# 31daysofhalloween halloween samhain ayokaiaday artist bexhill sussex 1980s cartoon art 1990s yokaitober yokai illustration japanesefolklore

"I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry'd—'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'" (Keats)

🖼️ Frank Dicksee "La Belle Dame sans Merci" (1901)

20 114
2021-10-29

"Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

The Stolen Child - W. B Yeats

10 37
2021-10-29

In the Scottish "Tam Lin," Tam Lin was kidnapped by the fairies. Though he enjoys his time in Fairyland, he knows that every seven years, on Halloween, the fairies offer up some of the humans they've abducted as tithes to Hell. Tam fears he'll be chosen next.

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2021-10-29

To protect a child from being kidnapped by the Mamuna (a Slavic spirit), a mother would tie a red ribbon around her baby's wrist, put a red hat on its head, & keep it out of the moonlight. Other preventative methods include not washing nappies after sunset…

1 6
2021-10-29

For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than he can understand.

—W.B. Yeats, The Stolen Child
🌟Arthur Rackham

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2021-10-29

“The Fairies come and go with noiseless steps, and their thefts or abductions are done silently and unawares to men”

Darklings! Join the Dark Queens tomorrow for & with your tales of

"Supernatural Abductions"

We'll RT after 2 pm BST

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2021-10-28

Pacts to extend life often have terrible consequences

9 29
2021-10-23

For those anxious to keep vampires at bay this - the rosehip should do the trick. Its thorns, strategically placed around a vampire’s grave can trap it therein, whilst the hips, when thrown, can stop an out & about vampire in their tracks.

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2021-10-23

The most popular versions of the Yuki-onna, the Snow Woman, involve her taking a human life after sparing the young woodcutter or weaver. She later marries him and gives birth to children, before she reveals her true spirit form.

🖼: Y. Yukikata

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2021-10-22

Lugats are Albanian vampires, well, sort of, they’re complicated. Sometimes the wicked rise from their graves (though they have a day off on Saturday) and once up and about, smash windows, seduce women, murder. You can’t kill them when they are awake. 1/3

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2021-10-22

Harry Clarke’s illustrations were nightmare fuel, none more so than the macabre plates he produced for Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1919)
L: The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
R: The Fall of the House of Usher

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2021-10-22

Perhaps due to the presence of Ian Gibson in during the we had an unexpected visit from the leader of the Dark Judges, Judge Death in 1994. Cutting from 28.2.1981.

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2021-10-22

十五日目は笹井のタケ坊！
2つの人物(一方は弁天様として祀られる大蛇)が習合した河童の親分。
youkaitover only for kappa!
Please take a look if you like!
kappa-only youkaitober
Day 15:sasai-Takebou


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2021-10-22

The personified Death featured in medieval morality plays & later, traditional folk songs:
"Fair lady, throw those costly robes aside,
No longer may you glory in your pride.
Take leave of all sour carnal vain delight
I'm come to summon you away this night."

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2021-10-22

In Norse mythology, Draugr are the spirits of dead Vikings that would rise from their barrows and terrorize villages. It was an Icelandic custom not to open a door unless the visitor knocked three times to signal they were not a Viking zombie.

🎨Darron Bensen

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2021-10-22

Darklings!

Tomorrow is the last day we'll let the beasts run free - draws close and so is the new topic for the last week of ... and of course we will RT your spooky tagged tweets. Looking forward to see you again!

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2021-10-21

Medieval thinkers saw dragons as scary beasts doing the “devil’s work.”Such myths spurred Victorian writers & illustrators in their depiction of dragons. Here are two 12th-cen manuscripts of fiery dragons, & Arthur Rackham’s fairy-tale, but fierce dragons. 🐉

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2021-10-16

Serpents and chickens shouldn't mix eggs, unless you want basilisks and cockatrices. A serpent or frog's egg hatched by a cockerel becomes the King of Serpents, a Basilisk. A cockerel's egg hatched by a serpent or frog produces a Cockatrice.

🖼: 1-D. Scott

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2021-10-16

A couple of beasts from the 18thc grimoire Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros (c.1775)
Author Unknown. Held in the Wellcome Library, London

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2021-10-16

"I could see his staring eyes...He vanished behind the mound, and for a moment there was silence...then began a shrieking and a sustained and cheerful hooting from the Martians."
– 'War of the Worlds' (1898) 7/7

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2021-10-15