In the land of the Vikings.
East Anglia.
Black Shuck.
Mere-wives.
Woodwoses.
Old Nick.
Spirits of the dark liminal places.
You can walk widdershins around many old churches nine times and the Devil will appear and grant you a wish.
Or dance around the Devil’s Stone at St Mary’s Church, Bungay, and Old Nick will jump out from behind a gravestone and ask you what you most desire in life — and deliver it.
Choose wisely.
All this was well known in medieval times.
What’s changed?
Nobody believes it anymore.
They don’t know the old folk tales.
But consider this:
What if it works?
The stone carving at the 13th century church at Santon Downham depicts a strange beast.
Nobody knows what it is.
It could be Black Shuck, the demon dog that on the same day in 1577 AD attacked both St Mary’s Church at Bungay and Holy Trinity at Blythburgh, a number of people died of fright on the spot.
The incident is on historical record.
How accurate a report is open to debate, but something clearly happened.
Some say Black Shuck was the Devil himself, shapeshifting into werewolf form.
Then there are the mere-wives, later known as mermaids.
Spirits that haunt the meres, which are small lakes or pools, some known as pingos in East Anglia.
Water spirits.
You will even find depictions of mermaids carved in stone on the walls of some old churches.
Clearly something was going on.
Things we can’t see today.
But then how many people stop scrolling their phones and go to the wild places?
And then there’s the woodwoses, “wild men (and women) of the woods”.
In Suffolk alone, there are numerous old churches with stone carving of these wild men.
Were they the left-overs of an indigenous species of hominid?
Or are they part of the liminal spaces, the inbetween, where the spooks roam?
The thing is, woodwoses are still being encountered today.
In July 2019, a group of people heard low, throaty growls in Thetford Forest.
Around the same time, people reported their dogs being spooked by something hiding in the near distance. Plus someone reported being “shadowed by something I couldn’t see.”
And in 2009 in Thetford Forest Park, someone reported a creature “not of this world” that was around 7ft tall, which they came face-to-face with in a clearing.
You can read the full story of local woodwoses at The Eastern Daily Press:
All the above are locations where I conduct my majiks.
Why?
Because the very land itself, the landscape, and the monuments all hold power.
Some are portals to the liminal realms, which you can enter, but the denizens also enter our world.
I’ve run into flotillas of UFOs, cryptid creatures, and all manner of strange encounters.
I go to the wild places partly because they are usually peaceful.
Fairly human-free.
But also because they show that our world is not what it seems.
It’s a haunted planet.
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