the mountain tops dusted lightly with snow, the sun sets pink above them.

"I have seen landscapes, notably in the Mourne Mountains and southwards which under a particular light made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge".

CS Lewis describing CO. Down and the Mournes, the inspiration for Narnia. #BookWormSat

📷Nigel Killeen

A map of Moomin Valley showing places of interest including The Cave, Woodshed and Moominhouse.

It’s a valley where you feel completely safe, Moomintroll told her. You feel happy when you wake up and it’s a pleasure to fall asleep at night. There’s a climbing tree where I’m going to build a house and a completely secret place that I shall show you. Comet in Moominland Tove Jansson #BookWormSat

woo-hoo! It is magnificent, isn't it? Top tip for you @stanleybad.bsky.social across the road is another museum building and it has a "secret" herb garden where you can go and eat your sandwiches - a wee gentle oasis.

Love your work @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social ♥️

New York, slick wet streets, multiple pigeons walk. A huge billboard advertises A Star is Born starring Judy Garland and James Mason.

That evening, the dark flat streets of New York, the tomorrow of work, the milk bottle dropped and broken in her sink, became unimportant. The Price of Salt - Patricia Highsmith

📷Times Square with Pigeons - Frank Oscar Larson

#BookWormSat

Inside a golden frame decorated with colourful birds and flowers, a bright red sun is rising over a hilled city. The sun has human features and appears solemn and somewhat serious. There are trees and a winnding river in the foreground.

On Easter Sunday in England, people once arose early to witness the sun dancing... #EasterSunday #Folklore

A sepia photograph which shows the classic white sheet transparent ghost standing outside in a garden by some ivy draped large French Windows.

In Scottish lore, folk born on Good Friday not only have the ability to see ghosts but to order them about... #PhantomsFriday

Thank you, I've really enjoyed participating this month 🖤

a grey sea, overcast sky, a skeleton is dragging a man into the water and the man is resisting so far...

A maritime superstition said it was unlucky to “save a stranger from the sea” for “he’ll turn your enemy”. There was a belief that the one who saved the other, would soon be drowned themselves... #MorbidMarch 🎨Niss

A black and white photograph of a fallen tree. Broken, its weather-blasted limbs have a skeletal quality.

Children claim it a Wood Sprite bones. None of them will admit to being afraid of it, but in all their frantic bonefire gathering – Pale Eve, Midsummer and Guy Fawkes – they leave it alone. Even in death, Wood Sprites infest their imaginations, Demand terror tithe. – Joanna Vickers #VOH

Painting by 🎨John McGie

shimmering blue sea with a fishing boat bobbing. a young woman in pink cardigan and white apron is walking across the rocky shore with a wicker basket, handle under her arm.

Balls of light have been reported hovering over various stretches of water on the Scottish lochs, sometimes stationary, then moving fast and dropping down into the water. In local lore such lights were thought to foretell death, and upon seeing them, fisherman would stay on dry land... #MorbidMarch

a fashionably dressed dark haired woman in a black silk striped mourning dress with bustled back staring out to sea. She wears a black hat with black feathers and a long white ribbon, and holds a closed black umbrella and a white handkerchief with a black border. Her mourning jewellery includes a silver and jet cross around her neck, jet beaded earrings and jet and pearl rings.

Whitby Jet became THE most integral piece of Victorian mourning jewellery. Following the death of Prince Albert 50 jet workshops swelled to 204... #MorbidMarch
🎨Jules Émile Saintin

It was really beautiful. I used to work at Maida Vale letting in audiences for radio broadcasts so I know the metallic bones of the place and the lovely canteen. I know those ghosts of stretched tape and wires and last night you brought them back.

@drmatthewsweet.bsky.social makes such beautiful programmes - "where Delia Derbyshire banged a metal lampshade and the universe resonated..."

Ophelia in a long grey dress is floating, drowning in the shallow river, a string of colourful flowers of blue, red and white clasped in her right hand. The riverbank is abundant and overhanging with long reeds, white flowers, grasses and plants.

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.
Pray you, love, remember. And there is pansies,
that’s for thoughts. . . .
There’s fennel for you, and columbines.

Hamlet, act 4, scene 5.
#ShakespeareWeek #BookWormSat 🎨John Everett Millais

Illustration for The Tempest; Caliban is covering his ears crouched beside a gnarled tree. This specific image is thought to represent the line, "The isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not" or "Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about mine ears". Several smaller, impish and fairy-like creatures are gathered around him and the base of the large tree trunk. One has large, wasp-like body and wings. Next to the tree are some bundled sticks.

‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here.’ ~ The Tempest, William Shakespeare. #BookswormSat
🖼️ Arthur Rackham

Painting of Ophelia carrying flowers. White dress. Reddish background.

'You have witchcraft in your lips.'
-Shakespeare

🎨Henrietta Rae (detail)
#BookWormSat

Felice Casorati - Artist - a woman is sleeping in a field of flowers - lying on her side, dark haired - in deep sleep

“I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.”

✍️William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
#BookWormSat 🎨Felice Casorati

A circus family. A glamorous mother in a tasselled bikini, her daughter in a tutu and two smaller boys. The eldest boy smiles whilst the rest of the family pose stony-faced. Everyone including the children are heavily tattooed all over their bodies. They are posing for the camera and behind them a sign reads Circus.

Tattoos all had symbolic meanings. The swallow represented how many miles the sailor had travelled and, if they drowned, would also fly their soul to heaven. The anchor represented stability, strength and safety... 📸Todd Walker #MorbidMarch

a ship is going down into a cascading sea overseen by a skeletal monster with a single giant bulging eye.

The fantastic legend of The Lady Lovibond is the tale of a ghost ship which reappears every 50 years off the coast of Kent. The ship was said to have been deliberately steered off course by the first mate who was in love with the captain's wife... 🎨Alfred Kubin #MorbidMarch

A flying stork carries a bundle containing a golden-haired baby. Text reads Announcing the arrival of our Baby.

Inveterate practical joker Charles Vance Millar had weird clauses in his will including leaving a house to three men who hated each other as long as they lived together; and a fortune to the Toronto woman who gave birth to the most children in 10 years - known as The Great Stork Derby! #MorbidMarch

Good Friday and Old Lady Day rarely coincide and 25 March was the day they executed Margaret Clitherow, for harbouring Catholic priests in 1586.

When the three dates align something strange happens in York's Shambles. Death and the scent of Daisies.

Read more in today's #DarkSpringtide tale below

a woman with long flowing red hair presses her mouth to the neck of a man in a black suit who is bent over into her embrace.

The aroma of roses repels vampires and the petals burn them like acid. Placing a rose on a grave helps trap a vampire underground... 🎨Munch #WyrdWednesday

A poster showing a large dinosaur skeleton with a small crowd of folk in Victorian dress gathering round and a cameo insert of P T Barnum's face. It reads Barnum and Co's Greatest Show On Earth.

Would you like to read your own obituary? PT Barnum did. On his death bed and in a final act of showmanship, he persuaded The Evening Sun in New York to publish his obituary whilst he was still alive. The paper did acknowledge this fact though! #MorbidMarch

A bull swishing their tail, looking rather startled. A simple ink drawing.

In Jamaican folklore when a child lost one of their teeth, the rolling calf would come rattling chains to take the tooth AND the child away! But the clever child would put their tooth into a tin can and shake it. The noise would keep the rolling calf away... #MorbidMarch

🎨Picasso

A tall woman dressed in a flowing robe of greys and blacks stands in a shallow niche caressing a pot lost in an erotic spectral trance, oblivious to the world and to observers.

Sweet basil in Italy was the flower of lovers while in ancient Greece it was an herb of hatred... #MorbidMarch

🎨Isabella and the Pot of Basil - John White Alexander

Stormy sea, rolling waves, a cradle floating on the water with a golden haired baby asleep soundly. a startled black and white cat is clinging to one corner desperately maintaining balance.

Cauls (pieces of the birth membrane) were rare and highly prized by mariners who bought them for quite high prices. They were believed to protect the owner from drowning...

🎨Alma-Tadema #MorbidMarch

Illustration by Peter Firmin of a snowy landscape with mountains in the distance and on the right a dense forest of pine trees. Looking into the forest is a group of people with a sleigh and huskies.

#BookwormSat In the Saga of Noggin the Nog story about the Ice Dragon, by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, the Nogs pursue Nogbad through the dark forest of Troleskow, where there are no paths as the trees move about when no one is watching them.

trees. snowy forest. branches bare. a lone figure looking around.

“Oh, Trees, Trees, Trees,” said Lucy (though she had not been intending to speak at all). “Oh, Trees, wake, wake, wake. Don't you remember it? Don't you remember me? Dryads and Hamadryads, come out, come out to me.”

Prince Caspian - CS Lewis #BookWormSat 🎨 Pauline Baynes