hookland.bsky.social

We run our hands across blocked doors, blocked windows. Psychic tactilism. Fingertips trying to discern some temperature differential, some subtle power at play across the stones. Feeling for ghost gateways, spectre trajectories. Feeling for temporal leaks. – #DAKilroy

Hookland has a lot more Fully-grown Changelings than other places Nokes. You can’t be a decent detective in the county if you haven’t got a tolerance for the unconventional, for the weird. Mind you, I’d say you can’t be a decent human without acceptance for diversity. – #DICallaghan

Goodnight from Stephanie Ellis, trying to read the story under the headline: ‘THE DEVIL KILLS IN HOOKLAND’ from across the tram. Goodnight from Jack Belford, following the paths in Long Wolver Woods gilded electrum by the last of the Hunter’s Moon. Goodnight from Hookland.

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

Come the season of the dead, come the commodification of the most tepid and tawdry stereotypes of the witch. We are not your plastic masks. Not your nylon conical hats. Not your acrylic green nails. We are the power to nudge the world. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Goodnight from The Devil’s Bread pub, where all the evening’s mutterings seem centred on Joe Wood’s sudden and unsettling disappearance from the village. Goodnight from Dorothy Winward, worried that there are more than satellites watching from tonight’s sky. Goodnight from Hookland.

Strangely, all mail from Hookland Folklore Society seems to bear the same postmark.

Between tick & tock lies a dislocated hour. Home to things with names too terrible to say. In the lost hours, in the gained hours, temporal spirits come through. Between tick and tock, some swear they can hear a soul trapped in time, scratching at glass. #ClocksGoBack

Goodnight from Candle Row, where an impromptu party at Weychester Wax Records has summoned a crowd the police cannot shift. Goodnight from St. Mary-of-the-Woods; crypt, where certain teenagers are not finding the spider-veiled tombs conducive to pashing. Goodnight from Hookland

There are passageways where we cannot help but brush against phantoms. Places that narrow our movements till a spirit scraping is inevitable. Neither dead nor living will yield right of way. This may come from an unknowing of the other's presence or a terrible lack of manners. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

Goodnight from the Branwood Raceway, where Nathan Rush is fixing a bag-o’-bones charm to the mirror of his Vauxhall Chevette ahead of tonight’s demolition derby. Goodnight from Abigail Parish, worried she’s misjudged her offering to the Well of Shadows. Goodnight from Hookland.

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

Give me library ghosts. Give me a chorus of discarnate tutting, reproachful coughs. Give me spirits which observe the Dewey Decimal System, returning misplaced books to their appropriate places on the shelves. Give me well-read spectres who whisper with references. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

Re-enchantment is often a remembering, a discovery a map already tattooed upon our bones.

Traditional #Hookland baking rhyme. For @cultauthor.bsky.social Rhubarb makes it hearty Apple makes it sweet But for a proper crumble give me blackberry and pear A dish that can’t be beat.

Goodnight from The Reaper Rides The Bus gig at The Black Broom nightclub, where even the bouncers are finding the fans’ outfits more than a little disturbing. Goodnight from Dr. Flag, intoning mathematical formula as an eleventh-dimensional summoning. Goodnight from Hookland.

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

Goodnight from the nurses in Coreham General’s canteen, unable to resist discussing the strange man in A&E whose silver jumpsuit couldn’t be cut off even with the sharpest scalpels. Goodnight from Laura Mills, wondering if she can capture souls in her compact mirror. Goodnight from Hookland.

The restless dead do not always restrict themselves to wandering as spectres. They may knock from within their coffins, cause their stone caskets to rock, to inch with purpose across church floors and boneyards. The knights' biers at Temple Moreton are particularly fond of this. – #CJosiffe, 1982

We ride autumn's roads wondering if the dappling will be the last of the year before everything becomes naked and grey. We ride and half-hope for a glimpse of those ghosts who used this road long before tarmacadam. The highway as a continuity with the dead. – #DAKilroy

Goodnight from Neil Lampkin, not sure what form of bioluminescence he’s brushed against to make him glow like a green version of the Ready Brek Kid. Goodnight from Bill Bram, reluctant to pick up hitchhikers after hearing recent reports of ‘Ice-cold Eleanor’. Goodnight from Hookland.

