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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 3h

There are stretches of place we instinctively feel are haunted. Long before we hear the story of phantom grey lady or discarnate chanting of skipping rhymes, we know to walk them would be to tread ghost soil. Our psychic skin itches with spectral anticipation. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

We walk streets we know to be ghost-soaked and our journey becomes the joy of a shivering story. We walk obviously haunted streets in the hope of spectral encounter. There is an ache for the strange and disruptive up until the moment it arrives to scratch our psychic skin. – #CJosiffe

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

The wood is full of watching eyes. The wood is full of sharp teeth. The wood is full of things that makes burrows in the dark beneath. – Trad. Hookland rhyme

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Some in Hookland still have headaches from last night's festival of Safe Return.

October 13th – The Festival of Safe Return
The company of Merchant Sailors, a force powerful in the 16th and 17th centuries
when it came to seafaring and the governance of Ashcourt, were once known as the
Guild and Fraternity of John the Baptist. Those who believe the Guild came out of the
dissolution of the Knights Templar on Friday October 13th, 1307 may see
confirmation in the fact the Merchant Sailors are recorded as celebrating The Festival
of Safe Return at least as early as 1525. A parade of burning torches and lanterns will
snake down from the Church of St. John-atte-Bower which used to be outside of
Ashcourt, all the way down to the docks where a beacon fire is lit – an event which
causes dozens of ships in the Ashcourt Sound to respond by lighting their own
beacons, making a chain of light out into the sea, a chain meant to symbolise safe
return for all those still lost across the water. As with so many these days, the council
feels the need to supplement proceedings with a firework display.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

We make wild pilgrimage. Approach feral churches in green communion, feel the rub of primitive ritual against our bones. Our faith is fierce, our faith is in the land. We are not summoned by bells, but by a congregation of spirits abiding at the edge of memory. – #DAKilroy, 1982

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

In terms of lithic lookouts for the dead, Ashcourt Necropolis refuses angelic monotony. While it has a grounded flight of winged guardians, it also offers Harrowhounds, lamplighters and many a knight. Banners broken, swords sheathed, I'd still take their protection. – #CLNolan

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

A couple of years back, the Hookland Tourist Board did a promotion about how many haunted lighthouses the county has. Of course our lighthouses are haunted, so would you be if you'd seen the things they've seen. Not just ghost ships, but the dark mysteries the sea holds. – Ray Salter #VOH

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

I remember car journeys with my Dad. A speeding along country roads till everything became green blur. I felt that if we had stopped the car, that's the moment we could have travelled into another country – Elfland, Faerie, England of the Shadows. Beyond the hedge lived wonder. – Ruth Lee #VOH

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

The Hum was a singing of the wires. The Hum was a telling of the land's electric ley in drone and buzz. The Hum was our conversation with wonder. How could we not walk below it? How could we not be pilgrims of the pylons? – Trippy Pete, ex=Pylon Person #VOH

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

The tower blocks the council put up in the 1960s only took a decade till they were so haunted, no-one wanted to live in them. It weren't just the broken lifts, the smell of piss in the stairwells, it was the ghosts that did for people. Spirits turned mean by the towers' design. Liv Green #VOH

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The rapid abandonment of Bennewith House by both the nuns and the orphans left in their dubious care, continues to generate much speculation. Phrases such as ‘mass possession’ and ‘group hysteria’ are commonly used. The gates remain locked, the buildings hollowed and left to rot.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

Give me stone bestiaries. Give me lithic libraries of strangeness. Let me look up and see impossible animals, a telling of folklore above me. May carvings roar their stories as part of the transmission of the living lore. – #CLNolan #FolkloreSunday

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

The Long Neolithic lives as call to mystery, call to wonder. Whether we respond to those calls as archaeologists, ley hunters or stone pilgrims – we respond with stories. The Long Neolithic tithes in narrative. With typology or folklore, we all pay our dues. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Planet D is the best track on that album. And yes, the county has the usual surfeit of nightclubs, but some of us are old and ill and just want the cat to come in and to have a nip of apple brandy – even on a Saturday night.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Autumn comes to the ponds with a hope that Stay Belows will soon be at mud. Comes with fear that they aren't yet sleeping. – #DAKilory, 1982 #Autumn

