Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

So here is a fairy mystery… In Romeo and Juliet Mercutio tells us that Queen Mab is ‘the fairies’ midwife’: a mysterious phrase that has never been explained. Most guides link it unconvincingly to a previous comment of Romeo’s. A much more interesting point of reference is  a fairy poem of Ben Jonson. Beach has […]

Beach has previously celebrated the (entirely unrealistic) myths about Kitchener’s survival from a shipwreck in June 1916. There were a number of theories: namely that the Germans had got him; that Kitchener had been kidnapped in Russia or was secretly helping the Russian army reorganise (perhaps he was killed in the revolution?); or some version […]

  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 previously here Sheridan le Fanu and Joseph Stalin (he of […]

This is a great supernatural stories from 18C England. The earliest version known to this blogger dates to 1793. Note that this is a much later version that claims to be based on actual records. Beach doesn’t believe that for a second. Ha! It is almost identical and entire passages word-for-word the same. An Account of Mr. […]

‘Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,/ Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,/ Silence the pianos and with muffled drum/ Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.’ 2 Apr Fri, 1830, Britain’s oldest inhabitant died. Solemn notices appeared in the newspaper Death Extraordinary. On Friday se’nnight [a week Friday], at […]

Location: Ireland (Wilde 1888, 195), late nineteenth century Aim: ‘To Cause Love’ Ingredients: new plate, new butter, a bucolic retreat, and an ‘O woman loved by me’ Method: (i) buy a new plate, make sure that it has never been used (ii) Put golden butter on the plate. (iii) Find the one you love. (iv) […]

It is always such fun when folklore produces an impossible story that is actually credible. Here is one recorded from the Hebrides in J. F. Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands. Note that the Feen are the Fenians, Gaelic Robin Hoods. I was told in Benbecula how a man had found a book, containing the […]

Here is a curiosity: a plate that plays magical music to your sleeping ear. The passage comes from the writing of John Beaumont (obit 1731) a geologist and reluctant British mystic who sometimes saw ‘spirits’. In one of his works (Account, 188) Beaumont claims: I may here note, That some Persons have told my self, […]

A busy day in paradise today. Exams. However, Beach ran, a few months ago across this story and wondered whether this was just journalistic bluff, sheer coincidence (very possibly) or a little bit of Civil War history that had been lost. The Evening Bulletin of San Francisco, dated February 24, 1885, is said to have […]

In the last months Beach has put up a number of posts on possible nineteenth-century urban legends: as they are reported as facts though and as the nineteenth-century was a foreign country (‘they did things differently there’) it is difficult, perhaps impossible with any certainty to distinguish the legendary from the simply bizarre. This is […]

One of the joys of reading about early modern witch trials is the description (particularly in British cases) of the crazy and creepy familiars kept by old women for their various delectations and debaucheries. Beach recently publicized a spirit mole and he now wishes to introduce Jamara, described in three different passages relating to some […]

It is well known that William Blake drew and painted fairies and it is also a matter of record that Blake saw fairies. Blake, allegedly, described to a flabbergasted contemporary how he has witnessed a fairy funeral. Beach has looked in vain for other references to Blake kicking it up with the fairies and he […]

Beach tries not to exaggerate – at least in this place* – but of his forty odd flight stories this is perhaps his favourite. Not a mean feat given that those stories include flying Anglo-Saxon monks and Chinese kite men. We are in Paris in 1840 A man, carrying a large bundle, applied some days […]

There is a long tradition of witches having familiars, animals who act as a source of power, or perhaps the medium between the witch and the devil. Britain has rather few references to sabbats and witch orgies compared to continental witch trials: but it arguably has more familiars than French, German and Polish witch investigations. Here […]

22 April 1903 a British column was attacked at Daratoleh (Somali) by dervishes: the British, as so often happened in Africa, were vastly outnumbered and the Imperial troops did the only sensible thing they could in these circumstances. They formed into a square and put their maxims to best use. Superior weapons did for superior […]