the silent pool
There's a pool, in the middle of a small copse of trees in Worcestershire, that is locals call the Silent Pool. The water is always very still, and very dark. No insects skate across its surface, and no birds sing in the trees around it.
Local legend has it that the pool is haunted by the ghosts of two children that drowned in it, back in mediaeval times.
With it being so still, you’d think you could look into it and see your reflection, but if you find yourself there, you won’t see yourself. Just dark, unmoving blackness that makes you feel dizzy, as if you might fall in. If you look in it for more than a few seconds, you will, and then you’ll fall and fall and fall and fall until a long time later and many millions of miles away you reach the bottom, and meet what haunts the pool, which is not two children, but something which has been down there for longer than there have been children.
Notes from the Cartographer
Hello everybody. Sorry I’ve missed a couple of months. There’s been quite a lot going on in the world. Also, I accidentally stood in a fairy ring while the clock struck midnight on St Melorius’ Day, and ended up stuck for a while in a little-known day that is hidden between a Thursday and a Friday.
I grew up in the 70s and early 80s, which was a time when the supernatural and the weird were firmly part of the mainstream culture in a way that they’re not now. The press were obsessed with poltergeists and ghosts, mainstream TV news/magazine programmes (the equivalent of the UK’s One Show now, I guess) would report on UFOs, I’m sure that if you read Maps you’ll already know just how weird children’s TV was, and books on the Bermuda Triangle and the like sold millions.
It may just be nostalgia, but looking back it felt more like innocent times, where the strange and the conspiratorial was less bound in with the political, when it was more playful, and full of awe, and didn’t lead people into some horrendous, twisted places. But maybe that’s just me.
Some of the best content though, came once a week or once a month.
Man, Myth and Magic was an encyclopaedia of the strange and the supernatural, which started off weekly in 1970 and ran for 112 issues. You could buy posh binders to keep them in, if you wanted to go for the occult encyclopaedia look, and the publisher put out a hardcover set which was reprinted in 1995. The rights were then sold to another publisher, who has moved away from the sequenced approach and published by theme in ten volumes, on subjects like Witches and Witchcraft. eBay is your go to place to explore any of the above. My best friend’s dad had the hardcover set, and it was just the best thing for curious youngsters to dip into. (It was billed as ‘the most unusual magazine ever published’, which does imply that the publishers had never been to Amsterdam).
Then there was The Unexplained - or to give it its full title, The Unexplained: Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time.’ This was published monthly by Orbis from 1980 to1983 and ran for 156 issues. A little more pop culture than I remember Man, Myth and Magic being, The Unexplained leapt from Yetis to spontaneous human combustion, UFOs to the Cottingley Fairies, anything weird was fair game. You can still find copies around (I have about a hundred in a box in my garage, that I intend to re-read soon)
The weird elephant-like cryptid in the room that I haven’t mentioned is of course the Fortean Times. Never as mass-market as the above, but still going strong and always ploughing its own weird furrow, that deserves its own individual mention another time.
eye know
If you turn over some stones on Cramond beach, outside Edinburgh, you may be lucky or misfortunate enough to find an eye stone. It looks like cloudy glass, and if you look through it at a person you love you will see what true thoughts are in their mind at that time. Lucky or misfortunate. Our money is on the latter. Sorry.
castlejack
If you're visiting the beautiful stone circle of Castlerigg near Keswick, watching the setting sun turn the Lakeland fells that cradle the circle a beautiful orange, keep your eyes on the walls and the hedges that surround the field. If you look closely, in the fading light, you may see a man, dressed all in black, skulking.
He is known as CastleJack.
If you see him, walk away from the stones as fast as you can, walk back to your car, run if you need to, because if he skulks his skulkly way up to you, he will whisper in your ear and you will fall to the ground in a heap, flipperty-flop.
Castle Jack will pick you up in his arms and carry you off across the fells to a hidden wood which holds a hidden clearing, where he is building his own stone circle where no one else but him will see it. He will whisper to you again, and you will wake, and he will stand you up and whisper to you a third time.
