iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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#FolkWitchFriday @folkwitchfriday.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

The old idea of a familiar wasn't theatrical; it was domestic kinship. The yard dog guarding the gate, the porch cat watching the dusk, or the wild toad returning to the same stone step. How do the animals living alongside your home act as practical guardians and sentinels? #FolkWitchFriday

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Treadwell's Books @treadwells-books.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Last night were honoured to celebrate the creator and community of @hookland.bsky.social . Christina and David in the subterranean Hades before the main event.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

This is such a lovely thing to read, especially from one of my academic heroes.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

A good story is always the antidote to a bad day. Lucky to have @cultauthor.bsky.social remind me that even bubble gum cards are foundational texts. In @hookland.bsky.social, it's encouraged that one should have the curiosity of a scholar & the wonder of a child.

A draft of David Southwell's work on Hookland as an active act of enchantment.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

My last talk of the year. It will focus on re-enchantment as resistance and include tales of Woodwosing, being re-enchanted during the Yugoslav Wars of Dissolution and waiting on the fetches of the future dead. www.tickettailor.com/events/tread...

tickettailor.com

Buy tickets – Hookland with David Southwell – In-Person Lecture – Treadwells Books

Hookland with David Southwell – In-Person Lecture – Treadwells Books, Thu 24 Sep 2026 - The creator of England's imagined lost county on re-enchantment as resistance. Through near-daily postings in th...

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C.W. Blackwell @cwblackwell.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

My last three published books are available at bookshop.org (and the other place too). #backlistsaturday

My last three published books: WHATEVER KILLS THE PAIN, HARD MOUNTAIN CLAY, and SONG OF RED SQUIRE, all lined up on a table

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

#Folklore matters and how we interact with it matters too. We cannot reduce it to ink stasis if we have any hope of enjoying its blessing of re-enchantment.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Last night I tucked myself in & read new "fragments" from @cultauthor.bsky.social's latest literary @hookland.bsky.social Like David, his work is a gentle rebuke/reminder of the personal purpose of lore & enchantment. Stories aren't "collected." Like anything loved, they are pursued w/ devotion.

Approached with politeness and genuine curiosity, people usually want to talk about their folklore. To represent for their locality through it. Especially when they have personal, intimate experience with it. Within us is a hardwired urge to share and transmit its stories. Folklore likes to travel – to possess and jump from person to person so it can walk further – and it has conditioned us from the first fires to enable this in acts of communal storytelling.

A couple of times I got to accompany a Krsnik to the crossroads or a hilltop where a spirit beacon blazed. I learnt about the ecstasies of flame-watching, village circumambulations as a route to the trance, the sorcerer’s sleep needed for magic. Learnt to see landscape as storybook, its landmarks as anchors for folklore. To understand place as a psychic battery holding the charge of tales told across generations.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Oh! They know how to Folklore in the UK and @cultauthor.bsky.social is one of the best! David takes the lore to the folk better than anyone! Congratulations, friend! (The FOMO is real!)

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

My last speaking engagement this year will be at the wonderful @treadwells-books.bsky.social where I will be talking about re-enchantment as resistance; communities of story and the importance of links between folklore and place. www.tickettailor.com/events/tread.... I hope to see some of you there.

tickettailor.com

Buy tickets – Hookland with David Southwell – In-Person Lecture – Treadwells Books

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Yesterday, I made a research trip to Braxton County West VA. The Flatwoods Monster Museum was amazing. The WVa Bigfoot Museum has an exquisite collection of Boggy Creek memorabilia. The jewel was the town of Sutton, a @hookland.bsky.social town where the land asserts itself & refuses to be ignored.

Braxton County West Virginia mural feature the Flatwoods Monster and Bigfoot.

Flatwoods Monster Museum display case with depictions showing the evolution of the monster over time and telling.

A display of movie memorabilia from the cult classic docu-drama The Legend of Boggy Creek.

A burned out bank whose interior, including the vault, is slowly reclaimed by the hills and woods.

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SelineSigil @selinesigil.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

John Barleycorn is made of barley.The lyrics first written in 1624 describe planting, growing, harvesting, and brewing as a series of tortures and a symbolic death and rebirth. #Folklore #Lughnasadh

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The Swamp Wytch @theswampwytch.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Southern tradition holds that inner corn husks from the first harvest are saved to craft usually faceless dolls. Ritually, these "First Shuck" figures become vessels - bound with intention to guard the hearth, store seasonal virtue, and anchor home protection through the winter. #FolkWitchFriday

A handcrafted traditional corn husk doll made of dried, folded tan corn shucks, featuring a blank, faceless head, an apron skirt, and dried flower details.

Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_husk_doll#/media/File:Corn_husk_doll.jpg

A page from Foxfire 3 featuring a vintage black-and-white photograph of a finished cornshuck doll wearing a layered skirt and bonnet, holding a small miniature bucket made from a plastic cap. Below the image, printed text details instructions for adding accessories like buckets, flowers, and tiny brooms.

