@cultauthor.bsky.social
Many rush a haunted hodology without realising they're vibrating strands of a psychic web. Ford Cortina MK IIIs and Vauxhall Cavaliers triggers the ghosts of ancient highways into manifestation. Riding below the tarmacadam are knights' chargers, legions on the march. – #CJosiffe
Of all the shoddy terror groups we have in the county the only one I've got a shred of sympathy for is the Ghost Preservation Society. They're right. Property developers are a plague. However, we can't be having bombs because spirits don't like new luxury flats instead of music hall. – #DICallaghan
I am for the witchcraft of hierarchical disruption, the witchcraft of connective relationships to the spirits of place. I am for guerilla covens, feral magics and a community of radical strangeness. In root, thorn and salt-wind kisses I find my truths, I find my powers. – #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky
The last coughs of sun. Shivering as the trees disrobe. A carpet of storm-bullied sticks. Autumn as the omens you refuse to read out of fear of more sadness.
My wife thinks I am a ‘bin chicken scavenger’. Even in Australian, I doubt this is a compliment.
There are some really unfunny reply guys on Bluesky. I admit I am as one notable editor has said: “Genetically unfunny”, but some of the stuff people feel the need to piss against your leg on Bluesky is dire.
I gave a talk recently about re-enchant as resistance. I didn't put enough mention of the cultural dislocation so many of us feel at the moment or enough mention the things that help resolve that. We are living through a period of engineered disorientation and it damn well needs opposing.
Some will tell you that it's a carving of Stay Below. Nonsense. It's clearly a representation of Gedalip. People get lazy with their monsters, don't focus on the details. I mean, have you ever heard of a Stay Below with two tongues? No, you haven't. It's a Gedalip. – Lou Ash, 1982 #VOH
I mean this, all letters on county business I send will have this because ephemera and strangeness are core to the county.
hookland.bsky.social@hookland.bsky.social · 4d agoStrangely, all mail from Hookland Folklore Society seems to bear the same postmark.
Salem’s Lot 2024 is beautifully shot, has two good acting performances and is an utterly shite adaptation of the original work. A terrible frustration to watch.
In Hookland you can find a haunted guidebook to almost everything – piers, dance halls, lighthouses. There's even one covering the county's surfeit of murder barns. I will concede that one intrigues as murder barns seem to be an essential part of England's ghostscape. – #MattAdams
Re-enchantment is often a remembering, a discovery a map already tattooed upon our bones.
For our ghostlore is not only an engine of pleasing shivers, it is an instruction in the etiquette of our relationships with the dead. In every ghost story a guide to navigating those places we share with spirits. This tale a warning against trespass. This tale a reminder of manners. – #CLNolan
It's one thing to count our omens, it's another to talk to them, to listen to their subtle messages. When a corvidae chorus comes calling, I count not on a wedding nor slain knight, but rely on artful augury to make a feathered telling of tomorrow. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky
Some streets are observed by a twitching, net curtain network. Others are scrutinised by spirits. Ghosts of the glass responding to soda-lime stasis with stares. They see our comings and goings lived as if there is no end. Let us forgive their jealous watching. – #CJosiffe, 1982
I am a witch of stick and stone; herb-bag, hedge and bone I am a witch of tide and wave; sand, storm and salt-grave I am a witch of bog and moor; fear me knocking the door – Trad. Hookland witch rhyme, still often heard in the county's playgrounds
There is always a locus of haunting. Whether corpse crossroads or cursed building, always some recognisable ghost engine. A locus we instinctually understand as phantom magnet, as anchoring point for scarelore. We've needed such psychic infrastructure since the cave. – #CJosiffe
Finally finished for @skullsandsheets.bsky.social brilliant fundraising auction for domestic violence charities. A folk collision where a 1920s tray meets a 60s dress, a 50s tray cloth sewn by a stranger meets 40s doilies & napkins embroidered by my gran, her fake pearls & my own stitches + painting
Rose Ruane@regretteruane.bsky.social · 4w agoSlowly getting there, for @skullsandsheets.bsky.social amazing auction to raise funds for domestic violence charities. Adding Mari Lwyds in appliqué & embroidery to this 1950s floral tray cloth, layering fabric fragments & embellishments from other eras, enjoying the enthusiastic amateur approach
We walk streets we know to be ghost-soaked and our journey becomes the joy of a shivering story. We walk obviously haunted streets in the hope of spectral encounter. There is an ache for the strange and disruptive up until the moment it arrives to scratch our psychic skin. – #CJosiffe
We talk readily about the collective folklore we still half-believe from days of parental scarelore – Stay Belows, Harrowhounds, Blackwater John – yet remain tight-lipped about our intimate encounters with it. As if to speak would break some cherished spell. – Dr. M. Benn #FolkloreThursday
Personally significant detail of the cover art for The Kith of the Elf Folk and others, from a walk in the necropolis with @cultauthor.bsky.social tangling Lord Dunsany and @hookland.bsky.social . (or shining an autumn light on the entanglement)
Mr Bones is the haunted skeleton of dead Bertie Basset, no further questions
Some in Hookland still have headaches from last night's festival of Safe Return.
We make wild pilgrimage. Approach feral churches in green communion, feel the rub of primitive ritual against our bones. Our faith is fierce, our faith is in the land. We are not summoned by bells, but by a congregation of spirits abiding at the edge of memory. – #DAKilroy, 1982
