In this episode of Fabulous Folklore Presents, I’m talking to archaeologist Wayne Perkins, who worked as a field archaeologist before moving into Historic Building Surveys. He supervises urban excavations in the City of London, as well as overseeing rural excavations in surrounding Sussex, Surrey, and Kent. He has a new book coming out this month,…

Herbalism has seen a boom of interest in recent years as people seek to find closer relationships with nature and create ways to supplement their wellbeing. The practice has a long history all over the world, with many cultures offering their own uses for the plants and trees that grew in their region. Having such…

If you’re interested in herbalism or plant lore, chances are that you’ve perused a herbal or two in your time. Culpeper’s Complete Herbal: A Compendium of Herbs and Their Uses, Annotated for Modern Herbalists, Healers, and Witches is a particularly well-known title, even if the contents have been surpassed with scientific advancements. Yet did you…

Storytelling is something we all do on a daily basis, whether we’re aware of it or not. Maybe we’re telling a funny anecdote about something that happened on the way to work. Perhaps we’re recounting how we first met the bride during a wedding speech. Or how about retelling our favourite folk tale to help…

Dr Steph Lay is a folk horror writer, psychologist and researcher, gathering and sharing local stories of the unexplained for a project investigating whether the new city of Milton Keynes might be more haunted than anyone realises. Behind the scenes, she works with Peter Laws on the popular YouTube channel Into the Fog, curating the…

Visionary film director and stage magician Georges Méliès is perhaps the earliest filmmaker who saw the visual potential of folklore. Among others, mermaids, sirens, ghosts, devils, and sorcerers are plentiful in his films. True, many of these figures become important for their centrality to the ‘tricks’ his films became famous for. Meanwhile, his films became…