When we think about folklore, we often think about the characters involved: King Arthur, Queen Mab, Lady Godiva, and more. Yet folklore has an intrinsic link with place, too. 

Even the most throwaway comment about a place can reveal stories linked with them. Such stories can reveal how we feel about places, especially when human activity moves away.

They’re also stories that get easily lost when people move on, so I asked the wonderful listeners of Fabulous Folklore if they wanted to share any stories they’d been told about places - and they did!

I wanted ghosts at a person's school, houses they ran past because someone in the neighbourhood said they were haunted, local legends of grey ladies, creepy back roads people avoided at night because of a local cryptid - that kind of thing! 

I didn't want personal experiences this time around, which I've collected before, because I wanted the focus to be on the place, not someone's experience of it.

Let's see what people came up with in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the blog post with the images and the references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/tales-of-space-and-place/

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English folklore is full of peculiarities. The legends of the so-called screaming skulls are definitely among them.

These are skulls kept in mansions and farmhouses, sometimes considered to be guardians of the property. Legends abound of the violent deeds done to the owners of the skulls.

But many of these stories come with hauntings attached if the skulls are disturbed. Sometimes the skulls even repeatedly return, no matter how often they're removed or even destroyed. 

Given our focus this month on ghosts and poltergeists, let's explore some legends of screaming skulls in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/screaming-skulls/

Tell me the supernatural stories of places that you've heard: https://forms.gle/WzXyGZLoe8iLZh656

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I'm talking to Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux from the Three Ravens podcast about the difficulties in defining 'folklore', the importance of storytelling, which of England's 39 historic counties has the best folk tales, why people love ghost stories, and making folklore accessible to wider audiences!

Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux are the brains behind the Three Ravens podcast, and they are a real life couple, based in Sussex. Eleanor was born in Suffolk and grew up in Sussex, and after developing a passion for storytelling and stage performance as a child, become involved in amateur dramatics and completed her BA in English Literature and earned her MA in Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama. She also founded the theatre company Rust & Stardust, which tours original work and education projects rooted in English folklore. Martin was born in Somerset and grew up in the developing world, including in Uganda and Papua New Guinea. After leaving school, he completed his BA in English and won National Student Television Awards for comedy and directing. Having been a freelance journalist, radio presenter, and English teacher, he also won the BBC Moo! New Writers Prize in 2009. He gave up teaching after the pandemic to undertake his MA in Romantic and Victorian Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths, and to launch Three Ravens.

Buy their book, The Three Ravens Folk Tales: New tellings of half-forgotten stories from England's 39 Historic Counties: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/12992/9781803999685

Visit the Three Ravens Podcast website: https://www.threeravenspodcast.com/

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Poltergeist marked Hollywood's big-budget engagement with the ghost film in 1982. Produced by Stephen Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper, it took the haunted house film and mashed it together with the family adventure film. Throw in some special effects courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic, and you end up with the film that relocated haunted houses to the suburbs.

The film obliquely references the settlement of land in California and a failure to acknowledge earlier inhabitants of that land. It also explicitly engages with the growing consumer boom of the 1980s, using technology - here in the form of the TV set - as a means to communicate with the other side. It's a film worthy of study for various reasons.

But one of the talking heads in the special feature on the 25th anniversary edition of the film exclaims that everything in the film 'really happened'. Does the depicted activity bear any relation to historically recorded cases of poltergeist activity? Where does the film draw on this record? What are these earlier cases? Let's find out!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/poltergeist-1982-film/

Tell me your supernatural stories: https://forms.gle/WzXyGZLoe8iLZh656

Order Ghostlore: https://geni.us/ghostlore

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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S.A. Lawless is an herbalist, gardener, forager, mycophile, outdoor educator, and published author and illustrator, with a long-held fascination with folklore and witchcraft, currently living in rural Ontario, Canada. She has been studying and practicing herbalism for 20 years and has worked as a professional nature field guide for 15 years.

As a herbalist her focus is on low dose botanicals specialising in researching, growing, processing, working with and writing about poisonous plants with a special interest in medicinal nightshades. 

In this chat, we talk about poisonous plants, including how to grow them, why poisonous plants are actually important to ecosystems, the "natural = safe" false assumption, and which plants you might be surprised to learn are poisonous!

