Wonderful interview with the great Alan Garner, just short of his 90th birthday. theguardian.com/books/2024/dec… Such a powerful, rich-and-strange maker-teller. Your favourite Garner novel? Mine: The Owl Service. “She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls. You must not complain,

I love the Yule Goat

I prefer the folklore figure of Old Father Christmas to Santa Claus: more ancient, more wild, more pagan. I love these drawings with wassail bowl of spiced ale, holly crown, Yule log and Yule Goat #gothicAdvent

A fantastic spooky Christmas short film: an episode of Inside No. 9, ‘The Bones of St Nicholas’. On bbc iplayer #gothicadvent

Settling down to watch ‘The Night before Christmas’ aka ‘Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka’ (dir. Aleksandr Rou, USSR, 1961) – a superb slice of festive viewing. Season’s Greetings to one and all! #fairytaletuesday

I’ve never seen this. It looks magical

‘Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the feast of Stephen’ A kind king with magic footsteps Happy St Stephen’s Day everyone #boxingDay

Festive edition of our podcast - traditional Christmas mummers plays, with Wantage mummers. A fantastic folklore tradition Great Old Father Christmas Characters dreamswarm-podcast.castos.com/episodes/chris…

Old Father Time handing over to the Baby New Year Happy New Year Everyone!

Janus was a god of doorways and passageways and also of endings and beginnings: able to look backwards and forwards. Happy New Year

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a good tale for Yuletide and New Year (here’s an alternative film poster from CA Martin)

Nice walk today on crisp frosty ground with frozen water droplets hanging from the pine trees.

The Hedley Koo is a shape-shifting ghost in Northumberland (known as a ‘brag’). In one tale he fools an old woman by turning into a pot of gold @mythologyMonday #MythologyMonday

‘A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year For a journey, and such a long journey: The ways deep and the weather sharp, The very dead of winter.’ ‘Journey of the Magi’ TS Eliot #epiphany

RIP David Lynch, a great visionary film maker with images that remain burned in your brain. Able to expose corruption hidden under polished surfaces. (He also invented trick for smoother dolly shots by piling all the camera boxes on top to make them heavier)

The Mistletoe Bough is a dark folktale set during a wedding at Christmas when a game of hide and seek goes wrong. The Bride accidentally locks herself in a wooden chest and cannot be found until her skeleton is discovered 30 years later. @MythologyMonday #mythologyMonday

Happy St David’s Day to all our Welsh friends #StDavidsDay

Shrove Tuesday mob football is a tradition in Britain. In Alnwick the game begins with a ball thrown off the castle walls and it ends in the river. #shroveTuesday #fairytaleTuesday @fairytaleTues

Wallsend Metro station in North Tyneside stands beside a Roman fort at the end of Hadrian’s Wall so the signs are all written in English and Latin. Believed to be the only railway station with Latin signage. #wyrdWednesday @wyrdwednesday

DreamSwarm has been listed as one of the top 15 folk horror podcasts - an honor to be on a list which includes Icy Sedgwick and Bone and Sickle Podcast Here's the full list podcast.feedspot.com/folk_horror_po…