Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog

What is a fairy tree? By rights a fairy tree should be where fairies gather to dance or perhaps to dwell: fairies it will be remembered have a special place particularly in Irish legend. However, Beach has recently started to run across curious late nineteenth-century reference to fairy trees of a decidedly none traditional sort. […]

  This is a delightful piece on a Calabrian werewolf from Norman Douglas: we are in deepest southern Italy, 1907-1911. In some senses it is a massive anti-climax, but perhaps that is the point… At last we started, and I began to slumber once more. The carriage seemed to be going down a steep incline; […]

Good Italian girl sits side saddle.

1939 Sheringham RAF bury German pilot

Russian priest blesses missile

Witchcraft or bad neighbours?

Here is a bit of gossip that span through the European press in 1852, a good twenty years before Darwin wrote his Insectivorous Plants. According to some Italian journals, a new organised being has been discovered in the interior of Africa, which seems to form an immediate link between vegetable and animal life. This singular […]

In early October 1811 two young Scots in Argyll claimed to see mermaids: one aged twenty-three, the other aged eight. That is interesting enough, but what is fascinating for the historian is how this news fed through into the wider world. In early November the two witnesses and the eight-year-old’s father were deposed, in other […]

1957 ghost drawing

This story is haunting and involves ice: so December fare. In 1844 young man left a village near Chamouny [Chamonix], on pilgrimage to the Convent St. Bernard, in consequence of a vow made before gaining the belle of the village. After leaving the convent, he went to several places and bought some linen, with the […]

Margaret Murray (obit 1963) is so often a rather obscure presence, flitting behind her bizarre writing on witchcraft and her sensible writing on Egyptology. It is from Hilda Ellis Davidson that we get a precious glimpse of the real woman in her twilight. HED, a great medievalist (obit 2006) had known Murray for many years […]

Love the expressions: damn, you sir!

This story appeared in Table Talk in 1870. Not having easy access it is taken here from the British press. Was it true or wasn’t it? When in India with my regiment, we were, at one time, quartered at a place where there was a missionary station. Some of the officers (as was frequently the […]

Seminarists play soccer, 1962: deep Franco.

Sigurd kills an enemy