The Ghost Monk

An old man, scantily clad in furs, stands by a camp fire earnestly recounting a story. The illustration comes from a 1949 edition of 'Famous Fantastic Mysteries' and is by A Leydenfrost.

In Jack London's early post-apocalypse novel 'The Scarlet Plague' (1912), civilisation has long since vanished. Only a Palaeolithic existence has survived. Histories of ancestors, now fabled beings, could only be told through folk tales since the art of writing had also been lost.
#BookWormSat

A D M Smith illustration from Sabine Baring-Gould's 'Book Of Ghosts' showing a boy in a churchyard being helped to his feet by a ghostly woman. His head is bandaged and he is holding a violin. It's years since I've read the book and have entirely forgotten what it's all about but it's very sweet.

Another great #PhantomsFriday yesterday. A big thank you to everyone who contributed. I'm getting to the point where I'll be too lazy to make my own posts, I'll just settle back and enjoy everyone else's!

#PhantomsFriday Midnight Movie: Two film posters for 'The Phantom Carriage' 1921. Some great early spectral effects & a scene that might have influenced Kubrick's 'Here's Johnny' sequence in 'The Shining'.

An apparition holding a parasol

A final touch of spook on this #PhantomsFriday

reds-kingdom.blog/2020/05/01/t...

#photography #ghost #uncanny

Richard Westall, engraving by Edward Scriven, Brutus and the Ghost of Caesar (1802)
#PhantomsFriday

Monastery of the Devil (Seville)
In the village of Carmona stands the gloomy-looking Monastery of the Devil. There is no mention of this Franciscan monastery anywhere in the municipality's bibliography. It is as if it did not exist. 1/3
#PhantomsFriday #folklore #horror #ghosts #paranormal

A misty night scene showing a massive stone sea fort rising from calm water. The fort is softly illuminated with warm lights, revealing thick walls, bastions, and a small church-like tower and dome on top. In the foreground, a lone figure stands at the water’s edge, seen only as a dark, blurred silhouette facing the fort. Fog hangs low over the water, and a glowing halo of light behind the fort creates a dramatic, mysterious atmosphere.

In the heart of Marsamxett Harbour in Malta lies Manoel Island, home to the imposing Fort Manoel. Built by the Knights of St. John in the 18th century, the fort has a dark past that has given rise to several legends. One of the most famous stories is that of the “Black Knight,”

#PhantomsFriday 🧵

Surfing skeletons in a Paul Hardy illustration of 1896 for 'The Story Hunter' by E R Suffling. OK, they're coffins not surf boards but I don't think that would make riding the waves any easier.
#PhantomsFriday

YouTube video by Tara A. Devlin The Most Terrifying Haunted Locations in Japan Compilation

Getting in early for #PhantomsFriday as I'll be busy tomorrow, but here is a long and well researched compilation of Japanese haunted house tales told by an actual human being who lived in Japan. To be fair, it's a good channel in general, if you like the #Spooky.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXF4...

Great! I wonder whether actually properly good stories by forgotten or amateur writers are hidden away in pulps like this?

Painted cover of Ghost Stories magazine, April 1929, showing a frightened man kneeling beside an open chest overflowing with gold coins in a dark, candlelit room. Looming above him is a large, translucent ghostly figure, reaching toward the man. The logo “Ghost Stories” is at the top, and at lower right a list of story titles includes “Coins of Doom,” “She Walks in Beauty,” and “Did the Ghost of Bismarck Warn the Kaiser?”

Ghost Stories magazine, April 1929
published by Macfadden

The cover story Coins of Doom involves the search for a dead man's hidden stash of gold coins. It soon emerges that the former owner's spirit has cursed the coins themselves. #phantomsfriday

Uncle Bunky's painting of the burning of the Eliza Battle, showing the Tombigbee River full of lifeboats as the steam ship burns in the cold night.

On cold nights on the Tombigbee in Alabama, the Eliza Battle reappears, completely drenched in flames. Though no one died when it sank in 1858, the mysterious steam ship can still be seen, haunting that stretch of river. #PhantomsFriday

🖼️: Uncle Bunky

The Spirit Appears as the Wife

The household of the Ducal stablemaster in Coburg was once haunted by a strange spirit that looked indistinguishable from the stablemaster's wife.

#PhantomsFriday
https://wiki.sunkencastles.com/wiki/The_Spirit_Appears_as_the_Wife

The Rainbow arch, Lindisfarne. The priory church at Lindisfarne was closely modelled on Durham Cathedral and shares many features with it, including the patterned columns. The rainbow arch' spans the church crossing and is the only vaulting rib to survive. Lindisfarne was the only 'cell' of Durham to have had such a magnificent church built, probably because of its connection with St Cuthbert.

Lindisfarne has an interesting variation of the Shuck. Here, the spectral hound takes the form of a white dog, said to be seen around the ruins of the priory and the castle. Locals claim that the dog jumps down from the castle steps towards people and then runs off.
#phantomsFriday

When the bride lifts her veil and your first thought is ‘open casket’—D. Murray Smith illustrates the ultimate wedding crasher. Letice didn’t RSVP, but she did bring a lifetime of sibling rivalry to the afterlife. Betty’s face says it all: ‘I did not sign up for this family reunion.’ A masterpiece in how to ruin a honeymoon before it even starts.

