Author: Ashley

15 February 2022

The Solway Spaceman, Men in Black, and the Blue Streak Missile

On 23 May 1964, firefighter Jim Templeton was walking through Burgh Marsh overlooking the Solway Firth in Cumbria with his wife Annie and their five-year-old daughter Elizabeth. It was a lovely spring day and Jim had brought his camera to take photos of their daughter in her new dress. Other than two elderly woman in a parked car at the...

Categories Paranormal Encounters

8 February 2022

No, John Dee Didn’t Actually Translate the Necronomicon

Polarising American author HP Lovecraft (1890-1937) wrote some deeply unsavoury things during his lifetime. But his contributions to the realm of speculative fiction are so immense that it’s impossible to ignore his continued influence on the genres of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.

Categories Weird History

28 January 2022

‘Castle Sinister’: The Terrible 1932 British Horror Film Lost in Time

Castle Sinister, released in 1932, was a 50 minute (4410 foot long) black and white British horror film produced by Delta Pictures that’s now classified as ‘lost media’. The film is so obscure that there is no remaining footage, stills, teasers, or posters and most of the actors don’t have any photos available online. It’s unfortunately common for early films...

Categories Weird History

24 January 2022

‘Bloody Mary’: Is an English Queen Behind the Haunting Urban Legend?

It’s 1999 and you’re at a sleepover for a friend’s birthday party. You’ve exhausted the films rented from Blockbuster and you’re all eager for something else to do. It’s nearly midnight when one of your friends mentions a game she heard from someone… a friend of a friend, but she doesn’t remember who. She’s wanted to try it for a...

Categories Paranormal Encounters

17 January 2022

‘Ghostwatch’: When the BBC Terrified the Nation with a (Fake) Haunted House Documentary

On Halloween night in 1992, the BBC aired what would become one of the most controversial programmes in the broadcaster’s history. Ghostwatch, presented as a live broadcast, followed the Early family and the horrors they experienced living in what was pitched as one of the most haunted houses in the country. And luckily for the BBC an array of paranormal...

Categories Weird History

29 December 2021

The Wacky World of Victorian Christmas Cards

In 1843, English inventor Sir Henry Cole created the first commercially produced Christmas card. It was tame and festive, showing a family gathered around for Christmas dinner above an inscription wishing the recipient a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. By the 1870s Christmas cards were being sent by nearly everyone thanks to the emergence of the affordable halfpenny stamp...

Categories Weird History

30 November 2021

Whitecroft Hospital: The Haunted Victorian Asylum You Can Call Home

It’s no secret that the Isle of Wight is one of the most haunted islands in the world. Castles, manor homes, hospitals, pubs, roads, cliffs — everywhere you look the island is overflowing with creepy tales of ghostly apparitions and disembodied voices. It’s more difficult to find a part of the island that doesn’t have a ghost story than one...

Categories Paranormal Encounters

20 November 2021

The Mysterious Dog Suicides on Overtoun Bridge, West Dunbartonshire

Overtoun Bridge, located in Scotland’s West Dunbartonshire, has a peculiar and frightening reputation: since the 1950s the bridge has allegedly been plagued by an ongoing trend of canine ‘suicides’. Reports of the number of dogs that have jumped or fallen over the edge of Overtoun Bridge could be as high as 300. In at least 50 cases, the dogs have...

Categories Paranormal Encounters/Weird History

11 November 2021

‘Anthrax Island’: Britain’s Secret WWII Testing Ground for Biological Warfare

Scotland’s Gruinard Island, better known as ‘Anthrax Island’, is a frightening example of the catastrophic repercussions of biological warfare. From 1942 to 1943, the British tested the affects of anthrax on the small, unassuming island off the coast of Gruinard Bay… and paid the price for the next 48 years. What is Anthrax? Classified as an infectious disease, anthrax has...

Categories Weird History

21 October 2021

Owlman: Did a Mysterious Creature Really Haunt the Cornish Town of Mawnan?

The first reported sighting of Owlman took place in the town of Mawnan, Cornwall on 17 April 1976. The Melling family, consisting of Don, his wife, and their two daughters June (12) and Vicky (9), were camping near Mawnan when they stopped for a picnic in the wooded area next to the medieval St. Mawnan and St. Stephen’s Church. While...

Categories Paranormal Encounters