Visit The Poison Garden website: https://thepoisongarden.com/

Find The Poison Garden on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.poisongarden/

Find S.A.'s class on Low Dose Botanicals here: https://rowanandsage.com/upcoming-events/sarahannelawless

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Last week, we looked at some poltergeist definitions and whether such definitions are even helpful. Can something as truly bizarre as a 'knocking spirit' be boiled down to a series of checkboxes on a form?

Yet they're also not the invention of the 20th century. Nor are they the preserve of ghost hunters or psychics. Poltergeist accounts stretch back through the centuries, even if the spirit responsible isn't always labelled as a poltergeist.

Just look at the Tedworth Drummer from the 1660s and the haunting at Willington Mill in the 1840s. That's just as far as England goes - these accounts appear all over the world.

So as we're interested in folklore here, let's unpick two vastly different cases, from 1716 and 1840, to see how they appear in written records that try to avoid using the P-word. Do the accounts even describe poltergeists? Let's explore them in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/pre-20th-century-poltergeist/

Tell me your supernatural stories: https://forms.gle/WzXyGZLoe8iLZh656

Ghostwatch talk: https://ko-fi.com/s/c81b496605

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This episode of Fabulous Folklore begins with a reading of the Poltergeist entry from my new book, Ghostlore, before we explore the problem with poltergeists - how do you define one?!

From deciding what phenomena to include to picking a name, the poltergeist proves to be a flexible yet elusive figure in historical accounts.

Is that spontaneous fire a religious portent, or a poltergeist? And did a household spirit turn the kitchen upside down...or was it a poltergeist? You get the idea.

Let's look at the poltergeist in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/poltergeists-definitions/

Pre-order Ghostlore: https://geni.us/ghostlore

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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People have lived in the Madrid area since prehistoric times. Occupied by Romans, Moors, and then the Spanish, it has quite the history.

Over 6.8 million people live in Madrid. That's less than Paris and London but more than Berlin.

Of course, a capital city will boast a few ghost stories. The ghosts of those executed for heresy and witchcraft in the Plaza Mayor are said to still haunt the square. A fire tore through the square in 1631, devastating the buildings and leaving people dead, and some wondered if the square had attracted some kind of evil energy.

So which other ghosts lurk in this beautiful city? Let's explore three of the most famous legends - and their variations in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/haunted-madrid/

Pre-order Ghostlore: https://geni.us/ghostlore

Star Lore and Legends: Myths of the Constellations talk: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/star-lore-and-legends-myths-of-the-constellations-tickets-1389351410469?aff=oddtdtcreator

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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In this chat, I'm talking to illustrator Katy Horan about murder ballads, discussing what they are, how they work within folk music, how contemporary musicians have tried to reclaim the tradition, and the issues with examining ballads when all you might have is the lyrics!

Katy Horan is an illustrator and interdisciplinary artist whose work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Canada, published in several books, and four times selected for New American Paintings. Together with the writer Taisia Kitaiskaia, she co-created Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers and The Literary Witches Oracle Deck. She is also the illustrator of Ask Baba Yaga: Poetic Remedies for Troubled Times. Originally from Houston, Texas, Katy now lives and works in Austin. 

Buy Murder Ballads: Illustrated Lyrics & Lore: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/12992/9781524889265

Find Katy on Instagram: https://instagram.com/goodyhoran

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

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If you head away from the hustle and bustle of the Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), you’ll head into the stranger, more magical part of Venice. It’s in the tangle of narrow streets and courts that you enter the realm of Venetian legend.

It's difficult to know how many of them have any basis in fact. One legend sees the Devil face off with legendary composer, Vivaldi. Another sees the Devil try to snatch the soul of the first person to cross the Rialto Bridge - a bridge he created. Yet another involves a fisherman and his mermaid bride, which I covered in Rebel Folklore.

I've also covered some Venetian creepy ghost stories before. Yet this next legend even has physical evidence to testify to its occurrence. Or does it?

Let's explore the legend behind the carvings found on a fabulous building in Castello in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/venetian-legend/

Pre-order Ghostlore: https://geni.us/ghostlore

Get your free guide to home protection the folklore way here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/fab-folklore/

Become a member of the Fabulous Folklore Family for bonus episodes and articles at https://patreon.com/bePatron?u=2380595

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