Signe Maene
@signemaene.com
3.6K followers 970 following 1.9K posts
Belgian writer of stories inspired by Flemish folklore. Loves spooky woods, fairies, selkies, poetry and pretty shoes :-) BookWormSat with Rachel Deering.🖤 OUT NOW: Flemish Folktales Retold. signemaene.com/links/
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
signemaene.com
Hi, new followers! It's lovely to have you here! I'm a Belgian folklorist specialising in Flemish folklore. My proudest moment was the release of Flemish Folktales Retold, an illustrated short story collection, and I'm currently working on something new with many more witches, devils and ghosts!
Picture of me at a talk about my book Flemish Folktales Retold in the Brugse Boekhandel.
signemaene.com
Thanks for the reply, but that's a different folktale though. We've got hundreds involving cats and witches. :-)
signemaene.com
According to a Flemish folktale, a man was walking his two dogs at night when all of a sudden he saw a cat. He threw a stick at the cat because he suspected the animal was a witch. Five minutes later, he found himself surrounded by hundreds of cats who threw mud at him.

🎨 Boris Groh
#WyrdWednesday
Artwork of six cats staring at something or someone in the night. There's a dog or wolf behind them with bared teeth. Black with yellow eyes. Night.
signemaene.com
The witches of Flanders are everywhere. Their tales may be forgotten, their voices unheard, but they are anything but quiet.

Step into the darkness and help us give a voice to Flanders' witches! 🌙 kck.st/492NqKt 🌙 #WyrdWednesday
Image with the title of the book: The Witch's Child and other Dark Tales from Old Flanders. Also the text: Back us on Kickstarter. Image shows the bookcover in both Ebook and paperback form. Book cover is a dark black and white cover with a witch staring at a field. There is a dog, crow, frog, butterfly and other animals around her. Moon and trees.
Reposted by Signe Maene
racheldeering.bsky.social
Web of Epeira strix, an Orb-weaving Spider, Galloway, 1915.
As described on black background.
signemaene.com
Thank you so much, mothers! 🖤
Reposted by Signe Maene
wyrdwednesday.bsky.social
Wyrdlings!
We have a special announcement today. Our dear friend @signemaene.com has collaborated with Wyrd Mother
@prairiebones.bsky.social and launched a Kickstarter campaign for their newest book of short stories! Link posted below⬇️

Our topic for tomorrow's #WyrdWednesday will be:
🖤WITCHES🖤
Reposted by Signe Maene
signemaene.com
Thank you so much, dear Chiara! I'm so excited about these witches and can't wait for your to read the stories! 🖤
signemaene.com
The Witches are here! 🖤 We are so excited to announce that The Witch's Child and other Dark Tales from Flanders is now live on Kickstarter!

The short story collection features thirteen stories inspired by Flemish witch lore with illustrations by @prairiebones.bsky.social.

🌙 kck.st/492NqKt 🌙
Image with the title of the book: The Witch's Child and other Dark Tales from Old Flanders. Also the text: Back us on Kickstarter. Image shows the bookcover in both Ebook and paperback form. Book cover is a dark black and white cover with a witch staring at a field. There is a dog, crow, frog, butterfly and other animals around her. Moon and trees.
signemaene.com
Thank you so much!!! 🖤✨️🌙I'm so excited about this project and really hope you'll enjoy the book and rewards when they are at your home!
signemaene.com
Witchy news tomorrow. So wonderfully witchy that Jean-François Portaels' witch might crawl out of her lovely dark cave. Hihi. 🧹🖤
Art by Jean-François Portaels. Painting of a witch with long black hair, wearing a red dress in what seems like a cave. She looks curious. Black cat sitting beside her.
Reposted by Signe Maene
racheldeering.bsky.social
‘Villains!' I shrieked. 'Dissemble no more! I admit the deed! Tear up the planks! Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!’ ~
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Writings. #BookWormSat #Gothtober
🖼️ Rackham
An illustration by Arthur Rackham for Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Tell-Tale Heart". It depicts the climax of the story, showing the narrator's confession to the murder of an old man. 
A frantic man, the narrator, is seen in the centre, looking terrified and clutching his head. He is standing on a floor with loose planks. 
Three police officers are standing around him. One of them holds a piece of a ladder or a chair. 
Beneath the floorboards, a dismembered body is visible. 
The narrator's expression and posture convey his distress as he believes he can hear the beating heart of the dead man, which ultimately leads him to confess his crime.
signemaene.com
'The front pattern does move—and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.'
-Charlotte Perkins Gilman

🎨John White Alexander
#BookWormSat
Painting of a woman in a yellow dress standing in small rays of sunshine.
signemaene.com
Hihi. It really does. If a ghost ever decides to haunt me, I do hope it stops with throwing furniture around, though! 👻
signemaene.com
A Flemish folktale says people never went near the dunes at night because it was haunted. A man decided to risk it anyway and was knocked over by a ghost who appeared as a headless horse. It stomped on him so badly that he was lucky to live to tell the tale.

🎨Jaroslav Panuska
#PhantomsFriday
Artwork of a white headless horse running in the night. Grass, dark cloudy background.
Reposted by Signe Maene
theghostmonk.bsky.social
"There is no ghost there at all; but the worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal man, and that is, in all its nakedness - FEAR! Fear that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in the room..."
- H G Wells, 'The Red Room'
#PhantomsFriday
Illustration by Lawrence Scarfe. A man runs across a corridor to a flight of stairs, looking back over his shoulder in terror.
Reposted by Signe Maene
bookwormsat.bsky.social
‘Sometimes I leaned over till my shadow mingled with that of Miss Sophie; then it seemed to me that we two were one.’ ~ Steen Steensen Blicher, The Diary of a Parish Clerk.

This #BookWormSat celebrates the short story for Blicher’s birthday. Do join us.

🖼️ Émile Friant, 1891.
Two lovers; a man and a woman in black, she is standing, he is sitting, she is looking away, he is looking at her, he is holding her hand, they cast shadows onto the wall behind them. Painting.
signemaene.com
Behind the scenes of something new, exciting, and witchy. News soon!
Picture of myself holding my tuxedo cat. Outside. Greenery behind us.
signemaene.com
'Come at my summons --- Come to me!'
Thus said a witch on a windy night,
Then sailed on her broomstick out of sight.'
-The Witches Song, Ruth Bedford.

🎨Adrienne Adams
Illustration of witches all clad in black flying on their brooms through the forest. One of them is holding a cage with birds.
signemaene.com
Haha. Same! The day I can say I have finished all laundry, I'll throw a party in the woods.