Fabulous Folklore with Icy

For this second episode in our Festive Folklore series for December 2025, I'm joined by my podcast pals, The Faerie Folk podcast and Sian Powell from Celtic Myths & Legends. We discuss some plant-based traditions from Herefordshire, the Mari Lwyd, and Cornwall's Montol Festival. We also talk about Christmas films, our own Christmas traditions, and what we'll be enjoying for Christmas dinner......

In this episode of Fabulous Folklore Presents, I chat to writer Suki Ferguson about some of the myths associated with the celestial bodies, how you approach myths when you don't just want to focus on the Greek and Roman ones, and what we can learn from looking at the night sky! Suki is the author of Young Oracle Tarot: An initiation into tarot's mystic wisdom (Quarto, 2022) and Astrologica: An enc...

For this first episode in our Festive Folklore series for December 2025, I'm joined by my podcast pals, James Shakeshaft and Alasdair Beckett-King, better known as the Loremen. We discuss some obscure Christmas superstitions and omens, and a truly bizarre apocryphal Christmas carol. We also talk about Christmas films, our own Christmas traditions, and the age-old practice of circling hoped-for ite...

New York City conjures up images of a neon-drenched Times Square, skyscrapers gleaming in the sun, and the labyrinthine subway system.  Yet the city also boasts three main rivers; the Hudson to the west, the East River to the east (unsurprisingly), and the Harlem to the north. Where we find rivers, we can find islands. Where we find islands, we find folklore.  New York is no exception. That said,...

Menorca is one of the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. Well-known for a huge collection of megaliths, Menorca has seen human activity since the prehistoric era. This period was the Talayotic period, which lasted until 123 BCE. The island fell under Roman occupation, Vandal conquest, the Byzantine Empire, and, centuries later, British occupation. It is now part of Spain, and its official...

Perhaps most famous as the home of the druids, Ynys Môn, also known as Anglesey, occupies 275 square miles just off the north Wales coast. It is an ancient place. Archaeologists found Neolithic settlements at Llanfaethlu, making these some of the oldest villages in Wales. The Neolithic Castell Bryn Gwyn site remained in use until the Roman period. Bryn Celli Ddu is one of the most famous Bronze Ag...

Drake's Island sits in Plymouth Sound, around 500 m from the mainland. The island is just 6.5 acres, and around 250 yards wide at its broadest point. You can reach the island by boat in 10 minutes. Its name refers to Sir Francis Drake, a problematic figure often lauded for his circumnavigation efforts. He also has very little to do with Drake's Island itself. When looking for its ghost stories or...

Today marks All Saints' Day, also known as All Hallows' Day or the Feast of All Hallows. That's why Hallowe'en is called that - it's All Hallow's Eve. The day celebrates saints, but the far more interesting day for folklore is tomorrow - All Souls' Day. All Souls' Day marks remembrance of the dead, whether that's visiting graves, praying for the dearly departed, or practising other family customs....

If I ask you to think of a famous haunted house, will your mind wander to a white Dutch Colonial house, with quarter-round windows lit from within to look like red eyes? Yes? Then the reputation of 112 Ocean Avenue has done its work, aided and abetted by The Amityville Horror . Even if that wasn't the first house you thought of, Amityville's reputation stretches before it, ready to snag your atten...

The Palazzo Ducale dominates the view as your vaporetto approaches the San Marco stop. The huge building is an example of Venetian Gothic architecture, all pointed arches and quatrefoils. It's hard to believe that two prisons lie within its bulk, with a third inside the pristine white building alongside it. Tourists might be the only people who visit these prisons now, trotting along the corridors...

In this episode of Fabulous Folklore Presents, I'm talking to two folklore heavyweights - Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook! Owen Davies is Professor of Social History at the University of Hertfordshire. He is the author of numerous books, most recently Art of Grimoire and Troubled by Faith: Insanity and the Supernatural in the Age of the Asylum (both 2023). He has been described as Britain's foremos...

If you've ever read any Charles Dickens novels, especially Great Expectations , then you'll have run into Newgate Prison. The hulking, notorious jail loomed large in London's history, before its demolition in 1902. While accurate execution statistics are difficult to find, there's a suggestion that over 1000 people faced capital punishment at the prison between 1790 and 1902. The old execution bel...