The strange stone creatures that climb and cavort the churches of the country make a fabulous bestiary. They function less as lithic lookouts, more as a telling of the mediaeval mind. What filled it with such oddities? What did the stone carvers see? – Sir John Betjeman, 1969

The land wears gold instead of green. We walk through October knowing it ends in the season of the dead. Everywhere an echoing back of bone omens, cardboard masks, mangle lanterns. Even the patisseries and fancy bakers of Weychester make folkloric nods in their displays of delight. – Dr. M. Benn

Goodnight from Maisy Bloom, the light from her Derek Fowler nightlight not quite bright enough after Nan’s bedtime stories of Marrow-suckers. Goodnight from Jay Rickman, stealing himself to swallow a spoon of cider vinegar to keep the Night Hag at bay. Goodnight from Hookland.

The coven as amplification. The coven as a community of intent. The coven as calling storm and drawing of the line. Witchcraft as a guerilla act. Witchcraft as resistance and communal defiance. But yes, explain to me again, how my witchery has no political role. – #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

Queen of Owls of Hookland for you today as the first load of things goes into moving vans. Will be glad to arrive at forever home. Been a bit too vagabond for me these last few years.

We're to be forgiven for believing that it's condition of licensing for an English pub to have an imbedded ghost. For in England, imbibing ale and engaging with spectres are activities braided together. The pub is a community hub for both living and the dead. – Dr. M. Benn, 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

Goodnight from The Cape of Green pub, where there’s muttering about how early the snow will come and whether the Cloven Maiden’s prints will be seen in it. Goodnight from The Fisherman’s Hall at Wegweck Cove, where the dancing is becoming a summoning. Goodnight from Hookland.

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

Always think of this bit of landscape as archetypally @hookland.bsky.social, kind of in-between, neither one thing nor the other. Pockets of old industry, rurality, modernity, old martyrs and abandonment.

Those of us whose have lives revolving around the ongoing Long Neolithic will tell you that certain stones sing to us. If you push us further, we may also admit that certain stones growl. They guard their territories, prowl our imaginations. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

Goodnight from Vicki Betts, desperate to test the efficacy of her new love charm in The Ice House nightclub. Goodnight from Broxton’s Orchard, where a lantern party is in full swing and each ghost story told darkens with the amount of roast cider that has been drunk. Goodnight from Hookland.

I don’t like self-appointed messiahs Nokes. They summon my inner rage in a particular form. Whether they are neon vortex messiahs, blood tide messiahs, stone circle messiahs - they are always the worst type of pisspuffin. I wish we could skip to the crucifixion stage. - #DICallaghan

Even the shallowest puddle on a city street can become a scrying mirror. For this is the power of the witch – she refuses the false polarity of magical and mundane. All and everything may hold wonder. All and everything may be a tool of her witchery. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky

Just a day to go until our online talk from Joanne Harris ( @joannechocolat.bsky.social ) at 8pm tomorrow She will be giving a keynote presentation with a deep dive on folk ballads in the British Isles and talking about her new book too. Tickets £10 (including a recording) from bit.ly/flaevents

I walk in autumn's boneyards feeling more sympathy for the grave guardians than I do for the corpses in them. Time, weather and man are all their brutalisation. Many will speak for the dead, but few give voice to their faithful lithic lookouts. They need a union. – #DAKilroy, 1982

There are stretches of place we instinctively feel are haunted. Long before we hear the story of phantom grey lady or discarnate chanting of skipping rhymes, we know to walk them would be to tread ghost soil. Our psychic skin itches with spectral anticipation. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

Goodnight from the Wrabwick Green Parish Council meeting, where’s there’s been much debate about positioning of litter bins and renewing the protective wards. Goodnight from Doug Barden, ghost-heavy as he waits on the Old King’s Ferry to cross the River Hel. Goodnight from Hookland.

Thomas is one of the few people I have ever taken to Hookland’s Ashcourt Necropolis. Nice to see a little of it represented so beautifully.