MY GRANDFATHER WAS A GRAVEDIGGER. My Granny Bert kept a garden and used techniques which a couple centuries earlier would have had her burnt as a witch. I grew up in a haunted house and find myself living there again, forty years later. The first time I saw a ghost I was so young I didn’t […]
Tanacetum vulgare: Once a necessity for British gardens, Tansy has been used for abortions as well as immortality, and goes good with eggs
And where the marjoram once, and sage, and rue,And balm, and mint, with curl’d-leaf parsley grew,And double marigolds, and silver thyme,And pumpkins ‘neath the window climb;And where I often, when a child, for hoursTried through the pales to get the tempting flowers,As lady’s laces, everlasting peas,True-love-lies-bleeding, with the hearts-at-ease,And golden rods, and tansy running high,That […]
Foxglove digitalis: From witches’ thimbles to witch’s hats, a flower to lure fairies and whose magic in folklore brings both life and death
It was this song which included Foxglove that gave me the idea to start a witch’s garden. It was in the spring of last year when I saw my foxglove was in bloom that I recalled poor Charlotte of the Rake’s song, and got to wondering what other deadly plants might be scattered throughout the […]
The Legends and Myths of Sweet Hollow and Mount Misery: Part IV, On UFOs and Men in Black on Mount Misery
Dearest Miss Bronwen, I never had the opportunity to finish telling you about the men in black, and grey as well, and I knew you would spend the rest of your life wondering about them. You know the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen on Mount Misery? This winter when I hiked up there alone during […]
Another Sleepy Hollow: From outside Louisville, Kentucky, a drive down a haunted road to urban legends
Most places I’ve visited have a road like this, the dark country road where people go at night to get the crap scared out of them, drink beer and smoke dope. Sleepy Hollow outside of Louisville has held that name for ages, a poignant name for any place to be steeped in legend. In the […]
