A regular feature of people’s encounter with liminal and numinous sites is an anomalous or disquieting experience… This section considers the non-mundane side of antiquarian field work.
Peter Naldrett is the author of a new book called Spooky Britain and here, for the first time, he tells the story of his own experience that inspired his nationwide hunt for the eerie and mysterious. Everybody loves a good ghost story, right? I certainly did and at university read Edgar Allan Poe and Charles […]
Strange phenomena on the Pendle witches’ path Read More »
Do rooks have an ancestral awareness and maps of significant places? John Billingsley is transported A familiar sight as the light thickens at the end of day are streams of corvids – rooks and jackdaws – skeining overhead as they head towards their night’s roost. It is a flight full of direction and purpose, and
Between a rook and a thin place: spirit paths of the corvids Read More »
Rob Stepney’s republication of a classic historical novel was accompanied by some remarkable coincidences Shakespeare, in Henry IV part I, has the Welsh rebel chieftain Owain Glyndŵr describe himself as ‘not in the roll of common men’. ‘At my nativity, the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,’ he claims. His supernatural powers seemed
A coincidence of comets Read More »
By Simon Crook And if you flung her headdress on her from under her highlows you’d wheeze whyse Salmonson set his seel on a hexengown – James Joyce, Finnegans Wake ‘an orangefiery shipload from the planet Alpha’ On 10 December 2023, 32 days into navigating a family bereavement, I learnt of a recently discovered Roman
‘The foal seeks the pasture’: A hexagonal Roman shrine in Hampshire Read More »
We say that time flies, and sometimes it drags…but there are times, as John Billingsley has found, that it just seems to slip out of place… Time Shifts? Isn’t it funny how time flies, sometimes? Not just when you’re enjoying yourself, necessarily, but also when it seems to have some agenda of its own. Then
Slip-Sliding Away: recollections of time-slips Read More »
Mark Greener describes how research is pointing to humans’ own magnetic compass Every time I get close to certain Avebury stones, an area I know and love, I experience a definite, palpable sensation lurking on the edges of my perception. Sadly, I wasn’t thrown back like Roj Blake (OK, it was Adam Brake in
A sense of direction Read More »
There has been a lot of discussion on the NEReaders Forum about transpersonal experiences at ancient sites. This inspired David Taylor to share with NE readers two of his own experiences at Avebury a few years ago. A Flash of Inspiration In the Winter on 1992 a series of events were about to
Experiences in the Avebury Landscape Read More »
Michael Haslam recounts weird experiences on West Yorkshire and Highland moors Story: A Stone Circle on Midgley Moor I came to live at Foster Clough, on the edge of Midgley Moor, in September 1970. I’d visited the area a few times, and I had gained a rough idea of local topography. I’d come to join
Rock-solid Boggarts in a Ring: An experience of ‘other’ Read More »
John Billingsley isn’t the only one to get a buzz from the countryside; here he reports on some experiences of the so-called ‘hummadruz’. “This isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs” wrote William Shakespeare for Prospero in the play The Tempest. Perhaps he was writing from personal experience, for this isle of Britain
The Buzz or ‘Hummadruz’ Read More »
Thomas Hanley’s fascinating account of aerial apparitions of military manoeuvres first appeared in the Yorkshire Folk-Lore Journal in 1888, and remains of much interest in the annals of northern forteana. On the 18th of January, 1792, a singular meteoric appearance was observed near Stockton-on-the-Forest, about four miles from York, which resembled a large army in