Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

Beach has recently become interested in Walter Yeeling Evans Wentz (or Evans-Wentz as he became)* the American mystic who in his late twenties and early thirties researched Breton, British and Irish fairies, before running off to India to become a guru. Many readers will know Evans Wentz for his Fairy Faith In Celtic Countries, the […]

Dear Reader, semester winding down and lots of sleep. Evidently some dream poison to sweat out. There follow the most interesting words sent in to StrangeHistory. Thanks to all contributors and linkers… Enjoy May and live and prosper. Beach A Duel in the Middle of Battle: Fred finds a Japanese-German sword fight and Bruce speculates… […]

***Stephen C got this*** Scroll down for the answer*** The Index Biography is a quiz pioneered by this blog and introduced in a previous post. The creator must find a biography of a famous individual from history, they must turn to the index and write down eight peripheral facts about the individual’s life. We offered up […]

You wake up at 2.00 AM and you hear an eerie moaning outside in the garden. You get out of your bed and walk over to the window and lift the glass. The cold of an English winters rushes over you and there, in the dark, between the W.C. and the geraniums, you spot a moving […]

A phrase that has recently gained more and more currency: even to the point where undergraduates shout it out in class discussion, is ‘the one percent’. It is an offhand, contemptuous way of referring to the internationally wealthy.* Beach was delighted, the other day, to come across, in a ghost story no less, to the […]

A Sumerian recipe!

For the discerning Nazi child. EC writes, 28 Apr 2017: That is a still from Andrzej Wajda’s 1983 film A Love in Germany. See link:    

The war in the Mediterranean Pacific 28 Apr 2017: Umbriel writes ‘While you’ve captioned your pic of this past 26 April as “The War in the Pacific”, I thought I recognized it as having been taken in the Mediterranean, and found copies on line confirming my recollection: It is, interestingly, a Spitfire in US colors […]

Allegedly (how often we have to use this word with photos) the woman had been a victim of the Nazis. The photograph was taken in Sweden. Nathaniel to the rescue, 28 Apr 2017: This is the crucial link, which sounds authoritative.    

Truly Beach isn’t that interested in this ignorant-native story from India, but the comparison to what is evidently a home grown British urban legend: A good story of a thief comes from Calcutta. ‘The Native,’ as Miss Fox called Major B ‘s servant, stole a musical box, ignorant of its use, and fancying it contained […]

Anyone who has ever studied the supernatural will know that the way we look at the impossible changes from generation to generation and from place to place. For example, in the nineteenth century in the UK and in the US ghosts often dragged chains, as they had since antiquity: today they do not. In the […]

Some peripheral reports from the 1883 Dundee ghost flap. Readers will remember that reports began in late 1882, and that they died out at the quarry in late Jan 1883, after an energetic policeman had intervened. 19 Feb 1883 a Dundee paper reported that the ghost had been caught. If this really was the or […]

Something about the blue and red of the French king and the black, white and flames of death.

Yesterday, Beach introduced the Dundee ghost of 1886. Here is the sequel. All is quiet at Blackness Quarry, but elsewhere in the town evil brews. Here is the main report Two or three weeks ago we drew attention the remarkable doings of an individual who the role of a ghost, and disported himself in the […]

In early 1883 in Dundee, the coastal Scottish city, a ghost was glimpsed in Blackness Quarry. Here we have a ghost flap, a ghost riot and a ghost hunt all combined. It is an interesting case because contemporary reports were rich in details. This, though, is the only report, known to this blogger, from the […]