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theghostmonk.bsky.social
The Ghost Monk
@theghostmonk.bsky.social
1.4K followers 460 following 2.4K posts
Enthusiast of British (mainly) ghostlore, folklore and vintage ghost and weird fiction. Collector of old magazines. Also keen on prehistoric monuments, old churches and suchlike. Am decidedly Q. All scans/photos my own (unless stated). Runs #PhantomsFriday
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theghostmonk.bsky.social
A perfectly acceptable repost for #PhantomsFriday, I feel. Words from the great man himself (by which I also mean John Silence).
#ghost #ghosts #AlgernonBlackwood
theghostmonk.bsky.social The Ghost Monk @theghostmonk.bsky.social · Apr 18
"Not far removed from the region of our human life is another region where floats the waste and drift of all the centuries, the limbo of the shells of the dead."

Algernon Blackwood, 'A Psychical Invasion'

#ghost #ghosts #ghoststory #weird #weirdfiction #horror #spritualism #BookChatWeekly #booksky
November 28, 2025 at 11:09 AM
Reposted by The Ghost Monk
ruinsofdespair.bsky.social
Fragment of a Ghost Story by P.B. Shelley

Often mistaken for Percy's entry to the famous Villa Diodati ghost story competition of 16 June 1816, that saw the drafts for Polidori's Vampyre and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Sadly, no text by Percy survives.

#PhantomsFriday #poetry #gothic #booksky
An Old Woman with a Child Lighting a Candle', after Rubens. Circle of Godfried Schalcken, late 17th c. An oil painting with softly dark atmosphere. An old woman holds a candle, shielding her eyes from the candlelight. She has a slight smile on her face. A boy pressing against the woman's shoulder looks at her lovingly, holding a candle ready to be lit. Text: A shovel of his ashes took From the hearth's obscurest nook, Muttering mysteries as she went. Helen and Henry knew that Granny Was as much afraid of Ghosts as any, And so they followed hard— But Helen clung to her brother's arm, And her own spasm made her shake.
November 28, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by The Ghost Monk
21rosa.bsky.social
"... hear my plaint of dead men's hate intolerable. Me, sternly slain by them that should have loved...Hewn down in blood by matricidal hands. Mark ye these wounds from which the heart's blood ran". Clytemnestra's spectre calls on the Furies to exact revenge on her killer/her son #PhantomsFriday
🎨 'The Ghost of Clytemnestra Awakening the Furies' John Downman (1781). The white clad, luminous ghost of Clytemnestra bids the 9 appalled and appalling Furies to pursue her son and avenge her murder
November 28, 2025 at 9:46 AM
Reposted by The Ghost Monk
warksfolklore.bsky.social
In the early twentieth century there were a number of sightings of a ghost on the road from Shipston to Stratford nr the gates of Alscot Park. On one occasion a man saw it walk in front of his car and thru the park wall.
#PhantomsFriday
Open wrought iron gates leading down a tree-lined driveway
November 28, 2025 at 8:11 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
In Gilbert Watson's weird tale 'The Face In The Jungle' (Pall Mall Magazine, 1907), the weirdest things are actually the feet in the jungle - the ghostly echo of horrible cruelty meted out to an Indian dancing girl.
#PhantomsFriday #ghost #ghosts #weirdtale
In a colonnaded temple, a man is shining a torch on the disembodied, dancing feet of a girl.
November 28, 2025 at 9:30 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
Striking illustration of Oscar Wilde's 'Canterville Ghost' by the great Charles Keeping.
#PhantomsFriday #ghost #ghosts #OscarWilde #CharlesKeeping #BookChatWeekly #artsky
November 28, 2025 at 8:27 AM
Reposted by The Ghost Monk
beesincampanula.bsky.social
The spectral black dog pads its way across international folklore. In Flanders Die Roden Ogen, in Germany the Roggenwolf, in S America El Cadeho. Known by various names across the UK, in Suffolk we know him as the Shuck. His claw marks can still be seen on church doors…
#PhantomsFriday
Shuck, commemorated by Royal Mail in a March 2025 issue. The design depicts a savage black hound baying in front of Blythburgh Church, the background gold as though lit by lightning. Deep gouges on the church door are said to have been left by Shuck in 1577…🐾
November 28, 2025 at 6:37 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
The medieval wooden font in the little church at Efenechtyd in North #Wales. It's a lovely thing: the colour of treacle and invitingly tactile. Exceedingly rare, it's survival is probably due to the fact that the great Welsh folklorist and antiquarian Elias Owen was vicar here.
#FontsOnFriday
November 28, 2025 at 8:00 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
#PhantomsFriday again tomorrow, of course. I look forward to further fear-filled and fascinating #ghost stories old and new; #folklore; art; poems and bloodcurdling info on haunted sites. @phantomsfriday.bsky.social is the place to go.
#BookChatWeekly #booksky #artsky #legends #haunted
A crazed woman in a swirling gown holds aloft a skull as she approaches the viewer. An illustration for Fergus Hume's 'The Turquoise Skull' from Pall Mall Magazine, 1906.
November 27, 2025 at 1:22 PM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
"She fell forward, and even as she fell a hand, far colder than the snow, caught her neck. She lay struggling in the snow and as she struggled there two hands of an icy fleshless chill closed about her throat. Then she lay still."
- Hugh Walpole, 'The Snow'
#BookologyThursday #booksky #ghoststory
November 27, 2025 at 12:15 PM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
Some new Christmas games as suggested by W Heath Robinson, scanned from a (rather tightly bound) 1935 Christmas edition of The Strand Magazine. They are 'Splashing The Scotch', 'Throwing The Wishbone and 'Hunting The Mince Pie'.
#BookologyThursday #HeathRobinson #humour #Christmas
November 27, 2025 at 11:04 AM
Reposted by The Ghost Monk
stephengrae.bsky.social
Here's a 1810 recipe for Fig Sewe:

chopped figs
bread cut into small cubes
boiled in ale
seasoned with treacle and nutmeg

more: 'Folklore of the Lake District'
bardofcumberland.com/folklore/

#bookologythursday #booksky
Bowl of Fig Sewe
November 20, 2025 at 9:37 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
Now because BlueSky has an even dirtier mind than I have (they labelled a photo of Michelangelo's David AC because you could see his marble bits and pieces), I suspect this innocent image might suffer the same fate. It's from the Reader's Digest Book - the story is beneath.
#ghost #ghosts #folklore
An elderly man is writing a document with a quill. A woman's hand has appeared, attempting to block the light so he cannot write. It is captioned 'The Protective Hand' and tells the story of a spirit preventing the clerk tasked with writing a will which would disinherit her son.
November 27, 2025 at 8:18 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
Absolutely wonderful. @folkhorrorrevival.bsky.social, what say you? There's something about the little boy standing at the top of the soon-to-be bonfire as the giant dummy topples over that I find weirdly eerie. Clearly, they "did it beautifully".
#FolkHorror
anniebrassey.bsky.social Annie Brassey @anniebrassey.bsky.social · 1d
"Pevensey Historical Pageant. Episode 1. A Tale of the Coming of the Romans. Circa B.C. 54." The Druids Sacrifice. July 1908.
#WyrdWednesday #Pevensey #Druids #1900s
November 26, 2025 at 1:04 PM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
You know how it is when you're not sure what to post and you end up posting a picture of a Vampire Elephant? Well, that.

(Victor Biegas painted a whole series of himself being molested by grotesque (mainly female) monsters but this is the weirdest. The man had issues).
#Vampire #Elephant #artsky
November 26, 2025 at 10:52 AM
Reposted by The Ghost Monk
anniebrassey.bsky.social
"Introduction Of Christianity Into Britain: Christian Missionaries Interrupting A Human Sacrifice." By J. E. Christie. In The Exhibition Of The Royal Society." The Illustrated London News 1.6.1878. #WyrdWednesday #Art #1870s
November 26, 2025 at 9:00 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
The reason why the tiny and ubiquitous wren (Britain's commonest bird) should have been considered King Of The Birds has always eluded me. Left alone on all other days, on Boxing Day boys would hunt it down and then give out its feathers to households in a sacrificial protection rite.
#WyrdWednesday
A photo of a wren in my garden.
November 26, 2025 at 9:09 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
Was King William II's death while hunting in the New Forest, #Hampshire, an accident, murder - or was it a pre-Christian god-king human sacrifice made to ensure fertility to the land and future prosperity to the people, as has been suggested? (But by whom I've forgotten - Murray?).
#WyrdWednesday
An illustration or woodcut showing a man collapsing against a tree in a forest with an arrow protruding from his chest. In the background we can see a stag heading out of frame to the left and the small figure of a bowman who may have been aiming for the deer - or not.
November 26, 2025 at 7:43 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
For #WordlessWednesday.
A narrow path bordered by dark brown bracken has beside it a fragment of a wooden fence which leads the eye towards limestone cliffs and an autumnal wood.
November 26, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Reposted by The Ghost Monk
elilewislycett.bsky.social
At Vale Royal Abbey today, I was reminded of how local lore has lingered here for 700 years. I gave a talk on it last year and an elderly lady came up to me at the end and asked if I ever walked in the woods where the abbot was murdered in the 1330s. There, she said, 'the birds never sing'.
November 23, 2025 at 1:21 PM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
Some stories in the old magazines are surprisingly gruesome. A Bernard Hodgson's short-short story, 'Flies', about miners - who we understand are also murderers - being engulfed by a colossal swarm of flesh-eating insects is especially horrid. (Pearson's, 1906).
#horror #horrorstory #BookChatWeekly
An illustration showing a man barging into a wooden hut, flailing his arms in the midst of a cloud of flying insects. Another man is against the wall, fending off the flies and another has been woken by the commotion. The caption reads: "In a moment he was black with flies - eyes, ears, nose, and mouth were full of the restless insects."
November 25, 2025 at 10:09 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
I'm having a bathroom fitted, which is noisy chaos, so I've been hiding in the sitting room re-watching #Quatermass And The Pit, with headphones on. I'm sure many have already noticed this but when the missile's glowing, the roundels inside look just like the Tardis interior.
#DrWho #DoctorWho
November 24, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Reposted by The Ghost Monk
coffinboffin.bsky.social
WIDDERSHINS means moving counter clockwise; this inversion of the natural order was associated with the devil and witchcraft. In this image Witches delight in flying widdershins around North Berwick church with their broomsticks #FolkloreSunday
November 23, 2025 at 4:51 PM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
Hijacked by another Monday morning.
(Roland Topor).
The four fingers and thumbs of a hand been humanised with faces and arms. The thumb is pointing two guns at the fingers which are holding up their hands in surrender.
November 24, 2025 at 8:28 AM
theghostmonk.bsky.social
Hideously tinted but rather charming picture entitled 'The Fairy Circle'. It was reproduced in an edition of 'Pall Mall Magazine' in 1907 and is by Elsie Gregory.
#fairy #fairies #faerie #folklore
A little girl in red and a smaller boy wearing green shorts watch tiny winged figures, coloured a pale pink, dancing in a circle. The fairies are in a field the other side of a brook.
November 23, 2025 at 1:06 PM