Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Cat meets fox: a royal navy mascot.

Here is a nice French story from a period when hypnotism was given far too much credit for being able to make people do things that they did not want to do. We are in 1894. A strange story is related of an extraordinary affair which is said to have occurred in one of the […]

This horror story dates to 1841. It comes to us by a long route. This text is taken from a British newspaper, which excerpted from an American newspaper, which translated from the Revue Britannique, which took its information from the Italian press. Is it true? Drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com Can it be traced back […]

Cutting sunshine: what is happening in the background? RR, 16 Mar 2018: Regarding the image in the background, it appears to be a musical “parade” of sorts with children wearing folded paper hats. One boy seems to be banging a cymbal as they march in a loose procession. A curious image with the young girl […]

Busy day. Lots of work and final papers to grade, but would love to know whether this can be paralleled: drbeachcombing AT gmail DOT com On the 8th of November, 1871, a public officer at  Colchester reported that having seen a report in the Shipping Gazette that a bullock had been picked up by the […]

Introducing Nancy This little passage is a troubling one for all kinds of reasons. In the mid-late nineteenth century, an itinerant preacher recounted an experience from his time in Staffordshire (a Midlands English county that ranged, in this period, from the beautifully wild to the grimily industrial). He had evidently begged a bed in the […]

Introduction In that wonderful book by Andrew Lang, Dreams and Ghosts (1897) there is a description of a phantom finding its way into a British courtroom in 1829 (pp. 143-144). Lang did not have access to the British Newspaper Archive – what fun he would have had there! – so his reference is brief and unsatisfactory. Here is […]

Disney (?) does their bit. EC writes 9 Mar 2018: Not Disney. It’s from a Tom and Jerry (MGM) cartoon called “Life with Tom”. The hammer and sickle is a recent meme modification; here’s a screenshot with the original book – titled “Life with Tom”: ​(left to right: Tom, Topsy, Meathead, Butch, and nameless cat). The full […]

The Forehead Cross The forehead cross has become a relatively common modern tattoo, both in the industrialized west and among some developing countries. However, those who wear it will probably not know that the first record of this design dates back to the sixth century AD. Let us travel through time and space to the […]

Extraordinary shot of Clinton with two other presidents.

Extraordinary map showing birth out of marriage. Very complex but fascinating patterning.

A childhood scene from the middle ages.

The Coker Hill haunting is unusual, first, in that we know that the locals believed it was a case of ‘overlooking’ or witchcraft (rather than a ghost); and, second, in that we know two of the spells employed against this malicious use of witchcraft. Spell One Matters were beginning to look serious and it is […]

Young girl in Pittsburgh, 1950s: hopefully well and in her 70s today.

The journalist himself arrived once the haunting had officially come to an end. However, he found one individual, ‘a well-to-do, respectable, intelligent man’, who had been in the building on Sunday 13 June when as many as three hundred neighbours had gathered to hear the noises. When I got in the sound seemed to be […]