A page from Foxfire 3 featuring two vintage black-and-white photographs showing hands step-by-step assembling a cornshuck doll. The top image shows folded shucks being shaped into the doll's body, and the bottom image shows sleeves being wrapped around the arms near a spool of thread, accompanied by instructional text below.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I absolutely stand by this description of folklore. #FolkloreSunday

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Malarkey @malarkeybooks.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

We coat every page of our books with a patented clear resin, harmless in low levels, that activates when a page is digitally scanned, releasing a generational curse on anyone who is using our books to train LLMs. Fear not, scholars and librarians have access to non-cursed editions.

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Nathan K. Hensley @nathankhensley.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏

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swadeshine☀️ @swadeshine.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Re-enchantment IS resistance. Populist nostalgia is made entirely of boring tired memetics. Take it all back.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

The euphoria that follows finding out something you needed to do was already done by past you and you want to give person a hug!

static.klipy.com

Spidey Points at Spidey

ALT: Spidey Points at Spidey

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cultauthor.bsky.social @cultauthor.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Ed is wonderful, inspiring folklorist and far too kind about my work.

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Phil Hine @philh.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Spotted in the wild. @hookland.bsky.social

Book: Hookland Fragments Volume One by David Southwell. Black paperback with black and white illustration of bear playing with bones. Propped against a tree.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

After a year of feeling less like my down on his luck folklorist self, I had a weekend that brought me back. A great turnout for my Ohio Brewfest presentation on Mothman and this gorgeous little number in the post from @cultauthor.bsky.social ! (My forward w/in). Let deep summer commence.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Giving myself a one day writing retreat before my Mothman and Mead presentation. I'm staying in a caboose in my own hills and it feels amazing.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Huge congratulations to @cultauthor.bsky.social on this delicious collection of @hookland.bsky.social fragments. I had the great honor of writing the forward. You don't want to miss this!!!! David, so very pleased for you. Well done!

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

As promised to link to my first actual Hookland book. It is only small, but covers a lot of the ghost soil. If enough of you buy it and like it there will be a Volume Two. www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1068598123 It will also be available in an actual bookshop soon.

The coverplate of the book HOOKLAND FRAGMENTS VOLUME ONE by David Southwell featuring a picture of the Ghost Bear of Hookland by Maria Strutz and the following blurb:

I firmly believe David Southwell’s Hookland to be one of the great
imaginative achievements of our age. One that will one day be
spoken of the way Lovecraft’s Mythos is now. Hookland is the
folklore of the county that exists on the edge of our vision, an
unseen but sensed Britain that is at once familiar and strange.
It is the land just to the left of where we live. David’s work is
made even more remarkable by his open invitation for all to
come and play there. Though of course visitors to Hookland
must be wary, the county exacts its price from us all. – R.J.
Barker, award-winning author of bestsellers such as The Bone
Ships and Gods of Wyrdwood.

As a visitor I am more frequently in Hookland than the barrows
and chalk downs of my childhood. – Roger Clarke, best-selling
author of A Natural History of Ghosts.

Hookland is gold standard eldritch world building. – Ian
Simmons, Fortean Times news editor.

This a shimmering place of deep time, cold wars, old gods and
ever renewing mysteries.The heartland and home county of the
restless and the outsider, a lamp glow to welcome the lost, a
pole star for those who dare to step into the dark and follow its
glorious glowing ghostlight. – Rose Ruane. Artist and writer of
Birding and This Is Yesterday.

Hookland has been called many things. Psychic shrapnel
embedded in place. A re-wilding of folklore. The English Eerie
told in strange fragments. According to its creator David
Southwell, nothing in Hookland is made up, just remembered
differently.

Hookland Fragments Volume One offers both an introduction to
Hookland and an exploration of its agenda of re-enchantment
as resistance.

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Thomas S Brown @tomsbrown.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Just completed the interior illustrations for Woodwosing by @taliskimberley.bsky.social , so release some time in July (after I pester @comicprintinguk.bsky.social again.)

Cover for Woodwosing by Talis Kimberley, illustrated by me with a foreword by David Southwell. Artwork is in two panels. Larger right hand panel shows a woodsprite sort of creature with a staff over their shoulder and an apple in the foreground. Right hand panel is a decorative border of branches, flowers, buttons and a moon.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

This is something the reductionist totally miss...the Appalachian dad's affinity for international music. My dad had a vast collection of Peruvian Pan flute music. There was nothing better than hearing it blasting from the garage as he sharpened a lawnmower blade.

