Weird Folklore
London’s Festive Phantoms
The power of the ghost story has long served us well, but a Christmas ghost story, read by the glow of a crackling fire, can never be bettered. Combining at once a cosyness with eerie quality, generations have huddled inside, sheltered from the wintry moans, to hear the whispers roll off the tongue of the [...]
Cathi Unsworth on London’s Dark Past
Author Cathi Unsworth is a mine of surreal and fantastic London folklore gems. She’s lived in Ladbroke Grove for more than 20 years, and has penned three novels set in and around this shifting, sprawling city. So when Cathi kindly conceded to confide some of these secrets, I was keen to discover which London-based beasts, ghosts, [...]
Phantom Or Flesh: Bears in London
Over the last few weeks a few strange whispers have emerged from the woods of Wanstead concerning the possible sighting of a bear-like creature. The animal was first sighted during early November 2008 by 18-year-old angler Michael Kent who was fishing with his brother and father in the Hollow Ponds area of Epping Forest, on [...]
When Dragons Ruled the Capital!
It was recorded many centuries ago, in 1222 - two years after Henry III’s coronation on the night of November 30 - of dragon-like forms soaring through the pallid skies over London.
The Mysterious Beast of Brentford
What you are about to read may sound like pure fantasy, and you are entitled to your opinion. All I can do is present the facts for you to judge for yourself.
More Mystery Snatchers, Leapers & Slashers
An obscure case which resides in London’s most silted areas of folklore, concerns a bounding prowler, a strange being, said to have been adorned in a cloak and active around the Beavor Lane vicinity, particularly St Andrew’s Guild Church around 1815.
Slashers, Snippers, Stabbers & Rippers!
The grim crimes executed by Jack the Ripper in Victorian London remain the capital’s most shocking murders. Meanwhile, Spring Heeled Jack, fifty years before the Ripper attacks, made his name by assaulting women on dark nights and vanishing into the quilt of darkness. However, and surprisingly, London’s sinister past is littered with similar accounts performed [...]
Who Was Spring Heeled Jack?
Fifty years before Jack the Ripper’s grisly slayings rocked Whitechapel, Victorian London was terrorised by another darkly adorned phantom of the night. Although this particular assailant was never believed to have killed anyone, his antics were still as frightfully ghoulish, and his identity, just like the Ripper, remains unknown to this day, despite countless theories [...]
Did Vampires Haunt London?
It sounds absurd to suggest that tales of vampire-like entities have roamed some of London’s most derelict and overgrown places. Generally, we perceive such ‘monsters’ as fictitious, and certainly movie-based apparitions intent on sucking the blood of damsel’s in distress. Well, that’s maybe just my own erotic belief, but delve into the archives of London’s [...]
Do Big Cats Roam the Outskirts of London?
During mid-August 2008 a Thamesmead man had three sightings of a large, dark-coloured cat during the early hours as he peered out from his window. On each occasion, the animal he saw appeared bigger than a Labrador, but was of feline gait, and after a few minutes slinked out of sight. Surprisingly, these kinds of [...]
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