Close their eyes with silver coins, or they’ll come back walking.

Coastal Southern tradition warns that an unkept wake draws the restless dead back down the dirt lane - not as mist, but as muddy feet returning to the hearth they left behind.

#WyrdWednesday #WitchSky #SouthernFolklore #Folklore

In the ballad ‘The Wife of Usher’s Well,’ a grieving mother is visited by her three dead sons. They wear hats made from a birch tree growing by the gates of Paradise and must depart before sunrise. #WyrdWednesday

🎨H.M. Brock

“…but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher.”

(Edgar Allan Poe “The Fall of the House of Usher”, 1839)

🎨 Harry Clarke

#WyrdWednesday

The medieval English chronicler William of Newburgh recorded several 12th-century stories of corpses leaving their graves to terrorize communities. He even remarked that such cases were so numerous it would be difficult to record them all. Medieval England had a revenant problem. #WyrdWednesday

Zombie Detective
#WyrdWednesday

The gruesome Leathermen were resurrected after 1000+ years to protect 'The Giant Under The Snow', John Gordon's classic folk horror for kids, published in 1968.
#WyrdWednesday #folkhorror #BookChatWeekly #booksky

In Norse folklore, draugr are malevolent animated corpses that savagely attack anyone who disturbs their burial mounds. They are envious of the living, yearning for life's simple pleasures, and can curse their enemies. The draugr inspired J. R. R. Tolkien's barrow-wights.
🎨Kim Holm
#WyrdWednesday

"The resurrection has come, as I always knew it would ... " ~ Davros.
#WyrdWednesday #DoctorWho

"I wasn't frightened. I'd always been told that the dead can't hurt you"

The 'Headless Monk of Furness Abbey' is one of the many apparitions around the ruins of this Abbey

more in my "Folklore of the Lake District"

#wyrdwednesday 📷 by me

Good morning, wyrdlings!

This #wyrdwednesday we are celebrating the birthday of Edgar Allen Poe, writer of mysteries & the macabre, with our theme:

“Sometimes they come back – Return from the Great Beyond”

@cwreeve.bsky.social here, ready to share your posts & reach our Edgar Allen Poe-tential!

"Husband's Strange Experience.
Meets Wife He Thought Dead at Bexhill.
Sequel To Drowning Mystery."
Bexhill Observer 14.8.1937.
#WyrdWednesday

When a girl is drowned by her elder sister in competition for love of a knight, a minstrel crafts a harp from her body; yellow hair for strings.

The minstrel performs at the elder sister’s wedding but when strummed the harp sings only the truth of the murder, exposing the crime🪉

#wyrdwednesday

The ghost of the Dun Cow, a monstrous bovine killed by Guy of Warwick, was reputed to reappear in the courtyard of Warwick Castle whenever a member of the Earl of Warwick’s family was likely to die. The spectre made no sound and its hoofs left no marks.
#WyrdWednesday

#WallsonWednesday #WednesdayWalls
#WatercolourWednesday
#WaterfallWednesday
#WednesdayWindows
#WellsOnWednesday
#WhiskersWednesday
#WildlifeWednesday
#WindmillWednesday
#WindowsOnWednesday
#WindowsWednesday
#WoodensDay
#WyrdWednesday

A 'wraith' is an undead being from Scottish folklore, the embodiment of a soul on the verge of death

Also a 'waff' in Northumberland and 'swarth' in Cumbrian dialects

#WyrdWednesday #Scotland
art: Vera Violetta

In Welsh Arthurian folklore, Peredur (the Welsh version of Sir Percival) battles a man in rusty armor who rises from under a stone slab that was lying on a hill. As pre-Christian Britains were often placed in megalithic tombs, the man is implied to be some ancient undead.
🎨Mike Smith
#WyrdWednesday

#WyrdWednesday
“Sometimes they come back”
The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs (1902)
An elderly couple possess a talisman that will grant three wishes. They are warned there will be dire consequences if they use it. Foolishly they wish for money & receive it as compensation for the death of their son.

The film Curse of the Undead (1959) is a black and white Western horror film about a mysterious gunslinger-for-hire who's secretly a vampire. A preacher goes up against the vampire to protect the small Old West town he's terrorizing. #WyrdWednesday