Weekend Compendium: 30 January 2016
One of those WTH vintage photographs. St. Buff Orpington levitating? A materialized chicken-bride at a séance?
Another week of cold weather and tax prep. Time for the weekly compendium of posts!
I saw that someone had shared a link my blog, saying something to the effect of “great posts, if you like haunted Ohio.” Very nice to be shared, but although I started my Fortean career writing the Haunted Ohio series, I’ll mention that the blog covers international Fortean topics, rather than the merely parochial. I describe the Haunted Ohio blog as “The genteel and the unspeakable from Chris Woodyard.” The second of this week’s posts lives up to the “unspeakable” ideal….
I’d also like to mention that The Fairy Investigation Society now has a great page on Facebook with a variety of posts and art. The Society just came out with its latest newsletter. If you’d like to sign up for the free, twice-yearly newsletter packed with fairy news and sightings, or if you would like to share a sighting of your own with the Fairy Census, please go to fairyist.com and sign up.
This week Mrs Daffodil has reported on:
Staging a Sandstorm, wherein the stage-magic secrets of the thrilling spectacle are revealed.
An engaging lady detective, who reports on her techniques and cases: her use (or non-use) of make-up, her professional flirtations, and what it takes to be a detective.
And a barber’s ghost who wreaks havoc by walking again, asking in sepulchral tones: “Do you want to be shaved?”
To-morrow, Mrs Daffodil gives a delicate sketch of that rara avis, The Ladies’ Man, and the peril he poses to those he professes to adore.
Mrs Daffodil’s favourite links of the week: An American millinery apprentice writes about the question of “historical authenticity” and, well, 18th-century bosoms. Plus, who doesn’t love red shoes?
Over at the Haunted Ohio blog, things got a bit grewsome, to use the 19th-century spelling:
A Post-mortem Room Ghost, in which a young medical student finds an unwelcome visitor in the Dead-room of a Dublin hospital.
And, “The Lesser (King’s) Evil,” a shocking account of a woman with scrofula, who undergoes horrific DIY surgery at home to relieve her pain. Not for the faint-of-heart or weak of stomach.
From the Haunted Ohio archives, a less fraught post on ladies and their tattoos: “The Girl with the Tell-all Tattoo.”
My favourite links of the week: A scientific study of “EVP.” and taxi-drivers in Japan’s tsunami districts are being haunted by ghostly fares.
Continuing the nonsensical bird theme, just because I can–a 17th-century coconut cup mounted to look like an owl. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O157613/cup/
Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead.
Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes
You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.