Ghost or Fairy on the Road from Wilden to Ravensden? June 25, 2020
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
1873, 2 women see a weird humanoid on the road between 2 Bedfordshire villages. Was it a ghost, a fairy, death or an itinerant tramp?
Council Séance Over Haunted House June 24, 2017
Author: Beach Combing | in : Contemporary
Beach has only once been to Bedfordshire, a tiny English county near London. He got stuck in its chief town, Luton, took a room in a sordid pub (the bookshelf had a rack full of well-thumbed pornographic magazines – if only Tripadvisor had been around…) and missed his bus.* In any case, enough of Luton. […]
Woman-Hating Bedfordshire Wild Man April 28, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
A couple of months ago Beach offered a post on British wild men. Here is one to add to the list, Simon Goodman or Simon Goodwin aka Tim Goodman or Tim Goodwin: those name variants give some warning of the kind of historical bog we are about to wade into. Simon Goodman was born c. […]
The Noontide Hag in Luton! January 10, 2016
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Walter Scott refers, in one of his poems, to ‘the noontide hag’, a creature he explains in a note as ‘a tall, emaciated, gigantic female figure, is supposed, in particular, to haunt the district of Knoidart’ and ‘which, contrary to the general rule of ghostly creatures, appeared in the full blaze of noon.’ Quite how […]
Ophelia, Shards and Suicides October 30, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
In Hamlet a priest says of the dead Ophelia as she is being brought to her burial (5,1): She should in ground unsanctified have lodged Till the last trumpet: for charitable prayers, Shards, flints and pebbles should be thrown on her: But what is this about ‘shards, flints and pebbles’? The Auden Shakespeare has no […]
The Earthquake Ghost October 28, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Medieval, Modern
Odell is a small village, now in the English county of Bedfordshire. Here is a nice nineteenth-century case of ghost hysteria. For two or three weeks the neighbourhood Odell has been put into an extraordinary degree of excitement by the description of a supernatural visitation, at the village alehouse. To such a pitch had this […]
Late Witch Ducking in Bedfordshire October 26, 2015
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern
Just to put the following events in perspective. The last witch certainly executed in England – there are some subsequent doubtful cases – dates to 1682: the last witch executed in Scotland dates to 1727. In 1735 witchcraft ceased to be a supernatural crime in England. Yet, 12 July 1737, The Monthly Chronologer reports the […]
