Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

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Danny Robins @dannyrobins.bsky.social · 8h

👻🎃 UNCANNY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: DAY 15 🎃👻

We are getting ever closer to #Halloween with Case 15: The Kitchen Bitch 🥘

Eeek! It's a potentially paranormal experience with transatlantic tentacles stretching across the pond... what do you make of this very odd #Uncanny case?

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Matthew Meyer (The Yokai Guy) @yokai.com · 8h

Tonight on A-Yokai-A-Day: a picture of a REAL kappa! Or is it...?

🥒

Check it out for free on my Patreon at the link below:
www.patreon.com/posts/yokai-...

#kappa #yokai #halloween

A-Yokai-A-Day: The Kappa | Matthew Meyer (The Yokai Guy)

www.patreon.com

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RaggaMog (Morri-Arty) @raggamog.bsky.social · 6h

Folklore connects hares and bluebells, particularly in Scottish and Irish myths, where the flowers are called harebells. Witches were believed to use the flowers' sap to transform into hares, and then hide among the blooms.
Art my own.

#WyrdWednesday #WitchSky #Folklore #MHHSBD

An original artwork of hare sitting amongst bluebells. Created using watercolours on heavy paper.

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Terri Windling @terriwindling.bsky.social · 8h

Good heavens, I didn't know this fabulous video is on YouTube. It's lovely to see my friends and neighbours Brian and Wendy Froud when they were still so very young! I've spent the last year helping them with a new book (we're not allowed to reveal the subject yet), which will be out in autumn 2026.

Catsuka @catsuka.bsky.social · 3d

"The World of the Dark Crystal" documentary (1983, 1 hour) is available for free on Youtube.
>> www.catsuka.com/breves/2025-...

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Signe Maene @signemaene.com · 6h

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.

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curious ordinary @curiousordinary.bsky.social · 3h

Here is a tale from #JapaneseFolklore about a temple that was haunted by a bakeneko, a type of #yokai cat. In this tale the yokai is also sometimes translated as a cat witch.
#WyrdWednesday

curious ordinary @curiousordinary.bsky.social · Mar 25

In #JapaneseFolklore 'The Cat Witch of Okazaki' is a tale about three travellers who stopped at a temple on their way home from a pilgrimage. They found a kind old lady called Osan living there who invited them to spend the night. While there, they witnessed something very...
#FairyTaleTuesday
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A woman with fan and two cats dance on hind legs at her feet.

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EssAeEm @essaeem.bsky.social · 3h

🎨: Dugald Stewart Walker

EssAeEm @essaeem.bsky.social · 3h

"And all were glad when they saw how magical a nurse the young heir had, 'for here,' they said, 'is the witch Ziroonderel,' and they declared that she would bring him up amongst the true principles of wizardry..."

-Lord Dunsany, 'The King of Elfland's Daughter'
#WyrdWednesday

Drawing of a witch with birds flying around her

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EssAeEm @essaeem.bsky.social · 2d

What a beautiful day! Finally felt a bit like autumn this morning.

Photo looking a a river through a gap in a line of trees

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Stephen G. Rae @stephengrae.bsky.social · 5d

It's #WorldPorridgeDay 🥣

A man from Killin entered a Faerie Knowe (faerie hill) and found inside, a vat of porridge. It was boiling so fiercely that a lump of porridge struck him in the eye. He saw faeries in that eye thereafter🧚‍♀️

#folklore #Perthshire

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Matthew Meyer (The Yokai Guy) @yokai.com · 5d

Tonight's A-Yokai-A-Day is up on my Patreon! Check out the link below.

How would you handle it if your employee told you needed some time off because he was a demon and he needed to take some time off to steal corpses?

Maybe it's better not to ask for reasons...

www.patreon.com/posts/yokai-...

A-Yokai-A-Day: The Demon Servant | Matthew Meyer (The Yokai Guy)

www.patreon.com

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EssAeEm @essaeem.bsky.social · 5d

The Disney Adventure Friends Cavalcade at Magic Kingdom may not be a long parade, but it really packs a ton of beloved characters onto its two floats. #WaltDisneyWorld

Photo of a parade float at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom featuring Woody and Jessie from Toy Story, Stitch from Lilo and Stitch, Marie from The Aristocats, Max from A Goofy Movie, Judy Hopps from Zootopia, and Meeko from Pocahontas all waving to the crowd assembled along the parade route

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Terri Windling @terriwindling.bsky.social · 6d

"It's all a matter of paying attention, being awake in the present moment, and not expecting a huge payoff. The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses." - Charles de Lint

Photograph: Lottie, a young brown spaniel, on a path through the green and rust and golden magic of the Devon hills.

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XingWu🐉ChineseFolklore @xingwu.bsky.social · 5d

In Chinese #mythology, Huang Zu (黃祖) is a divine tree spirit and guardian goddess, dwelling in a towering tree where thousands of birds nest. With a flick of her wrist, she can summon rain, nourishing the land and those who honor her. Huang Zu watches over the pure of heart, 1/2

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The Godyssey Podcast @godysseypodcast.com · 7d

Thor took a short voyage with Tyr's father Hymir, meant to be a fishing expedition, but the Thunderer knew better. He eschewed gentle seas to fish to the harsh churning waves and used an ox head for bait: he caught Jormungandr the World Serpent, who got away. #WyrdWednesday

An unknown artist's depiction of the final battle between Thor and Jormungandr, showing Thor leaping with a massive, too-long instead of too short handled Mjolnir from a stormy mist into the Midgard Serpent, a massive snake with pointy teeth and a long tongue, with horns all over the serpent's back.

