Author: Ashley

Ashley is a history lover, paranormal enthusiast, and easily swayed sceptic with a BA and MA in the History of Art. Originally from Canada, Ashley lives on England's Isle of Wight (one of the most haunted islands in the world!) and enjoys internet deep dives into peculiar histories from around our weird and wonderful planet.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Paranormal Encounters

8 September 2021

The Bizarre Exploits of Helen Duncan: Ectoplasm Producing Medium and Britain’s ‘Last Witch’

Helen Duncan, ‘the last witch’ of Britain, was born in the small town of Callander, Scotland in 1897 to Archibald McFarlane and Isabella Rattray. As a child, Helen (born Victoria Helen) was said to cause distress at school by tormenting her classmates with frightening prophesies. And from a young age Helen believed she was clairvoyant and could see the spirits...

Weird History

30 August 2021

The Unsolvable Shugborough Inscription, the Priory of Sion, and the Holy Grail

Almost two decades ago, Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code won over millions of readers with an entertaining pseudo-historical adventure to find the Holy Grail. And with a new interest in historical conspiracy theories and secret societies, a spotlight was put on the Shugborough Inscription at Shugborough Hall, a sequence of ten letters that form one of the...

Weird History

16 August 2021

Sam the Sandown Clown: Alien, Man in Black, or Folie à Deux?

This is a weird story, I fully admit that. But I have so many drafts about haunted locations on the Isle of Wight that I was curious if anything other than ghost sightings had happened on the island. And then I stumbled upon the bizarre story of Sam the Sandown Clown and obviously had to look more into… whatever the...

Paranormal Encounters