Today marks All Saints' Day, also known as All Hallows' Day or the Feast of All Hallows. That's why Hallowe'en is called that - it's All Hallow's Eve. The day celebrates saints, but the far more interesting day for folklore is tomorrow - All Souls' Day.

All Souls' Day marks remembrance of the dead, whether that's visiting graves, praying for the dearly departed, or practising other family customs. 

Given it's a day dedicated to the dead, I thought it would be a great time to hear some more unnerving and uncanny experiences from listeners of Fabulous Folklore…

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/supernatural-experiences-4/

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If I ask you to think of a famous haunted house, will your mind wander to a white Dutch Colonial house, with quarter-round windows lit from within to look like red eyes? Yes? Then the reputation of 112 Ocean Avenue has done its work, aided and abetted by The Amityville Horror.

Even if that wasn't the first house you thought of, Amityville's reputation stretches before it, ready to snag your attention at the first opportunity. After all, the design of the house reappears intermittently, as do elements of the haunting. A presence that hates Christian icons? A child's invisible friend that takes a dislike to a parent? Items going missing around the house, reappearing elsewhere, if at all? The fact the haunting apparently contains ghosts, poltergeist activity, demonic shenanigans and possibly even a portal to hell just adds to Amityville's towering reputation.

Let's explore this reputation in this week's episode!

I also make a mistake at 10mins 15secs by saying the Lutz family left in March 1976. They left in January, but that's the joy of recording live!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/amityville-horror-house/

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The Palazzo Ducale dominates the view as your vaporetto approaches the San Marco stop. The huge building is an example of Venetian Gothic architecture, all pointed arches and quatrefoils. It's hard to believe that two prisons lie within its bulk, with a third inside the pristine white building alongside it.

Tourists might be the only people who visit these prisons now, trotting along the corridors as part of organised tours. Yet in bygone centuries, notorious reputations clung to the cells, and people feared being slung into them. The fearsome reputation of this prison may not have outlived the building, but they certainly outlived the Venetian Republic.

Let's explore this reputation, some legends associated with the Palace and its prisons, and even learn of a daring escape from one of them - by none other than Casanova - in this week's episode!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/doges-palace-prison/

Hear my interview on How Haunted: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bonus-episode-ghostlore-with-dr-icy-sedgwick/id1639335870?i=1000730532826

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In this episode of Fabulous Folklore Presents, I'm talking to two folklore heavyweights - Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook!

Owen Davies is Professor of Social History at the University of Hertfordshire. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Art of Grimoire and Troubled by Faith: Insanity and the Supernatural in the Age of the Asylum (both 2023). He has been described as Britain's foremost academic expert on the history of magic.

Ceri Houlbrook is Senior Lecturer in Folklore and History at the University of Hertfordshire. Her books include The Magic of Coin-Trees (2018), Unlocking the Love-Lock (2021) and Ritual 'Litter' Redressed (2022). In addition to her scholarly work, she writes folklore-inspired fiction.

We chat about their new book, Folklore: A Journey through the Past and Present, about whether folklore should open up to admit openly-invented lore, the importance of the urban environment to folklore which has often been overlooked, and the way social media has shifted 'local' traditions into often international ones. There's even a mention of the folklore of ice cream vans!

Buy Folklore: A Journey through the Past and Present: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/12992/9781526180384

Find Ceri on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cerihoulbrook.bsky.social

Find Owen on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/odavies9.bsky.social

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

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Request an episode: https://forms.gle/gqG7xQNLfbMg1mDv7

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If you've ever read any Charles Dickens novels, especially Great Expectations, then you'll have run into Newgate Prison. The hulking, notorious jail loomed large in London's history, before its demolition in 1902.

While accurate execution statistics are difficult to find, there's a suggestion that over 1000 people faced capital punishment at the prison between 1790 and 1902.

The old execution bell rests in a glass case in nearby St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, rung the night before an execution as a reminder to the condemned.

So how did this prison gain such a fearsome reputation? How has it survived well beyond its early 20th-century demolition? Let’s find out in this week's episode!

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

Buy tickets for Haunted Tyneside at Newcastle Castle on 28 October: https://www.newcastlecastle.co.uk/talks

Buy tickets for the Witchcraft Panel at Treadwell's on 29 October: https://www.treadwells-london.com/events-1/witchcraft-panel-interview-soiree

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Bedlam, or Bethlem Royal Hospital to give it its full name, is actually the world's oldest psychiatric institution. It began life in 1247 in the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem, which stood where we now find Liverpool Street Station. 