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Rosalind Ahmed @21rosa.bsky.social · 6d

Sir Gawain must journey through the 'wyldrenesse of Wyrale' to fulfil his quest - the beheading contest with the Green Knight: "Sometimes he warred with dragons & with wolves/sometimes with the crag haunting woodwose/with bears, bulls & boars, or pursued by giants across the fells" #WyrdWednesday

Image of knights in blood red cloaks, a black cloaked Mari and scarlet swords suspended from the ceiling. The Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead (2024). 'Into the Wyld' was an exhibition exploring the legacy of the medieval poem 'Gawain and the Green Knight' Gawain journeys through the wilderness of the Wirral so the topography of the north west was a major theme of the collaborative exhibition and day long conference

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curious ordinary @curiousordinary.bsky.social · 7d

One of the most well-known tales in #JapaneseFolklore is of Urashima Taro and his journey on the back of a magical turtle to the palace of the dragon king under the sea. Unfortunately when he returned home, 300 years had passed and everyone he knew was gone.
🎨Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1882
#WyrdWednesday

A man hding a fishing rod sits on the back of a large turtle with seaweed growing from its shell that looks like a tail.

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Signe Maene @signemaene.com · 6d

1/3 According to a Flemish folktale, bokkenrijders or buckriders, who were said to be thieves, ghosts, or sometimes even witches, and rode through the sky on the backs of goats in Flanders and the Netherlands, had stolen the Queen's laundry.

#WyrdWednesday

Art from Affiche: "De Bokkenrijder of het skelet." Opdrachtgever: Het Hollandsch Tooneel. Shows a buckrider riding through the sky. Castle in the far distance. Clouds.

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EssAeEm @essaeem.bsky.social · 7d

Long ago, the goddess Pele traveled across the ocean in her canoe to search for a suitable home where her fire and lava would be safe from the waters of her sister and rival Nāmaka the sea goddess, ultimately settling inside Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. #WyrdWednesday

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Dr Francis Young @drfrancisyoung.bsky.social · 7d

This takes me back to when I was a school library monitor in Sixth Form and allowed to log on to the librarian’s computer, which was one of the few with a reliable internet connection. Of course, we used it for important things…

Internet Archive @archive.org · 7d

🐹 Before viral videos on TikTok or YouTube, there was Hampsterdance.

Full of dancing hamster GIFs & a sped-up tune, it became one of the internet’s first viral hits.

You can still dance to it on the #WaybackMachine ➡️ web.archive.org/web/19991222...

#Wayback1T

🧵

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The Godyssey Podcast @godysseypodcast.com · 7d

Charles Perrault's version of Cinderella is one of the most popular, and it is this version that installed the pumpkin-as-carriage that Disney animated: this New World crop had become so ingrained in European society by the 17th century it bled into fairy tales. #FairytaleTuesday

William Henry Margetson's depiction of Cinderella and the Fairy Godmother, the latter using her wand/cane to turn a pumpkin and mice into a carriage and horses right before Cinderella's very eyes (also indoors, so that seems unsafe).

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Matthew Meyer (The Yokai Guy) @yokai.com · 8d

Tonight's A-Yokai-A-Day is story number 100 of Shokoku hyakumonogatari!

It took four years of A-Yokai-A-Days to finish this collection, and I am happy to complete it. I hope you enjoyed this book as much as I did.

Check it out for free on my Patreon below:

www.patreon.com/posts/yokai-...

A-Yokai-A-Day: How Telling One Hundred Ghost Stories Lead to Wealth and Honor | Matthew Meyer (The Yokai Guy)

www.patreon.com

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Danny Robins @dannyrobins.bsky.social · 9d

👻🎃 UNCANNY HALLOWEEN COUNTDOWN: DAY 6 🎃👻

Are you enjoying counting down the days until #Halloween? Today’s bijou bite of the bizarre is Case 6: The Blanket Seal 🛌

What happened in that university hall of residence room?

Send your questions and theories on the case to [email protected]!

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Emily Jane Rothwell 🖤🌸🖋️ @emjanerothwell.bsky.social · 9d

‘The realm of fairy-story is wide & deep & high & filled with many things: all manner of beasts & birds are found there; shoreless seas & stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, & an ever-present peril; both joy & sorrow as sharp as swords.’
—JRR Tolkien

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Matthew Meyer (The Yokai Guy) @yokai.com · 10d

If you died, what would make you come back as a #ghost?

I think I would definitely come back to play D&D, though I'm not sure my players would want an undead DM.

But an afterlife of board games seems like a fun one!

Check out today's A-Yokai-A-Day post below:

www.patreon.com/posts/yokai-...

A-Yokai-A-Day: How Ōmori Hikogorō’s Wife Died and then Came Back to Play Sugoroku | Matthew Meyer (The Yokai Guy)

www.patreon.com

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