“Then the bride put back her veil, and Betty, studying the white face, saw that this actually was not herself; it was her dead sister Letice.”

(Sabine Baring-Gould “A Book of Ghosts”, 1904)

🎨 D. Murray Smith

#phantomsfriday

#PhantomsFriday We have largely forgotten than objects can be haunted, for example an old door may have absorbed unspeakable horrors in the chamber it opened on to. Ghost hunter Elliot O'Donnell wrote that furniture made from Irish bogwood 'has from time immemorial been haunted by uncouth spirits.'

The "Porthcawl phantom steam train" refers to ghost stories associated with the disused branch line in South Wales. The sound of a steam train can still be heard along the old rail route, with sightings frequently reported near the railway bridge on Moor Lane

#phantomsfriday

An old engraving of a burial at a crossroads on a moonlit night. A stone has been removed from beneath the way marker, which one man is struggling to hold on to. A man with a spade and another with rocks to pile on top are also present, as are mourners standing by the coffin.

Murderers, suicides and suspected witches were once buried at crossroads, in the hope their restless spirits might stay put, unsure which way to go. Just two of many crossroads ghosts are murderer Black Toby in #Suffolk and a highwayman at Fright Corner (truly!), in #Kent.
#PhantomsFriday #folklore

Take a quick look at the Folklore Of Warwickshire's post below for an especially grim example in a haunted house.

Cool hat! I wonder whether the police officer resigned for good after proving such a wimp.

A scowling figure in a sheet/cape and a tall pointed hat points a clawed hand at a cowering figure on the ground.

#PhantomsFriday January-April 1861 A "Man in White," described as being 5'8" to 25' tall, wandered about in the dark in Cleveland, Ohio, terrifying its residents. Posses were formed; the ghost complained in a letter to the papers of being persecuted by armed gangs when it just wanted a quiet stroll.

A very battered black and white photograph clipped from a local paper reporting on the “ghost hunt”. A crowd of people in a dark field. In the foreground a young boy stares at the camera.

#phantomsfriday
Some small town ghostly malarkey. I grew up Pershore, Worcestershire.
In August 1965 3 small boys claimed to have seen a ghost in a meadow by the river. Over the next 5 nights increasing numbers of ghost hunters gathered there, reportedly 200 by the final night

Good for them! (The boys I mean, not the ghost-hunters). I like the fact that you can remember it.

According to the Sagas, #Viking ghosts were anything but incorporeal. A 'draugr' could emerge from its tomb and thump on hall doors demanding to join the feast. It could be gigantic, with bluish skin and reek of death, or could take animal forms, such as seals, bulls and cats
#PhantomsFriday #legend

"I am quite of the opinion that vulgar incredulity is a much more contemptible thing thing than vulgar credulity."

- Catherine Crowe, 'The Night Side Of Nature' (1848)
#PhantomsFriday #supernatural #paranormal #Victorian

Art by Thomas Satterwhite Noble. A skull wearing a wreath.

According to a Flemish folktale, a woman was followed by a ghost while she walked home late at night. The ghost had a skull instead of a head and a white beard. Overnight, a huge tree grew in front of her door. It had to be cut down because nobody could enter or leave.

#PhantomsFriday

An ethereal. glowing figure raises her hand to the air, while several other around her figures cower away.

'The Ghost of Clytemnestra Awakening the Furies' (1781), by John Downman.

#PhantomsFriday

Oxney Bottom (2020) Oxney Bottom (2020) - a late December visit to the haunted woods of Oxney Bottom, Kent, photography by Phil Gomm.

Oxney Bottom sits just off the Deal–Dover road in east Kent. Said to be haunted by a Grey Lady and worse, it’s long had a reputation for unease!

reds-kingdom.blog/2020/12/31/o...

#PhantomsFriday #photography #ghosts #Kent

An Irving Montagu illustration of the wily clergyman holding out his list of subscribers to the skinflint's ghost, which is wearing Tudor costume and clutching a bag of what would have been sovereigns. The ghost is hurrying away, a sour look on its face.

A clergyman was once bothered in his chamber by the #ghost of one of his host's ancestors - who had been a notorious miser. He presents the ghost with a list of subscribers to a local charity, pointing out that as a long-term resident, he ought to pay up too. This frightens it off!
#PhantomsFriday

Engraving by John Godfrey, after the original drawing by Doré. A black-and-white image of a staircase in a ruined house with an arched ceiling. A figure in dark garb climbs the steps, and two figures, one dark and one white, precede him on the upstairs landing. Vines grow on the steps, and from the hole in the crumbled wall we see outside. Three owls sitting on the wall spectate. A bat follows the climbing figure from the darkness downstairs.

'A residence for woman, child, and man, A dwelling place — and yet no habitation; A House — but under some prodigious ban Of excommunication.'

Gustave Doré 1882
#illustration for 'The Haunted House' by Thomas Hood

#PhantomsFriday #gothic