Yet the hospital has inspired a range of books, films, and TV series, with its infamous reputation lasting well into the 21st century. The hospital has since become a valued institution for psychiatric treatment, yet the ghost of its former incarnations still linger.

After all, the word 'bedlam', meaning chaos, came from this very hospital. People shortened 'Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem' to Bethlem, and then Bedlam, in around the 1660s. The word even went on to inspire the word 'Bedlamite', used to describe someone suffering from insanity, from the 1620s.

So how did this hospital gain such a fearsome reputation, and how has it survived well beyond the hospital's adoption of new practices? Let's find out in this week's episode!

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

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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Foxes appear in literature and legend across the world. Look at Brer Fox in the American South. In Rebel Folklore, I discussed the Jiuwei Hu of China, or nine-tailed fox, who drains men of their life force. Korea's kumiho is a similar spirit, while Japan has the supernatural fox spirit, the kitsune.

Scholar Al-Biruni, magician Cornelius Agrippa and astrologer William Lilly put the fox under Mercury's rulership. Mercury is the trickster of the Roman gods, and represents communication, cleverness, speed, and resourcefulness - all qualities traditionally associated with the fox. It probably explains why dreaming of foxes meant you should beware of treachery and thieves.

I have an exclusive article about foxes for Patrons on the lowest tier, but I've also made it available for sale if you'd like to read some additional fox folklore. As it is, it seems foxes also appear in folk tales and literature so I managed to write a whole new episode that didn't involve the lore from the article!

So let's explore the way foxes appear in folk tales and literature!

Find the images and references on the blog post: https://www.icysedgwick.com/foxes-folk-tales/

Foxes and Folklore article: https://www.patreon.com/posts/exclusive-foxes-106946093

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Natalie Lawrence is an author and illustrator who explores our relationship with the natural world, looking through multiple lenses - from the biological to the mythic and psychoanalytic. She completed a MSc and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge, exploring the making and meanings of monstrous creatures in seventeenth century Europe.

She published her first book as a teenager, Feathers and Eggshells, inspired by Hampstead Heath and the birds she was entranced by as a child, and published Planta Sapiens with Paco Calvo in 2022. She has also given a TedX talk, appeared on BBC Radio, and worked with installation artists. 

In this chat, we talk about humans' fascination for monsters, how the walrus was originally conceived of as being a monster, the Hydra of Hamburg, cryptids as contemporary monsters and the ways in which our understanding of what is real and what exists has changed over the centuries.

Buy Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and Their Meanings: https://uk.bookshop.org/a/12992/9781474619035

Find Natalie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natalie.j.lawrence/

And her website: https://nataliejlawrence.com/

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

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Hedgehogs are one of the stranger mammals you might encounter. They're nocturnal, they hibernate, they're prone to rolling into a ball when frightened, and they're extremely vulnerable to habitat loss. While some of you will undoubtedly have first thought of Sonic, others might have thought of Mrs Tiggywinkle from the Beatrix Potter books. 

Either way, those are quite positive associations. I've been feeding hedgehog visitors to my garden since June 2023, and I find them charming, adorable, and slightly idiosyncratic. Yet in the past, hedgehogs have had a much more sinister reputation that they certainly didn't deserve. People linked them with witches, the devil, and even fruit theft.

So let's explore the folklore surrounding hedgehogs! 

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

Sign up for the Bonfire Night talk: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gunpowder-treason-and-plot-the-legends-and-customs-of-bonfire-night-tickets-1687030616989

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Moles are fascinating creatures. They're phenomenal diggers and while they weigh around 120g, they can shift 540 times their body weight of earth.

Given they live entirely underground, they're a rarely seen mammal, and we only know they're there when we see their molehills. Surprisingly, there is more folklore about them than more commonly encountered animals, like badgers. 

Used in folk medicine, they're also creatures connected with omens for both death and the weather. Their appearance as folk remedies is somewhat cruel, and reflects earlier times when humans had less regard for animal welfare.

So how do moles appear in folklore? Let's find out in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore!

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

Tickets for the Northern Spiritualism talk: https://bit.ly/spiritualism2025

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

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