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Autumn comes to the alleys with a crowding of ghosts. Schoolboy firework anticipation triggered by the smoke of every garden bonfire. Comes with half-heard voices full of leaf-rasp and branch-stretch. It comes with waking shadows. – #DAKilory, 1982 #Autumn

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

October is change. October is spirits. We walk the edge of its fields, knowing they wait for the first frost of the year to crack them and release their ghosts. - Katherine Gidding, Hookland artist, talking about her 1939 painting 'The Lip'

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Autumn comes to the cottages with carpets of apple rot that sour the air with vinegar tang. Comes in a dressing of the year not in green gowns, but wounded rags of brown. It comes as a fear of early darkness. A terror of hungry spirits that rush the path. – #DAKilory, 1982

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Hookland nephomancy AKA cloud-telling No. 1: The Witch Rides Her Besom. This is said to represent magic in play; new starts; pursuit; success obtained only by combing intent and speed of action; detached perspectives reveal new truths and the consequences of disrespect. #Nephomancy

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Some buildings hold their shadows after sunset. They stretch and pace beyond the failing sun. Stalk corridors, assemble in former ballrooms in hope of a grand waltz. Creep wooden doors and walls overdressed for the dark. Shadows that are so eager to meet you. – #DAKilroy, 1982

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Bloody kids of today. They aren't satisfied with manglewurzels or turnips for their Haggedy-Raggedy lanterns. Oh no, they want something non-traditional, something a bit different. Something a bit too bloody orange if you ask me. The spirits won't like it. – Sam Buckle, 1982 #VOH

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

True story. I waited each night for those 11 weeks for the next episode of Sapphire & Steel and it was the first show broadcast when things restarted.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Maisy has been banned from the chained Lower Library in Weychester Cathedral. She asked the librarian if the ghosts enjoyed ratting the chains and he said no. She called him a liar. A bit of a scene erupted. I backed the librarian which means I'm now on the shitlist. – #MattAdams

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Give me lithic lookouts that watch for priestly misdoings and slowly hiss at the miscreants. Give me stone guardians that roar against all evils – not just those convenient to a church. Give me spirited stones with eyes that do not blink when it comes to staring down hate. – #CLNolan

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

England of the humming wires. England of the ghosted fields. England of the nephomantic sky. This is where my patriotism lives, not in its ragged flags, but in a land that knows its spectres. – #DAKilroy

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Hooklanders talk of dusk as 'hurry home'. It's an attempt to express that creeping sense of peril that comes upon you in certain places as the sun goes down. Twilight terror. Another cup of tea declined. The Highway Code ignored. The true rush hour of the county. – #MattAdams

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The spirit of the stairs told in tug at clothing, sudden rush of jasmine perfume or laughter of children. Told in tobacco fug, in an undeniable, audible wheezing. Told in whispered curse or snide tutting. Told in sudden shove. Staircase spirits are rarely less than bold. – #CJosiffe, 1982 #Ghosts

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

To stand inside a stone circle is to be enfolded by the Long Neolithic. To stand inside a stone circle is also to be enfolded by folklore and a sense of awe. Archaeology is a telling of stories, we do not pretend that our stories are the only ones that matter. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

War is target fixation. War is concrete cicatrix. War is an unbanishable ghost. Hookland knows this. It pillboxes remain manifestations of invasion fears. The abandoned sound mirrors of its salt marshes still listen out for phantom planes. There is no psychic peace. – #DAKilory

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

We like to tell ourselves that time flows evenly, but we all have a history of convenient lies. Time has its slow eddies. It runs across some places so tardily a year might become a decade. Places where the walk of a hundred yards might take two hours to complete. – #DAKilroy

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Books are ghost magnets. This means every good library has it phantoms. A density of Dewey Decimal Classification is spirits what a saucer of beer is to slugs. Of course we understand ghosts desire to haunt libraries. Thousands of books and the time to read them is a heaven. – #CJosiffe #Ghosts

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

When I see wide way through a wood, walled with stone, I think only of futility and the coming of those feral days when the trees shall take back what was stolen from them. A tide of tangle and thorn is the future of this path. I feel it echoing back as I walk the now. #DAKilroy

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The bounds have be beaten, it's the Hookland way, just wish I didn't also have to do it for people who are troubled by fictions and concepts such as characters.

