Sometimes you don't have to search for an answer as to why certain doorways are sealed. Instinctually you know. It's to stop something terrible getting out. When you run your hands across them you can feel invisible lines of warding. Sigils set in the stone. – Vicky Pender #VOH
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
Sometimes when you climb Stepstone Hill it's hard not to imagine that you are on an island. You look down and can feel an incoming ghost tide. Waves of phantoms coming across the fields below. Spectre surrounded, a sense of being above time. – Frances Tailwood #VOH
Everyone has their own intimate telling of spring's arrival – colt's foot sighting, ash growth, crab apple blossom. For the children in my class it seems to be the first reliable report from a classmate that a Stay Below has been spotted in Thornley Pool. – Joanna Vickers, 1982 #VOH
Following The Hum was hard. I remember freezing Februarys, muddy March marching. Winds slipping passed whatever armour you had against the weather like a vorpal blade. Yet we kept walking. Pylon-to-pylon, a strange navigation, a faith in electric leys. – Signal-catcher Rose, ex Child of The Hum #VOH
All wise children in Hookland know that the gauge doesn't just measure the river at flood and drought, but tell you whether the brook is deep enough for Stay Belows to swim. – Stella Fleet #VOH
my ancient scanner chewed up the subtleties a little bit, but here's my finished watercolor. #watercolor #poeticadohabitar #pestilento #voh #violinistofhameln #ハーメルンのバイオリン弾き #brart
The sky turns nursery pink, turns nursery blue. Wears the bruises of the day as it walks towards the dark. Sensible folk pick up their pace and hurry to home, club or pub. For twilight is a vulnerable threshold. It's best to be inside before it sees you. – #DavidKilroy, 1982 #VOH #Twilight
The lights at the edge of Brantunge Woods always made me think of ancient clifftop beacons for ships. There to keep people away from hidden danger, not to encourage journeys towards them. At dusk you can feel the place waking. Feel it growling at your bones. – Joanna Vickers #VOH
You can tell people think a place is haunted when it's been abandoned for years and no window is been broken. Then again, some folk don't think Holdhurt asylum is fully deserted. There's pub talk about people still seeing lights on. About it being a place that refuses to die. = Phil Slater #VOH
hamel and flute sitting together under a tree, looking like they're having a calm conversation
Been a long time since I last paid my respects to Them #violinistofhameln #voh #ハーメルンのバイオリン引き planning to make this a watercolor
(flute's skirt poofiness is making her legs look so short... maybe i'll have to rethink the boots)
I've heard people who were never Children of The Hum say pylons were portals to us. That's a bit wrong. Transmission towers were our temporary temples. It was the whole of The Hum that was gateway to the electric ley of the land. – Signal-catcher Rose, ex=Pylon Person #VOH
I'd like to think all of the children in my class are wise enough to not open any bottles washed up by the river. However, there's always one that hasn't paid attention in storytime to the perils of unsealing a witch bottle. That child is so often Kevin Butt. – Joanna Vickers #VOH
We call such avoidances not swear words, but swerve words. The wise have them in their vocabulary. No-one wants to summon a heap of trouble. No-one wants to call down Faery wrath or the spite of Lazybones. The wise serve. – Molly Ash #VOH
In Hookland, Lazybones is an avoidance word, a word covering a taboo. It's akin to ancient Germanic cultures using bear to avoid saying the creature's actual name for fear utterance would call it to them. We say Lazybones because to speak its true name is a summoning. – Molly Ash #VOH
Jennie Willow was an arrogant woman. The sort who thought calling herself Witch Queen would have no consequences. You have to be careful when telling stories about yourself that those tales don’t attract the wrong sort of attention. Especially teeth and talons attention. – Mary Hider #VOH
I know it's hard for people who never heard The Hum to understand what we Pylon People were about. Transmission towers were our temporary temples. The wires charted the electric ley of the land. We marched under them and heard wonders. – Signal-catcher Rose, ex-Pylon Person #VOH
I always thought it was telling that the Around Britain board game square for Hookland read: ‘Swept out into the waves by the King-Under-the-Sea Miss 3 turns’. - Claire Darling #VOH
Kids in the village who watch Doctor Who call it the 'dark TARDIS'. Older, cooler kids who meet there for a snog or crafty fag call it the 'brick dick'. There's never been a time I can remember when it wasn't a dare to put your ear to the door to hear the ghosts in the reservoir below. – Jo Ash #VOH
There are days when the rain refuses to take a breath, when the morning mist forgets it bad manners to outstay your welcome. It's then I'm sure the playing fields are haunted. I hear shouts from phantoms teams, invisible crowds watching games where the final whistle never blows. – Tom Foster #VOH
See the reason the Empress Eel never gets caught is because she absorbs the wisdom of every body she nibbles on. She has had enough eel-takers flesh to know all about their horse head bait, their tricks and traps. The Empress is is corpse-wise and you don’t catch the corpse-wise. - Tom Rudd #VOH
Tourists see a windmill and think how quaint, how picturesque. If you've lived around here it's a bit different. It's a painful symbol of the Society of the Miller's Word. Fearful folklore, weather magic extortion. Truth is, sorcerers often exploit others. – Mike Bascomb #VOH
I know some people take twilight as a signal to hurry home – especially when their route home crosses an old churchyard – but not me. I love boneyard lingering at twlight. That's when the tombs whisper loudest. That;s when you hear all its best gossip. – Izzie Barber #VOH
I hate Christmas, not least because all manner of foolish folk send me cards with robins on them. Hateful birds. Don't they know robins are a death omen? Who in their right minds sends you one of them through the post? The Royal Mail ought to make it illegal. – Shirley Deyne #VOH
People round here all know the folklore of the Hagthorn Wall. You might first hear it in the playground, but later you’ll come across it again in pubs and the like. Not everyone believes it, but everyone treats the hedge with caution. You’d be mad to want to attract a witching. - Carole Gray #VOH
As a child I wondered a lot about the gates in the boneyard wall at St. Wulfram's. Who used them? Were they for the people in the houses behind the wall to visit relaitves or were they for the dead. I could never quite rid myself they were for the convenience of the latter. – Sarah Buckler #VOH
All sorts of weird folklore gets rolled out on Christmas Eve. Animals speak, house hobs demand apple brandy. It's the one night when the winged dogs that climb and perch in churches can change positions. Magics and strangeness always seems thick today. – Nancy Appleyard #VOH
Living on the coast, you're on the salt border with the King-Under-the-Sea. Given he has claim on all the tide touches, that makes ebb and flow, high, low and slack important. Out here, you live according to tide tables. You live with one eye on the waves. – Jacky Cogg #VOH