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cultauthor.bsky.social @cultauthor.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

There is a similarity between those pisspuffins that say ancient aliens taught man how to make fire and those AI lickspittles who claim LLMs can do things we can’t. Both groups erase humanity’s ingenuity, ability to learn and agency. A pox upon them all.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

100% bringing this energy back to Metaphysical studies!

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Alice Wickenden @awickenden.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

I agree with all the takes about an attack on the humanities being an attack on critical thinking, &c. It’s also about joy, though. ‘Why bother studying that’ is always also a sneer at — why do you think you should get to do something you enjoy? Grow up and be miserable all the time!

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

I have friends out there doing difficult, high stakes things. Then, there's me discovering a new Mothman/Cornstalk variant.

static.klipy.com

Antonio Banderas' Satisfied Reaction

ALT: Antonio Banderas' Satisfied Reaction

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

I'm more than excited to get to represent Dutch Creek Winery for Ohio Brew Week. I'm going to look at how Appalachian Storytelling took Mothman from a "winged weirdo" to our monster. It's going to be fun! (And there's mead!)

Mothman and Mead Sunday July 12th 2-3pm at Dutch Creek Winery.

Mary Hyre newspaper clipping from original Mothman flap

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Reckon Review @reckonreview.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

We have new fiction for you today from Curtis C. Morgan. Morgan spent four years operating a commercial beekeeping farm in Bradford County, PA, before a 40-year career in IT contracting took him across four continents. He lives in Falls Church, Virginia.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

In a few weeks, I'm giving a talk in Athens Ohio on the evolution of Mothman in place and story. It's at a winery. Not my usual venue. I was feeling skeptical. Then, I went to Dutch Creek Winery over the weekend... it's making sense now.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Yesterday I turned an academic meeting at the Pitt Archives into some archival voyeurism with this beauty. Dad and I used watch The Devil Rides Out when it was in rotation on Night Owl Theater in the late 70s. Funny how grief finds it's expression in the weirdest flashes of time and place.

The sign for University of Pittsburgh's Archives and Special Collections.

The title page for the script The Devil Rides Out.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

I've been waiting for this book since I first stumbled into Hookland. I can't wait to order! Congratulations, @cultauthor.bsky.social !

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Cover art by the wonderful @mariastrutz.bsky.social, words of support that made me a little teary from @rjbarker.bsky.social; @skionar.bsky.social; @iansimmons1960.bsky.social and @regretteruane.bsky.social. The foreword is by @edkarshner.bsky.social. Ordering details next week.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

I promised you a book cover for Hookland Fragments Volume One at Midsummer and here it is:

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

What is folklore? Happy 11th birthday to #FolkloreThursday.

If history is the black and white of books, folklore is its grey voices, the bits written in blood red ink. Speaking through the filter of magic and dead spirits, folklore is where the ache for justice among the powerless lives. In it dwells the anger of a wounded land, the widow’s sorrow, the moth er’s hatred for the king who took her sons to war. It is and always has been the cultural margin sneered at by those who fear its feral power. Untameable. Eel-slippery. No empire has ever been able to control it. No amount of study will ever make it behave in a civilised, orderly fashion. Try to corner it into staying still with learning and it will bare its fangs. Leap over you Spring heeled Jack style. Self-organising. Self-evolving. Folklore has never needed academia to survive. More importantly, never needed political patronage to thrive. Give it a traveller’s fire, give it a pub or post office queue. Give it a playground. It spreads. It mutates. Standing out side of top-down power structures it is and always has been a haven for voices criticising the elite, the oppressors. It is folklore’s very nature to resist. You can’t burn the books of an oral tradition. You can’t censor the stories parents tell children when tucking them into bed. No empire has found an effective system to control tales swapped across beer glasses, across tea cups. Empires, kingdoms, republics of repression – they all always fear what cannot be enclosed and economised. Not even the Stasi, not even the Syrian Military Intelligence Directorate could call themselves the folklore police.

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Wrighty @wrightsnake.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Nice thing to see on my way home.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Weychester is rare in that it has had a Dodgesonian Professor of Folklore at Woden College since 1898. This was a major first in the history of folkloric studies, but we shouldn't be too surprised given the nature of Hookland. After all, it is a county where stories live well. – Dr. M. Benn

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

See, a proper book, (little book, but a proper one) with an ISBN number and everything. Cover reveal and ordering details coming soon-ish. And yes, there is an-anti piracy, anti LLM curse embedded in the text. It is Hookland – you'd expect nothing less.

Proof of the title page of the book 'Hookland Fragments, Volume 1: Remembering Differently' by David Southwell. Also includes text warning of a curse to book pirates.

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EdKarshner 🫈 @edkarshner.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Ohhhh!!!!! Boy! Trust me! You are going to want this skeleton's key to all things Hookland. @cultauthor.bsky.social's opening essay is a gorgeous acknowledgement of all of us who came to folklore and magic via In Search Of reruns and the trauma of the Cold War. A true enchantment reset.

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