Phantom feline

Mike Hallowell, Tyneside ghost-hunter extraordinaire has learnt of a new spooky encounter at his favourite haunted pub, the Marsden Grotto. Check out his post at the CFZ website here: http://networkedblogs.com/bGrCD

Holy Thorn hacked down

One of the Holy Thorn trees round Glastonbury Tor was cut down by vandals overnight in early December. This is/was the most famous of the Holy Thorns, on Wearyall Hill, the one believed by (fairly modern) folklore to be the descendant of an original hawthorn planted by Joseph of Arimathea during his putative wanderings around the West Country. For the full story see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-11957440 

Lancashire 'Nessie'

An angler who has fished this unidentified lake south of Preston, Lancashire, for decades had never seen anything like this before, so videoed it for posterity. He said: "The old jetty behind the unidentified object is about 10 - 12 feet in length so that may present us with some comparative scale.” The YouTuber who confidently states that 'it's a snake' (meaning a grass snake, which do swim well), may have the answer, though.

The Witch of St Ives

Amusing sideline in Dr James Fox's recent programme on BBC4 on The Art of Cornwall. Apparently, the sculptor Barbara Hepworth was such a formidable character that the locals secretly referred to her as 'The Witch of St Ives'. A tongue-in-cheek morsel of folklore grew up that the abstract sculptures in her garden were actually the ossified remains of her victims, transformed by her Circe-like powers. 

James Stewart and the Yeti hand

BBC stalwart Sandi Toksvig mentioned an odd story that was new to me on last night's QI quizz series. She mentioned that actor James Stewart smuggled a 'yeti's hand' out of India - or rather his wife did, in her underwear. The man who'd stolen the so-called Pangboche Hand, a relic said to be the hand of a yeti, gave it to Stewart rightly trusting that his luggage wouldn't be searched. The relic had originally been stolen from a monastery in Nepal. The story was rediscovered by cryptozzologist Loren Coleman (whose site Cryptomundo.com I highly recommend). You can read the full story on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangboche_Hand 

Eerie crossroads

Two new articles on www.uncannyuk.com, each about the folklore attached to crossroads. These liminal places have long had an eerie aspect and there are many examples of haunted crossroads in Britain. Just click on the 'Ghosts' tab to read them.

Moving on

Uncanny UK has now moved to a new home at http://www.uncannyuk.com/ This new and improved site is on a better server and is fully content managed, which means that previous bugbears in which articles were taking up to a week to upload should now be eliminated. There should be no excuse for me now not to write and upload at least one article every week as planned - laziness notwithstanding!

This blog will therefore cease to be, with the Uncanny UK blog instead transferring to http://www.uncannyuk.com/ .

Avanti!