You will then stand there for thousands of years as stone, alive but unmoving, slowly weathering, undying, long gone mad.
Maps Traced By Other Hands
This week was the sixth birthday of what is now a venerable institution of weirdness, national treasure of the eldritch, and home of the eerie: Folk Horror Revival.
I’m not going to dwell too much on it, because I can’t believe that anyone reading Maps isn’t already aware of it, so this is not a discovery post, this is a celebration post. It’s a great community, run by lovely good-hearted people who have managed the difficult job of steering a very large Facebook group through the usual whirlpools of problematic posters, arguments and rows, and the fash that use folk to hide behind, which is no mean feat. It’s still a great place to spend some time, and has never lost steam.
Apart from being a community in itself, FHR has spawned books and fetching t-shirts, conferences, seminars, and more, and it’s brought together a lot of people from around the world - and been a constant inspiration for me, and for Maps.
Good people, doing good things, about a subject everyone reading this will love. Can’t ask for much more, can you?
All the profits from the books are donated to different environmental, wildlife and community projects undertaken by the Wildlife Trusts. So, if you want to show your appreciation for what they do, those are the places to send a donation.
Happy Birthday, and thank you. Let’s celebrate.
The Ooser Speaks
(taken from the wonderful Readers Digest 'Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain')
Near Pilton, in County Durham is a very small village called Picktree. This sparse scattering of houses was once home to a spirit known as the Picktree Brag. The Bragg was full of mischief and would change shape to appear in many different guises. Most often though, it would choose to manifest itself as a horse or donkey, a docile and friendly animal…which would then try to throw anyone who attempted to ride it.
If you find yourself in Picktree now, and see an expensive-looking road bike left leaning unlocked against a hedge - do not be tempted to ride it away. It will not end well.
wide-eyes, flared nostrils
On the way out of Hunstanton a horse runs around and around a field as if there is a storm coming. There is, but it is a most peculiar kind of storm, and not one that you will see or hear. It will rage around you nonetheless, and you may not survive it if caught out in the open. So, let the horse warn you, as he has warned others for eight hundred years.
Secrets the Wind Whispers
Regular readers might remember that in Volume Three I talked about Julian Simpson’s weird and eerie audio dramas, and his recent modern adaptations of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward and the Whisperer in Darkness. The latter were broadly faithful to the original Lovecraft stories but also brought in lots of other strange history and happenings, from the Rendlesham Forest UFO incident to numbers stations to Jack Parsons, Crowley and the Babalon Working, mashed them together with the mythology and secret history that Julian had created for his own dramas, and made it all work.
Well, the third - and final - instalment of the Lovecraft adaptations has just come out. You can find The Shadow Over Innsmouth here. I’m not reviewing it because I haven’t listened to it yet. I’m saving it up for an indulgent binge. I’ve loved this series. And Shadow is my favourite Lovecraft story.
Listen or download here, or find it on the BBC Sounds app.
hellfire caves
A cave in Buckinghamshire was briefly notorious for being a meeting point for the Hellfire Club, and their decadent rituals, which for the most part were about getting drunk and frolicking with whoever was happened to be nearest in the dark.
The Club picked the cave because it had a bad reputation which kept locals away, and no gentleman needed to be spotted frolicking by curious rural types. They didn’t know how much they risked by holding their bacchanals there though, because the cave had a bad reputation for a very good reason.
Once a year, on a certain night, something comes walking out of the rock, and out of the cave into the starlight, and it walks the fields of Buckinghamshire and somewhere nearby, someone walking home late from a job or the pub will never be seen again.
Beyond This Point There May Be Dragons
You’ve been reading Maps of the Lost. Or have you? It’s hard to tell. Maybe this is all just a dream. Or a prophecy, or a forewarning. I hope you enjoyed it. Feedback is always welcome, as I’d really like to shape this newsletter to be what you’d like to read and hear. So, ideas, suggestions and comments welcome. You can just reply to this email if you like.
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