A black and white photograph of a weathered, ivy-strangled tombstone in a somewhat feral boneyard bordered by trees still waiting for their spring finery.

As an author, I treat the boneyard as a resource. Its gravestones are lithic library. Rarely will I walk its paths without being gifted a character's name, a tale to tell. It whispers to me. The dead desire to talk and it would be rude to ignore them. – #CLNolan

Sometimes in a boneyard you come across a whispering wall of displaced headstones. Here is a tumble of complaint and spite against the sexton. Here the neglected dead are so eager for visitation that will tell you a dozen secrets for some snippet of news about the living. – #CLNolan

When people talk of the Old Ones in the Hollow Hills, there is an assumption of familiarity. Folklore is so embedded we're often left to unfold its details and meanings from the briefest of mentions. We do not have to ask what the Old Ones look like, it's something we've always known. – #CLNolan

Depictions of owls in Hookland are claimed as avatars for their Queen. Every carved set of eyes, every stitched set of tufted ears, ever pair of painted wings. All are her agents. She peers at us from pictures, hears us at prayer. Those with secrets beg her mercy. – #CLNolan

For what if I pause at a certain point on the path and pay my respect to a phantom? Do the dead deserve less than curtesy? Are they not owed politeness? If a ghost has had the manners to regularly manifest at a certain spot, I'll happily raise my hat to it. – #CLNolan #Ghosts

Occasionally you come across mausoleums bereft of bodies. Some seem to have been waiting patiently for decades to receive corpses that never came. Others hold a sense of having been abandoned by their residents. Stare too long at their locked gates and you may risk a revenant's return. – #CLNolan

Once you realise many tombs are nothing more than dream incubation chambers for the dead, a walk in Ashcourt Necropolis becomes a navigation of visions. No amount of bricked thresholds stops them leaking. Stay still too long and you risk being caught in terminal ephialtes. – #CLNolan

We adorn buildings with lithic lookouts not just for their delivering of stern beauty, but because some atavistic element aches for protection. Soot=scarred they may be,, but we first set those stone spirits to watch what was beyond our own eyes to see. – #CLNolan, BBC National Programme talk, 1933

Folklore is a living current in perpetual manifestation, perpetual mutation. Each telling – whether in story swapped across pints or carved into a church's wooden bestiary – makes a bridge from then to now and onto tomorrow. Even the smallest oak dragon is transmission. – #CLNolan #FolkloreSunday

Folklore lenses the land with story. We take old corpse paths and wonder if the boneyard's iron gates will ward those spirits that did not find rest. We see first growth of bear garlic and think of Ghost Bear, hedge-priest medicine. To walk with folklore is to scuff up the strange. – #CLNolan

The last Parliament of Bears in England was held in 490 AD. However, the date of the last Parliament of Ghost Bears is much contested and a sure way to start an argument in a tavern. - #CLNolan, BBC National Programme talk, 1934

Whatever the weather, you can always find some adherents to the Black Fathom Faith in wordless wave communion. They storm-stare, listen to long sunken voices rasp against the stones of the shore. We who are outside this salt sect can only imagine their ecstasies. – #CLNolan

There is a malignant tree in the graveyard of St. Mary of the Three Crowns at Danebury that always wakes when storm darkens the day to the point lanterns are needed. Bone-fed and cursed, its hiss can be heard above the wind. Its scraping words wish only doom to men. – #CLNolan

As an author, I tell others my walks among the feral graves of Ashcourt Necropolis are for finding names for my characters. This is a partial truth. I also wander where the names are obscured to collect dead whisperers and growls. To become entangled in the dreams of bones. – #CLNolan

For Hookland has the dialect word of gigban – a corner on a path that is not itself haunted, but when turned will present you with ghosts. If you are walking the county it is a most useful word to have. – #CLNolan #WOTD

It is in a city's nature to spawn secret societies, cults of dubious nature. Havens for collaborative sorcery. You can deny this truth, but I only need walk you along certain streets in Ashcourt or Weychester to prove you wrong and manners make such a prospect uncomfortable to me. – #CLNolan

Ashcourt Necropolis may be territory ceded to the Empire of the Dead, but its peace is not easy. Lithic lookouts watch paths. Grave guardians stand by doors. The living are not forgiven all our trespass. Even if we've valid business with the departed, we remain a stone sufferance. – #CLNolan

A morning without the prospect of tea makes the universe a darker place. It is inevitable in this circumstance that I will write unpleasant stories. - #CLNolan #Tea #Writing

One of the joys of collecting folklore is having conversations where lines such as: “When my sister spent some years transformed into a fox …” tumble out quite naturally. – #CLNolan #FolkloreSunday

The sealed doors in those little houses of the dead are pitiful barrier against whispers from beyond. Wandering Ashcourt Necropolis, I am forced to hum and sing old songs such as 'Old Clip Takes A Sip' to ward against their beckonings as there is rarely any good in them. – #CLNolan

For it is one of those pubs that has abandoned its baptismal name and adjusted to its citizens’ title. While the loss of its original moniker – The Prophetic Dolphin – is a blow to this folklorist’s heart, at least The Courtesans’ Rest preserves its history in the prudishness of the now. – #CLNolan

It's no secret many authors are boneyard loiterers. It's where we go to steal names from tombs and grave markers to clothe our characters. What's less known, is how many of us authors hear certain stones sing their names, whisper their stories. We tend to keep quiet on that. – #CLNolan #Writing

The ivy enfolded grave guardians of Ashcourt necropolis exist in lithic time. We flicker and fizz in their slow seeing. For the most part we hardly register. When we do, we are trespassing ghosts. Edge of eye phantoms moving against the speed of stone. – #CLNolan

The wise children of Hookland are prepared in a ways no Cub Scouts ever are. They hold in their heads a dozen false names - Charlie Dazzle, Jo Planter, Bobbie Anchor - to give to any Faery who demands one from them. For names are powerful and tricky things. - #CLNolan #FolkloreSunday

Those broken-limbed, time-disfigured sentinels above us observe in slow judgement. We rush and flicker in their stare. We see their breaking and they see ours. Sometimes I hold my ear to their walls in hope of hearing whispered memories, unhurried stories. – #CLNolan

On December 27th, walking with a sharper care is common. For the Boxing Day Bounds have been beaten. We all know where our borders are and what lies across them. We feel their threshold spirits as a dream-thrum, as insistent itch of warning when approaching them. – #CLNolan

Later, we shall walk the same path through the boneyard to midnight mass. It shall be more ghost-crowded then, for in death many seem to remember the ritual of life and walk beside us. Each year adds to the roll of phantoms. – #CLNolan in a letter to #ArthurMachen, 1929

There hasn’t been a wild wolf in Hookland since 1483, but the land is long memory told in ghosts. The King’s Chase Forest has phantom pack. Wolves grown in size with each generation’s telling. Red-eyed, shadow-furred. They howl so we don’t forget our extinguishing sin. - #CLNolan

Whether we call it Faery or Elfland, it is a territory bordering our own. Some elements of it are shared - certain trees extend roots into the soil of both realms - but we know it most when it walks into our world. It comes as a haunting strangeness, as a terrible yet familiar oddness. - #CLNolan

The city is layers of story. Sometimes it is told in occulted stone symbolism, sometimes in street names and haunted hodology. Thousands of narratives with no editor. Thousands of tales seeping into the city's own strange dreams. No wonder it imagines fabulous things. – #CLNolan