Signs of life.

The folklore of Hookland swerved 1920s Flower Fairy propaganda. Its depictions of Faeries retains a dark power, a sense of them as engines of fear, engines of sublime terror. The Queen of the Winter Court may be winged, but she carries a string of decapitated heads. – Dr. M. Benn

Hookland was made by Soviet science fiction and cosmonauts. It was made by pulp novels my mother didn’t want me to read, but that my Aunt Barbara still lent me. Made by countless bad films surreptitiously watched on an old black and white TV. It has been shaped by a refusal to sneer at the work of Stephen King because Salem’s Lot was brilliant when I read it at 11 and still is. In fact, it has been shaped by a refusal to sneer at anything that generated a sense of sublime, awe and terror in childhood – even being forced to perform interpretive dance to Tomita. It has been made by brilliant writers – Aickman, Machen, Jackson – and it has been made by bad ones. It owes large debts to comics, goth, punk and movie soundtracks that is will never repay. Its substitute parents are free public libraries and Radio 4. It comes with a childhood place soaked with fear of ghosts and UFOs, it comes from a place of love for those exact same engines of terror. It comes from a revulsion for how psychogeography has increasingly became an academic and art language that excludes people from their own primal experience of landscape. It comes for a raging dislike of commodity writing about place and nature. It comes from an absolute refusal to allow fascists to easily occupy their cherished grounds of myth and folklore. It comes from the cunning, the ghost soil, the landscape of England as experienced by this broken body for five long decades. It comes from being a Fully-grown Changeling. Fay Godwin, Paul Nash and Dame Laura Knight are always muttering about it with disapproval in the imagined afterlife. Nothing in it is made up, just remembered differently. It was designed to be a permissive space, a common ground where people could explore and find their own hauntings. You all own it, you all make it. You are all marching with the spirits of dead spaceman, wood sprites and a thousand lost childhoods. You are all scuffling up your memories, your own stories as you navigate across th…

Today's answer to What is Hookland?

Truly fine folk.

Goodnight from that suburb of tangled streets close to the Weychester Canal known as Jordan, rumour-shivered by the walking of the brass-eyed man. Goodnight from Sarah Padley, making prayers to a box of teeth given pride of place upon her kitchen table. Goodnight from Hookland.

Place is layers of story. No matter how wide the field, how sweeping the sky, it will always ghost-soaked. For this is the inevitability of place and us, we cannot help but plant our ghosts in it. – Dr. M. Benn, presentation at the 1982 Woden College Ghost Conference

Give me a parade of clouds and I shall tell you tomorrow. For I am a witch. Nature gifts me omens and opportunities for augury. I need only the clouded sky for nephonmancy, need only the plants below me for phytognomy. Peeking around the corner of fate is my commonplace. – #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

You really ought to know that one Scott.

More Mekon Scott, more Mekon.

Yep.

Churchill.

“Lance took a beating in the Brighthaven ice cream wars and scarpered to London. Still, I reckon hell get revenge as his mother cursed the bastards who did it. They call his mum ‘the Curse Queen of The Ends, so I don’t reckon on them having a happy life.” #OverheardInThePub

Never had #Walthamstow described as the ‘sunlit uplands‘ before.

Mrs. S: “Don’t say that. It will go down like a bag of cold sick.”

War criminal in a pub car park …

Safe journey. See you soon.

We didn’t, but you might be surprised at how the magic of that ritual leaked out.

My story involves that Morris.

I can tell you a special true story about Bluebell Hill, but only over pints.

Binfield Heath is a little odd even on its good days.

Oh how lovely.

Going to lie in a bluebell wood and contemplate death. Forty years on and I still have some things in come with 16-year old me.

Fine folk #FF @sebbyb.bsky.social @dirkmaggs.bsky.social @mariastrutz.bsky.social @annodracula.bsky.social @kjsoar.bsky.social @skionar.bsky.social @philh.bsky.social @odavies9.bsky.social @simonguy.bsky.social @stonelands.bsky.social @loreandordure.com @sjfarrer.bsky.social

Possessed stuffed weasels incoming in Hookland.

Goodnight from Sergeant Powers, finishing his boat patrol for Ashcourt River Police somewhat relieved no new Drowned Dead were sighted. Goodnight from Adam Dunford, now regretting camping on Barrowcross Moor for reasons other than the strength of the wind. Goodnight from Hookland.

The creature moved with a sound like dry autumn leaves being crunched by a child out for a walk. It moved with the sound of sticks scraping stone, old trees straining against storm. This was the moment he felt what seasoned occultists call ‘summoning regret’. - #CLNolan, Come Sprite, Come

Oreleton is the oldest of Weychester University's colleges. Not only is it home to Oswald – England's only spectral Dodo and doom omen – it is acknowledged as having educated more infamous necromancers than any other British academic establishment.

Timeline cleanse. #Cats

Some have a kissing tree, some have a thinking tree, some have a tree they tell their secrets to. I am a greedy witch. I've as many trees as lovers and I've performed magic with most of them. My favoured wood is like a party filled with old friends to talk to. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #WitchSky