Bedlam, or Bethlem Royal Hospital to give it its full name, is actually the world's oldest psychiatric institution. It began life in 1247 in the Priory of St Mary of Bethlehem, which stood where we now find Liverpool Street Station.  Yet the hospital has inspired a range of books, films, and TV series, with its infamous reputation lasting well into the 21st century. The hospital has since become a...

Foxes appear in literature and legend across the world. Look at Brer Fox in the American South. In Rebel Folklore , I discussed the Jiuwei Hu of China, or nine-tailed fox, who drains men of their life force. Korea's kumiho is a similar spirit, while Japan has the supernatural fox spirit, the kitsune. Scholar Al-Biruni, magician Cornelius Agrippa and astrologer William Lilly put the fox under Mercu...

Natalie Lawrence is an author and illustrator who explores our relationship with the natural world, looking through multiple lenses - from the biological to the mythic and psychoanalytic. She completed a MSc and Ph. D. in History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge, exploring the making and meanings of monstrous creatures in seventeenth century Europe. She published her first book as a teenager...

Hedgehogs are one of the stranger mammals you might encounter. They're nocturnal, they hibernate, they're prone to rolling into a ball when frightened, and they're extremely vulnerable to habitat loss. While some of you will undoubtedly have first thought of Sonic, others might have thought of Mrs Tiggywinkle from the Beatrix Potter books.  Either way, those are quite positive associations. I've b...

Moles are fascinating creatures. They're phenomenal diggers and while they weigh around 120g, they can shift 540 times their body weight of earth. Given they live entirely underground, they're a rarely seen mammal, and we only know they're there when we see their molehills. Surprisingly, there is more folklore about them than more commonly encountered animals, like badgers.  Used in folk medicine,...

Otters are some of the most charming mammals you might encounter. Sometimes nicknamed the "water sausage" by the internet, otters are playful, intelligent, and capable of using tools. They also appear in popular culture, most notably in Tarka the Otter and The Wind in the Willows . Yet in reality, they're incredibly elusive. They might live in wetlands, along rivers, and at the coast, but seeing o...

When we think about folklore, we often think about the characters involved: King Arthur, Queen Mab, Lady Godiva, and more. Yet folklore has an intrinsic link with place, too.  Even the most throwaway comment about a place can reveal stories linked with them. Such stories can reveal how we feel about places, especially when human activity moves away. They’re also stories that get easily lost when p...

English folklore is full of peculiarities. The legends of the so-called screaming skulls are definitely among them. These are skulls kept in mansions and farmhouses, sometimes considered to be guardians of the property. Legends abound of the violent deeds done to the owners of the skulls. But many of these stories come with hauntings attached if the skulls are disturbed. Sometimes the skulls even...

I'm talking to Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux from the Three Ravens podcast about the difficulties in defining 'folklore', the importance of storytelling, which of England's 39 historic counties has the best folk tales, why people love ghost stories, and making folklore accessible to wider audiences! Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux are the brains behind the Three Ravens podcast, and they are a real...

Poltergeist marked Hollywood's big-budget engagement with the ghost film in 1982. Produced by Stephen Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper, it took the haunted house film and mashed it together with the family adventure film. Throw in some special effects courtesy of Industrial Light and Magic, and you end up with the film that relocated haunted houses to the suburbs. The film obliquely reference...

S.A. Lawless is an herbalist, gardener, forager, mycophile, outdoor educator, and published author and illustrator, with a long-held fascination with folklore and witchcraft, currently living in rural Ontario, Canada. She has been studying and practicing herbalism for 20 years and has worked as a professional nature field guide for 15 years. As a herbalist her focus is on low dose botanicals speci...

Last week, we looked at some poltergeist definitions and whether such definitions are even helpful. Can something as truly bizarre as a 'knocking spirit' be boiled down to a series of checkboxes on a form? Yet they're also not the invention of the 20th century. Nor are they the preserve of ghost hunters or psychics. Poltergeist accounts stretch back through the centuries, even if the spirit respon...

This episode of Fabulous Folklore begins with a reading of the Poltergeist entry from my new book, Ghostlore , before we explore the problem with poltergeists - how do you define one?! From deciding what phenomena to include to picking a name, the poltergeist proves to be a flexible yet elusive figure in historical accounts. Is that spontaneous fire a religious portent, or a poltergeist? And did a...