queen Caroline, in 1821, the guards at the Tower were doubled, and Col. S., the keeper of the Regalia, was quartered there with […]

    The Tower Monster #2: A Contemporary Account July 16, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Tower Monster #2: A Contemporary Account

    The very striking witness description of Swifte can, fortunately, be supplemented by a near contemporary account. This dates from January 1816: either Swifte got January and October confused or two soldiers (not one) died after seeing an apparition. The first possibility is surely more likely? For some weeks past, a family residing in the Tower […]

    The Tower Monster #1: The Witness Account July 15, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    The Tower Monster #1: The Witness Account

    There follows the single most interesting ghost story Beach has ever read. Perhaps part of its fascination is that it is not clear that it is a ghost story: though something bizarre is certainly going on. In any case, all began when in 1860, in the tenth volume (new series) of Notes and Queries  K.B […]

    Wild Man Circus Fakery May 9, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Wild Man Circus Fakery

    The wild man was a staple of nineteenth-century circuses and penny shows. This personality was typically black, mostly undressed and the possessor of a cannibal’s grin. He (and it was invariably a male who took on the role) would stomp back and forth in his cage every so often lunging at some unwary child, allowing […]

    Searching for Mrs S***k*n*us April 30, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Searching for Mrs S***k*n*us

    Can anyone please help with this one? Beach will send a 75 Euro voucher for the first person who manages to get a convincing candidate in a British census return. ***note this has now been solved*** Walter, My Secret Life, is an eleven volume work of pornographic autobiography describing a Victorian gentleman’s ‘romps’. As the ‘gentleman’ in […]

    Life on Mars, c. 1900: Rainmakers and Unicorns April 20, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Life on Mars, c. 1900: Rainmakers and Unicorns

    In 1897 one Mr West of Shirland Road, Paddington London began a series of seances to discover the truth about life on Mars. H.G.Wells’ War of the Worlds had just come out and perhaps the ‘spirits’ wanted to calm human fears about the red-skinned ones. In any case, a Martian named Silver Pearl offered to […]

    Natator #4: Diving off London Bridge April 3, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Natator #4: Diving off London Bridge

    From Natator’s defeat to the churlish Fish Man in the spring of 1871 it was all down hill, and the slope was steep and full of briars and stones: some readers might want to spare themselves the unhappy denoument and click away at this point. OK, well you’ve been warned. In June 1871, doubtless desperate […]

    Natator 2#: Buckland Speaks March 29, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Natator 2#: Buckland Speaks

    Natator had no biographer: who would be equal to such a life! However,  10 August 1867 Frank Buckland the celebrated naturalist and son of a great British eccentric (who once ate a king’s heart) visited the Cremorne Gardens to examine Frog Man. We learn more from this account than from any other. First, the aquarium: […]

    Natator 1#: Arrival of the Master! March 28, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Natator 1#: Arrival of the Master!

    Nineteenth-century London. Three million human beings crammed into rookeries and tenements, villas and palaces and desperate for stimulation outside the normal run of work, gin and jellied eels. The theatres and music halls did their best, of course, but even the wildest cant, the heartiest acting, the prettiest legs quickly jade in the world capital. It was […]

    Death by Joke March 21, 2015

    Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
    Death by Joke

    The historical practical joke tag has now reached almost a dozen posts and Beach thought that he would celebrate with a brief survey of a particularly unusual form of practical joke: jokes that ended in the joker or jokee dying. Beach limited himself to British newspapers from 1 Jan 1880 to Dec 31 1899 and […]