Hookland is what science fiction author John Clute would call a polder – reclaimed territory with fiercely protected boundaries; an enchanted enclave of toughened reality with thresholds designed to keep out ethnostate numpties, misogynistic pricks and homophobes. A defended, safe space within the commonwealth of imagination for stories to live, to explore the power of folklore. Its fluid, expanding bounds are beaten daily, because in this age of bruises, all of us Fully-grown Changelings need spaces of re-enchantment, places of fantastical defiance.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

For I am a salt-hag. I know gull gossip. I know the calling and quelling of storms. My hair is wind-braided. My lips wear rough salt kisses. I stand on the cliffs and read omens pulled by the tide. Be well and avoid my anger. – #EmilyCBanting, 1982 #FolkWitchFriday #WitchSky

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

We walk passed buildings that leak ghosts. We are window watched. We are scratched with shadows. A psychic toll is paid for our navigations in headache, in a pressing into the back of the neck. This is our phantom reality. – #DAKilroy #Ghosts

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

You drive by it. For an idle hour you think about buying. Yes, it's dilapidated, will take a lot of work to get it right, but for an hour you dream. Then you think about how isolated it is, wonder why it's been abandoned. For reasons you can't fathom, you ponder its ghosts and let go of the dream.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Another day spent fruitlessly searching for the Black Library in Weychester Cathedral. Another dozen subterranean rooms visited, but no new clues. It remains firmly occulted. Remains legendary, an engine of the imagination. – #MattAdams

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Re-introducing a Hookland childhood nightmare/beloved icon. Mr. Lookout – the ghost bear mascot of the Hookland Tourist Board's 'I-See! series of books'. The scarrer of many a child's imaginations as depicted by @tomsbrown.bsky.social. #MrLookout #Hookland

A ghost bear. A big, fat ghost bear. Wearing spectacles, holding what appears to be a bone wand. Trust me, it is one scary bear. The text says: Mr. Lookout

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

For even the solitary witch never truly walks alone. She may be rarely seen at those guerrilla covens of extreme need, but she travels with the spirits of the land. Her constant companions are genii locorum – whispering, protecting and teaching as she navigate her way. – #EmilyCBanting #WitchSky

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Whilst out and about and cake-bothering booksellers, I saw my first Hookland sticker out in the wild.

A Hookland sticker on a pipe covering up some fascistic filth. The sticker reads: HERNE THE HUNTER HATES YOUR RACIST BOLLOCKS

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Dropped in a Hookland vinegar cake to all at @treadwells-books.bsky.social as a small thank for hosting such a magical evening last week. They still have plenty of signed copies ‘Hookland Fragments’ with a special insert if you want to order from them.

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

For when they hold the Feast of the Archangels and they make much in their sermons of St. Michael defeating Satan, I ponder why so many churches resemble nothing other than forts. Angels and saints that need stone security against the world fail to impress me. – #CLNolan

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We were pylon pilgrims. Each transmission tower a sacred destination in the electric ley of the land. The Hum called us to walk to them, to move under their steel legs and into our temporary temples. We marched lines of electrical ecstasy. – Tattoo Labyrinth Dave #VOH

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

From the introduction to the Hookland Tourist Board I=SEE STRANGE HOOKLAND book:

REMEMBER:

Don’t go out by yourself at night. Many things in this book are thought to be imaginary, but being out by yourself in the dark can still be dangerous – even if you don’t encounter the Danebury Grim.

If you see something that scares you, tell a parent or a trusted adult such as a teacher. In extreme cases where you can’t find an adult you can trust, you could even tell a police officer.

Don’t provoke Faeries of any type. You would not like people shouting your name, poking you in your bed with a stick or throwing stones in your bath, so don’t do it to Faeries. No-one likes ill-behaved children, least of all the Elves of Hookland.

Don’t signal for UFOs with torches. It is not only a waste of batteries, it can be misinterpreted by the emergency services. Besides, we can’t promise that all UFOs are friendly or interpret your signal as a positive message.

Show some respect for the graves of the dead. If you were buried in the ground you wouldn’t appreciate another child dancing on your grave or trying to dig it up would you?

Remember to take extra care when looking for things around water – both by the sea and along rivers and pools. Even if he is imaginary, the King-Under-the-Sea should be shown some deference and Stay Belows not encouraged to grab at you when dangling your legs or trailing your hands in cool, apparently calm water.

Imaginary things can’t hurt you unless you believe in them with all your heart and then they are really quite dangerous.

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