The story of the first woman in Wales to be hanged for witchcraft…..
“Full of Ritual”…..
Aeon Rising – The Battle for Atlantis Earth…..
British Cryptids Conference 2018…..
The Saga of Ireland’s Ghostly Animal-Man…..
Britain’s Bigfoot: A Big Beast and Big Problems…..
‘I believe in fairies, you should, too’…..
Beware Of The Little Folk…..
Christopher Crellius and the Savior of the Swamp…..
In 1594, Gwen ferch Ellis was a three-times married woman making her living weaving cloth and providing cures for sick animals.
She was proud of her expertise as a healer. Taught by her sister, she used charms to help people.
The 42-year-old did not charge for her help but was paid in kind with food and wool.
But when a charm was found at Gloddaith, the home of upper class Thomas Mostyn, her life changed forever.
Gwen, a woman who had already lost two husbands and a sister, was to become the first person hanged in Wales for witchcraft.
The story of the first woman in Wales to be hanged for witchcraft
I’m not sure why The Guardian chose to write about it now, but the city of Perth has its arts festival coming up in February. And apparently the program for the festival is– and I quote– “full of ritual.”
Of course it is. Because sooner than you think, everything will be.
“Full of Ritual”
Visionary artist, Neil Hague, has published his latest book, “Aeon Rising – The Battle for Atlantis Earth”, the final part of an epic creation myth…and it’s superb. Lavishly illustrated with Neil’s unique artwork, here’s where you can find out more:
Please click on the image
Back in the 1930s, a strange and sinister story surfaced of a diabolical beast rumored to haunt an old Irish castle. According to two ghost authorities of that long gone era, Marchioness Townshend of Raynham and Maude Ffoulkes (in their book True Ghost Stories), “…the truth of this story was vouched for to Mr. Reginald Span by the Vicar of the Anglican Church, Arizona, as it happened to some friends of his when they once rented a picturesque castle in the South of Ireland.” And, with that said, read on. So the very weird saga goes, late one particular night, in the latter part of the 19th century, a certain “Mrs. A” was sitting alone in one of the castle’s bedrooms, awaiting the return of her husband. Suddenly, there was the distinct and unmistakable sound of one of the doors banging in the corridor outside the room. More disturbingly, footsteps could be heard, too. Someone or something was creeping around the old castle. Grabbing a lit candle, Mrs. A carefully and slowly opened the door and, to her eternal horror, saw a darkened, shadowy form heading towards the staircase.
The Saga of Ireland’s Ghostly Animal-Man
Back in 2007 I wrote a slim, little book titled Man-Monkey: In Search of the British Bigfoot. It was on the not-so-well-known story of a strange, ape-like creature seen in January 1879 at Bridge 39 on England’s Shropshire Union Canal. Five yeas later, I followed up Man-Monkey with Wildman! The Monstrous and Mysterious Saga of the British Bigfoot, which was a 300-page study of all the various, so-called “British Bigfoot” cases on record. There’s no doubt that the U.K. has in its midst a lot of strange and controversy-filled creatures that, in the field of cryptozoology, have become known as “Cryptids.”
Britain’s Bigfoot: A Big Beast and Big Problems
It is 100 years since two girls in Yorkshire helped the world believe in fairies. That glorious story, of Elsie and Frances, and some hatpins and a camera, and the insistence that fairies lived in a suburban village called Cottingley and had very fashionable hairstyles actually, became famous when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used the girls’ photographs to illustrate articles and a book about the existence of fairies. “The recognition of their existence,” he wrote, “will jolt the material 20th-century mind out of its heavy ruts in the mud, and will make it admit that there is a glamour and mystery to life.” When a psychic visited, he said he’d seen fairies everywhere. And despite the girls in adulthood admitting to faking the photographs, they maintained the fairies themselves had been real.
‘I believe in fairies, you should, too’
Samuel Johnson was wrong about this, as now, as was then, untold numbers of people have encounters every day with his catch-all term ‘spirits’. Eva Wiseman’s question is a good one. My own understanding is that the Others, and we, are together entering (very quickly in the scheme of things) into a state where we are becoming more interactive with each other again. – Ellis
It was in the early hours of a winter’s morning in 1975 when Barry and Elaine, a married couple then in their late twenties and with two small children, were driving towards their then-Slitting Mill, Staffordshire, England home, after attending a Christmas party in the nearby town of Penkridge. As the pair headed towards the small village (its population today, four centuries after its initial foundations were laid, is still less than three hundred), their car’s engine began to splutter and, to their consternation and concern, completely died. Having managed to carefully coast the car to the side of the road, Barry proceeded to quickly open the hood and took a look at the engine – “even though I’m mainly useless at mechanical stuff,” he states.
Beware Of The Little Folk
Today’s story takes us into a Polish swamp where we find a strange savior for a fleeing Unitarian theologian and his family. There may or may not be a fairy involved.
The story was lengthily prefaced in The Spiritual Magazine of January 1874 by an explanation of the expulsion of Unitarians from Poland after their persecution by the government. (The Spiritual Magazine blames the Jesuits. As one does…) While The Spiritual Magazine and The Monthly Repository were most interested in the mysterious workings of Providence, I wonder about the nature of that Providence and its relation to the kingdom of the Fae, rather than the Heavenly Kingdom.
Christopher Crellius and the Savior of the Swamp
Ellis Taylor 