How did Halloween emerge in the mists of ancient Ireland; how has it helped us deal with horror, disorder & death; & where did trick-and-treating come from?| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
Six sailors died trying to bring Cleopatra's Needle to London while an elaborate Masonic ritual welcomed its twin obelisk to New York ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
Phantom black dogs reputedly haunt many parts of Britain. These terrifying hounds roam lonely moorland paths, urban alleys & London jails ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
Edgar Allan Poe's infamous poem The Raven was inspired by a real bird, a mischievous raven kept as a pet by Charles Dickens. Barnaby Rudge ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
In 1970s London, a dark presence was said to haunt Highgate Cemetery. The Highgate Vampire sparked media panic, mass hysteria & two young vampire hunters ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
The London Underground may be the world's 'most haunted' metro system. Egyptian priestesses, Victorian actors, Celtic queens & black nuns ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
The remains of gibbets & gallows scattered across England are linked to legends of pirates, ghostly highwaymen, skulls in attics, cursed chairs, guillotines| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
A vampire is said to have menaced Croglin village, Cumbria. Issuing at night from a churchyard vault, it entered a young woman's room and bit| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
How did the infamous Lord Byron influence our image of the sexually compelling, aristocratic vampire & what did his doctor John Polidori have to do with it?| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
London's Kensal Green Cemetery is linked to a macabre ghost legend. A wealthy publisher stumbles upon the grave of a long-abandoned lover ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
High on Bodmin Moor, the mysterious Dozmary Pool is said to be haunted by a corrupt steward's damned soul & to be where King Arthur acquired Excalibur.| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
Jane Lewson - a likely model for Dickens's Miss Havisham - reputedly lived to 116 in a gloomy, grimy mansion, never washing or changing her ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
The British Museum houses a 'cursed mummy' blamed for sicknesses, deaths & even sinking the Titanic. Once a princess & priestess of Amen-Ra ..| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
Joe Magarac was a superhuman giant who laboured in Pittsburgh steel mills. Joe, made of steel, stirred molten metal with his bare hands & ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
In 1954, hundreds of children joined a hunt for the Gorbals Vampire, a boy-eating ghoul said to haunt Glasgow's Southern Necropolis. A major moral panic ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
A colony of ferocious feral pigs were once rumoured to inhabit the sewers under Hampstead. A terror to 'toshers' - men who scavenged sewers ..| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
Manhattan was to have been home to a 465-foot owl-shaped tomb. Within, chains would suspend the coffin of the fabulously rich newspaper owner ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
Mummia, made from ground-up Egyptian mummies, was once gulped down as a medicine. A paint - mummy brown - used in famous pictures, was also ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
A Russian princess is said to lie in a glass coffin in her opulent Paris tomb. Anyone brave enough to spend a year alone in her mausoleum ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
A tomb in Hollywood Cemetery, Richmond, is said to house a vampire. The vampire, blamed for a railway tunnel's catastrophic collapse, is ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
Mother Damnable was a notorious witch whose cottage stood where Camden Town Station is now located. The Devil was seen entering her house ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen
British churchyards can be odd places, harbouring such artefacts as standing stones, ships' figureheads marking graves, devils' footprints ...| David Castleton Blog - The Serpent's Pen