Many academics maintain a façade of sober-minded individuals, but they’re sharp as a whip. Sometimes it takes an academic, like Dr. Beachcombing, to spot when another academic is winking at his audience. For example Peter Alderson Smith’s W. B. Yeats and the Tribes of Danu and a sly reference to one of his own experiences, […]
Whether this is folklore or jokelore, the story raises at least an eyebrow, or more in the case of a stiff with a stiffy. No date given for the discovery of a deceased lusty fellow, for whom it seems death was an aphrodisiac. Saucy Dr Beach wants to know if there are other similar stories. […]
Dr. Beach continues his fascination for fishy females and tells of a sighting in 1819 made by a pregnant woman “of the lower order” and later witnessed by 300 people – but can you help the good Dr trace other press reports of this event? And our next question is, would you like to see […]
A street in this Derbyshire town was experiencing “much uneasiness o’ nights” back in 1930, thanks to a ghostly gal with “eyes like electric light bulbs.” But perhaps this was preferable to The Old Lady with the Nails, who was not a senior manicurist, but a specter alleged to be a harbinger of death for […]
Dr. Beach continues his weekly words on watery women with a look back to a sighting from 1894 near the Scottish island once famous as the getaway of Paul McCartney. Did the mariners spot a seal or a siren? Back on shore, Micah Hanks considers Naked and Afraid: Wild Men, “Grease Devils” and Other Oddities […]
Dr. Beach gives us Mermaid Monday, the weekday when he wants to relate tales of watery women. He’s dredged up a piece from 1883 which offers a possible explanation for at least some mermaid sightings. And while he’s at it, he also ponders another mythical creature, Winged Ninth-Century Elves and whether or not their images […]
Beach brings us a fascinating tale from 13th century Sweden, where the local dwarves objected to drunkards and, as it turned out, made the very best bouncers. Next, Shane Cochrane recounts a story from Ireland in the very early twentieth century: The Mad Gasser of Mullingar? He was the local peeping tom with a penchant […]
Contemporary mass hysteria at schools is rare in the west, or covered up by the mainstream news much to Dr. Beachcombing’s chagrin. Here’s a 20th century account of some craziness from Barnoldswick where a spook gripped one school in terror with the potential of a Columbine-esque massacre. Also lurking within the margins of current culture […]
Beach seems to have seen parts of the world that most of our readers have not, or might have avoided, or never knew existed. One such journey reminded him of a tale from 1947 in Befordshire, England, where the owner of a haunted house sought a tax break from Council based on the poor salability […]
Dr. Beachcoming is rather keen to know more about fairy-researcher-turned-“American mystic” Walter Yeeling Evans Wentz, the author of the remarkable Fairy Faith In Celtic Countries, “the single most bizarre book ever published by Oxford University Press.” Turns out his life during his time in England is lacking in detail. If any Anomalist out there has […]