Look behind the legend
Follow me into some of the most haunted houses around
Got a taste for gothic gardening? Interested in poison plans for spells and hexes, a moon garden to ponder at night? Or maybe you just like curious botanicals?
A collection of spine tingling short stories from the golden age of horror. Featuring writers such as Poe, Lovecraft, Blackwood, James and more
Here’s where to go to feel the kind of atmosphere where it’s easy to believe anything can happen.
Explore the macabre side of travel.
The roots of paganism, history of witchcraft. From stone circles to pagan holidays we celebrate without a second thought, the gods of antiquity still loom large in our psyche.
When hour and place is right, the present fades away and you’re transported back to another time. The more you know history, the more you understand who we are.
Join Todd Atteberry in the search for mysteries and the magical. From ghost stories long forgotten, to the ones everyone knows, to places still stained with the macabre dyes of history.
Top: Old Wardour Castle, Tisbury, Wiltshire “On the south western border of Wiltshire about half between Salisbury and Shaftesbury and in the parish Tisbury stand the ivy crowned remains of the old castle Wardour.” The Antiquary, Volumes 3-4 Front Cover.W. Allen, 1873 Old Wardour Castle was built as an impressive fortified home for Lord Lovell in the late 14th Century. But before the…
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Top: Meadowsweet, right, growing along a path by the river Avon, Barton Country Farm, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire. I have a soft spot for Meadowsweet. Standing in a field of it along the river Avon one July some years ago, trying to rekindle a dying love, I do believe it showed that there is more to plant folklore than we…
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“The death… of a beautiful woman” is “unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world” Edgar Allan Poe Ligeia is a curious one in the Poe canon. Published in 1838, scholars are still debating how to take it. Some see it as a tale reminiscent of reincarnation, others a supernatural tale and quite possibly the hallucinations of an opium addict….
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Top: Poppy Field by Cate Davies. Click here to view larger or purchase a print. I’m standing in the Tate Gallery, years ago, staring at the painting by Sir John Everett Millais of Ophelia. I know the story, and the story of the model, Elizabeth Siddal. It was the Pre-Raphelite movement in painting, the romantic poets were just fading away….
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I wake up before dawn and heard the ocean outside. The dunes separate the beach house from the sea itself, but not the smell of the ocean, nor the pounding of the surf, a dull thud, without the crackle and sizzle of the foam. The sky is beginning to lighten, I get dressed and grab my camera. It’s a safe…
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Poe stands for every fucked up soul who wandered a graveyard on a dark and lonely night. For every person who has grieved to the point of madness, and who can draw a line between dread and fear with a sharp point pen. Poe is the beacon of darkness, the one who first reached the black inside all our souls,…
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Top: West Kennet Long Barrow, part of the the Avebury World Heritage Site in Great Britain, with Silbury Hill in the distance. While most of the meaning of the Avebury complex is lost to time, we know that the ancient’s beliefs about death and the dead were based on a more intuitive understanding of life. WE MEET DEATH IN MANY…
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Top: The last rose of the season Dear H., It’s time again, to start putting away the garden for winter. It’s been a couple of months since you left, and I thought you’d like to see how things turned out. The kid and I were in a shop and came upon Halloween decorations. There was a skull that looked quite…
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It’s midnight, I’ve been walking. I’m staring up at my bedroom window, one dim light shining through. The same window I looked out on as child. I’ve been to many places, many streets, lived in many towns, stared up at many windows. I didn’t expect to be this age, staring up at that window again. But sometimes life has surprises…
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New Harmony, Indiana was the site of two utopian experiments. The beauty of the town is intact, thanks to a sweet old lady with oil money to spend. But the experiments were distinct failures. From the History Trekker: If colonizing Mars can save humanity, why can’t you apply those same principles at home and save more people? THERE’S A LOT…
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I’M SITTING OUTSIDE AT THE MOCHA BERRY CAFE, talking to Vickie Steward, author of one of the most eclectic blogs out there, about one of the most eclectic towns in Britain, Glastonbury. Normal For Glastonbury is the blog, and Vickie has the enviable job of documenting the goings on in this peculiar little place. A woman stopped by to talk…
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“Avalon will always be there for all men to find if they can seek the way thither, throughout all the ages past the ages. If they cannot find the way to Avalon, it is a sign, perhaps, that they are not ready.” ― Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon + + + I came to Glastonbury to find God….
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It easier than you’d think to have a nap on High Street in Glastonbury. Young, dreadlocked people do it quite a lot. Older dreadlocked or pony tailed people do it as well. I wanted a bed. The best place to find a place to stay in Glastonbury is the Tribunal on High Street. Actually the accommodation listing is on the back…
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I took off from the George and Pilgrim Hotel about ten in the morning. I was really kind of excited to be getting out of there. It’s moody and dark, which I love. But I needed the light. I had light for the first block I walked up High Street. It’s not that steep of a hill, but I had…
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Bubbling up from the base of Glastonbury Tor are two springs which arguably give Glastonbury much of its renown. The sacred, the myths and legends of what is often called England’s most holy ground has its epicenter in the flowing waters found here. It’s long been my belief that the truth of a place can’t be found in facts, but in the landscape…
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