A month ago I stood atop a long barrow on White Horse Hill, with the grass covered chalk walls of Uffington Castle behind me, the galloping Uffington White Horse below me, and pondered a question for which there is no answer. What makes a landscape sacred? Is sacred the right word? Mystic perhaps. What makes […]
Haunted Hikes
The hammer of the gods still ring out at Wayland’s Smithy, a long barrow chamber tomb nestled in a secluded grove in Oxfordshire
The chambered tombs and long barrows of Britain have long tickled the imagination, and perhaps none more so than Wayland’s Smithy. Perhaps it’s the stand of beech trees enclosing it which makes it feel more intimate, more hushed. Unlike West Kennet Long Barrow near Avebury, sitting exposed to the wind and the rain, high on […]
Folk horror from Wiltshire: The Blood Stone at Luccombe Spring, starving out the Vikings at Bratton Camp, the White Horse of Westbury and the nature of folklore
The Luccombe Valley below Salisbury Plain and Bratton Camp, just visible in the upper right. In the foreground are two of the four barrows in the valley, with one of the others being the site of the Bloodstone. While wandering on Salisbury plain one day I came across a hidden valley and as I […]
Traveling back in time to explore the hauntings in Parsonage Woods, and the ghosts of Castle Combe
If you’re looking for the picture book English village, it’s hard to find better, at least in Wiltshire. Lacock is a bit more refined, with about twice the traffic from what I’ve seen. Then again, I’ve never been to Castle Combe in the summer. It was a winter stop. Technically we were there for a […]
Lucifer’s neolithic home, Devil’s Den stands vigil near the Avebury circle complex
Devil’s Den Dolmen. It is naturally the subject of many legends in the district, and few, we imagine, of the people about would care to find themselves too close to it at the solemn hours of midnight, though one of the stories necessitates such a state of things; for we were told that if any one pours […]
Hiking Rockefeller State Park Preserve: Looking for Spook Rock, Hulda the witch and the non-headless horseman origins of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow
At last she came to a little house, and an old woman was peeping out of it, but she had such great teeth that the girl was terrified and about to run away, only the old woman called her back. “What are you afraid of, my dear child? Come and live with me, and if you do […]
A Salem Walking Tour in Three Miles
Salem is a walking town, with Essex Street acting as the main pedestrian artery. If you’re spending the night in Salem, haunted hotels are the way to go. This walking tour assumes you’re staying at either the Hawthorne Hotel, or the Salem Inn, which lie at opposites ends of this walk. Both are historic, with […]
Urban Legends: Mysteries as dark as the night from a Sleepy Hollow Road in Kentucky
Sleepy Hollow Road, Prospect, Kentucky Since teenagers started driving, one of the rites of passages, at least for those who live near real country dark, are nocturnal drives down creepy old roads. It’s my personal theory that the golden age of haunted country roads was the early to mid 1970s, when it became pretty common […]
The death, resurrection and retribution of Zona Heaster Shue, The Greenbrier Ghost
Zona Heaster Shue was born in the mountains of West Virginia. Raised around Richlands, as far as we know, Zona never left Greenbrier county in her too short lifetime. Even now, Greenbrier county is far removed from the hustle and bustle of city life, with a population of about 34,000, spread out over a thousand […]
Haunted Gettysburg: True ghost stories from Little Round Top, then and now
44th New York Infantry Monument and 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Little Round Top, Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg, PA. “But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far […]
The Pursuit of Ichabod Crane, from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving
Writing in an introduction from a reprinting of the story in 1996, Henry Steiner, Village Historian of Sleepy Hollow states that “At the close of his narrative, Irving anticipates a time when change will have so completely altered Sleepy Hollow that cramped historians will doubt that it once existed at all.” Irving need not have […]
The Legends and Myths of Mount Misery and Sweet Hollow Road, Part III. Mary takes another swing with her bloody hatchet on the big screen
It’s approaching Halloween and we have another film based on the legend of Mary Hatchet of Sweet Hollow Road and Mount Misery. Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet is a hatchet job on the legends, which we look at in detail in this look at one of Long Island’s most popular Urban Legends in the Gothic Cabinet of Curiosities and Mysteries.
