Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Introduction The Wollaton Gnomes was a classic anomalous encounter. 23 September 1979, a half dozen primary school children went for an evening walk in Wollaton Park in Nottingham. A number of these children then saw thirty small cars each with a gnome driver and passenger. The encounter lasted, according to the children, about fifteen minutes, […]

First the problems with dates. This appears in a 1913 newspaper and had been borrowed from the Observer, which had taken it from a newspaper from ‘A Hundred Years Ago’, named Drakard’s Paper. 1813, c. 1813? For the record this does not sound like a report from 1813, but why spoil a good story Wednesday, […]

The bogeyman was the monster conjured up by parents in times gone by to terrify their children. Here is a paragraph published in Britain in 1887 by some frightful progressive. Boggard is a local Yorkshire version of the same and the writer gives a good sense of how bogey was deployed. It was a common […]

***Dedicated to whosoever helps Beach to find Marjorie*** It is very bad form to write two articles on fairies in as many days, but Beach has been excited since Splendid Chap emailed with the exciting information that Marjorie Johnson is still alive in Carlton, Nottinghamshire (UK). Marjorie was born in 1911 and by 1956 she […]

***This post is dedicated to Invisible*** Beachcombing has a bit of a chip on his shoulder about Wikipedia. But every so often there are pages there that are the closest we come to ‘real knowledge’. Take the Fairy Investigation Society that Beach has been looking into for the last couple of days – since, in […]