S.A. Lawless is an herbalist, gardener, forager, mycophile, outdoor educator, and published author and illustrator, with a long-held fascination with folklore and witchcraft, currently living in rural Ontario, Canada. She has been studying and practicing herbalism for 20 years and has worked as a professional nature field guide for 15 years. As a herbalist her...

Last week, we looked at some poltergeist definitions and whether such definitions are even helpful. Can something as truly bizarre as a ‘knocking spirit’ be boiled down to a series of checkboxes on a form? Yet they’re also not the invention of the 20th century. Nor are they the preserve of ghost hunters or psychics....

This episode of Fabulous Folklore begins with a reading of the Poltergeist entry from my new book, Ghostlore, before we explore the problem with poltergeists – how do you define one?! From deciding what phenomena to include to picking a name, the poltergeist proves to be a flexible yet elusive figure in historical accounts. Is...

People have lived in the Madrid area since prehistoric times. Occupied by Romans, Moors, and then the Spanish, it has quite the history. Over 6.8 million people live in Madrid. That’s less than Paris and London but more than Berlin. Of course, a capital city will boast a few ghost stories. The ghosts of those...

In this chat, I’m talking to illustrator Katy Horan about murder ballads, discussing what they are, how they work within folk music, how contemporary musicians have tried to reclaim the tradition, and the issues with examining ballads when all you might have is the lyrics! Katy Horan is an illustrator and interdisciplinary artist whose work...

If you head away from the hustle and bustle of the Piazza San Marco (St Mark’s Square), you’ll head into the stranger, more magical part of Venice. It’s in the tangle of narrow streets and courts that you enter the realm of Venetian legend. It’s difficult to know how many of them have any basis...

Dublin is a beautiful city that straddles the River Liffey, famous as the home of Guinness and the National Leprechaun Museum. What you might not expect from the Irish capital is a series of Dublin ghost stories. Though why not? The city enjoys a millennium of history, including Viking settlement, economic hardship caused by the...

Florence was founded in the 1st century BCE as a Roman military outpost, although it came to prominence as a centre of commerce and the arts in the 14th to 16th centuries CE. The Florentine method of speech even became the Italian language. Some of the city’s most famous exports are Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo,...

Tracey has written fiction for as long as she can remember, covering a variety of genres and subjects. Her first stage play WITCH, a historical drama based on original English witch trial transcripts, premiered in 2016 and has been performed more than 80 times to date. Tracey’s most recent publications were Dark Folklore (2021), co-written...

Dave Silk is a storyteller and historian from Newcastle upon Tyne and co-author of Tyne and Wear Folktales for Children. He collects and retells traditional tales and ancient stories from around these isles and further afield and enjoys rearing pet leeches and practicing the Dark Arts. In the daytime, he is usually found doing his...

In this third episode of our Witches, Cunning Folk & Magic theme, I’m talking to Deborah Hyde, an author, presenter and producer who has written for periodicals such as The Guardian and The Fortean Times, and who specialises in the subject of weird belief. For ten years, Deborah was Editor-in-Chief of The Skeptic and is...

In this second episode of our Witches, Cunning Folk & Magic theme, I’m talking to Willow Winsham, an author and historian specialising in folklore, and the history of the English witch trials. Her books include the highly popular Treasury of Folklore series from Batsford Books, and Accused: British Witches Throughout History from Pen and Sword...