Boggart and Banshee: A Supernatural Podcast

Bölümler

• 
  The Oz Factor: When the World Falls Silent 01.09.2026 49dk

  Simon and Chris have a feeling they’re not in Kansas anymore as they follow Jenny Randles down the yellow brick road into the Oz Factor: that peculiar sense of silence, isolation and altered reality that sometimes accompanies UFOs, ghosts, time slips and fairy encounters. Is this strange quiet a gateway into the supernatural, or simply what the brain does when confronted by something terrifying? Can supernatural experiences ever be separated from the people who have them? Chris brings in magn...
• 
  Supernatural Smells: Roses, Brimstone, and Decomp 01.08.2026 45dk

  Chris and Simon sniff out some supernatural scents, ranging from the prosaic, like tobacco and flower perfumes to the sinister, like the odor of rotting bodies. They note the link between scent and memory and wonder whether some ghostly scents are just a spirit’s shortcut to announce its presence or even to communicate. 'Odor Mortis', a musky aroma said to predict death, may, it transpires, be a physiological, rather than a supernatural, phenomenon: ask the hospital cat 'Death'. Simon gives l...
• 
  Supernatural Funerals: Fairies, Phantoms and Futures 01.07.2026 52dk

  You’re walking down a road in the twilight. Suddenly you’re surrounded by a jostling crowd and see a coffin being carried in a funeral cortege with many mourners. You might recognize your neighbors in the procession — or in the coffin — and are the people brushing past you fairies, phantoms, or something worse? In the high heat, Chris and Simon clash on Scotland, the pronunciation of Duchas, William Blake, FFFFs, and the question of what exactly these ghostly funerals are. In a fit of summer ...
• 
  Children, Fairies and the Night 01.06.2026 45dk

  Simon and Chris venture, for this historic episode,* into the nursery at the witching hour to ask why so many children see fairies in bed, in the dark, and at the edge of sleep. Along the way there are tiny soldiers marching across eiderdowns, horse-trading fairy women in pointy hats, airborne night visitors in upstate New York, nasty little wolves running out of wardrobes, and the vexed question of whether these experiences belong to folklore, popular culture, the sleeping brain, or some mor...
• 
  Supernatural Hats: From Witches to Freddy Krueger 01.05.2026 48dk

  Simon and Chris flip their lids with a capful of questions about supernatural, magical, and unlucky hats. Why are witch and wizard hats pointed? What is the fashionable color for fairy caps? What headwear does the Leprechaun favor? Chris suggests an ancient origin for magical pointed hats and goes off on a medieval tangent. Simon tops that by pointing out the importance of hats in signaling status, even in the fairy world. Chris, naturally, finds omens of death associated with hats and tells ...
• 
  Walter Evans Wentz: The Greatest Fairy Hunter of Them All? 01.04.2026 48dk

  Simon and Chris follow in the mystical footsteps of Walter Evans Wentz, who journeyed from New Jersey real-estate hustler to theosophic acolyte to roving collector of fairylore in the deep west. Tramping through Ireland, Scotland, Man, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany, Walter sat by many a peat fire hearing tales of fairy nurses, stolen brides, knockers, pixies and the Gentry — and Chris wonders what these narrators really made of such a singular American. Along the way there is fairy seer extrao...
• 
  Witness! Talking to Those Who’ve Seen the Impossible 01.03.2026 49dk

  Simon and Chris discuss their experiences interviewing witnesses to paranormal events. What kinds of things cause witnesses to distort their recollections? Why do some people slide from one strange story into ten stranger ones? And what should we make of angels on bridges, voltergeists, bewitched dog bowls, demonic chip bags, vampire bats (in Ohio!), and shamanic puppies? Chris draws on decades of visiting haunted houses and chatting with occupants. Simon discusses collecting reports for the ...
• 
  Gef, the Extra Clever Mongoose: Fake, Poltergeist or Talking Animal? 01.02.2026 57dk

  In 1931 at the Irvings' farmhouse on the Isle of Man there were poltergeist bangs, words and, then, the appearance of Gef a talking weasel-like creature with human hands, 'the extra, extra clever mongoose'. Join Simon and Chris as they attempt to be extra, extra clever about Gef who could talk, sing, report gossip from all over the island and do selfies. Expect to learn what kind of families produce poltergeists, why Harry Price was a 'conman', and whether Gef's pronouncements are teenage or ...
• 
  Haunted Churches 01.01.2026 48dk

  What spirits (holy and otherwise) haunt churches? Women in white, ghostly clergymen, fairies, angels, organist twins, naughty nuns, and giant maggots. Simon and Chris bicker, in this ecclesiastical outing, about consecrated ground, wimples, the recording properties of stones, the mental health of vicars' families and double dipping. Chris tells of infernal churches in the States, while Simon pontificates about church porches where the dead foretell the coming year. In just forty-five minutes ...
• 
  Bunny Horror: Ghostly Rabbits and Witchy Hares 01.12.2025 43dk

  Ghostly rabbits, witchy hares... Welcome to one of the strangest corners of the supernatural warren. Chris and Simon talk sheep-killing, human attacking, Roman-hating, bad luck bringing bunnies and speculate about why rabbits and hares so terrified our ancestors. In this episode you will learn: what a graveyard bunny is; tricks for getting off a poaching charge; and how to sabotage a witch trial with a hare in a sack. Other highlights include: Donnie Darko, the axe-wielding Bunny Man, Lewis C...
• 
  Fiftieth Anniversary Episode and Listeners' Questions 01.11.2025 50dk

  It's been 50 glorious episodes of nattering and squabbling and dramatic readings about all forms of the supernatural! Chris and Simon reminisce fondly about how they first met (it involves a baby, a settee and an unfortunate accident). The duo answer questions from readers: when can we expect Fairy Census 3? What is the origin of the phrase 'fairies at the bottom of the garden'? Why does Simon hate Gef? What are Chris' favourite horror reads? They reveal their favorite episodes, share s...
• 
  Possessed Possessions: Haunted, Cursed, and Hoodoo Furniture 01.10.2025 49dk

  Roll out the U-Haunt truck while Chris and Simon load up stories of haunted furniture. Simon tests out haunted chairs where ghosts sit and deftly avoids cursed seats. Chris takes joy in bouncing beds from brothels and trap beds that make human sausage meat. There is the murderer trunk and the toy box with angry gnomes. Clocks foretell death (and, in rare instances, prevent premature burials). Do humans get so attached to household furnishings that they cling to them even after death? Can a pi...
• 
  Victorian Shapeshifters: Furries, Shaggies or Folk Angels? 01.09.2025 50dk

  Is it a dog!? Is it a calf?! No, it’s something in between or just possibly a headless bear or a giant lolloping rabbit, instead. Simon and Chris debate the appearance and habits of a class of supernatural creatures Simon insists on calling, to Chris's irritation, 'furries': solitary, shaggy shapeshifters that haunted the roads and wilds of nineteenth century Britain. These ambiguous animals, with their trademark fiery, saucer-like eyes, might predict death, assault those who confront them, o...
• 
  Highway to Hell: Road Ghosts and Phantom Hitchhikers 01.08.2025 52dk

  Chris and Simon hit the road with tales of spectral travelers: headless motorcyclists, driverless hearses, ghostly coaches, and hitchhikers who vanish mid-ride. Highway hobgoblins leap into passing carriages and crossroads—where suicides were buried—are haunted by the devil. Chris steers the conversation to carriages as omens of death, while Simon says it’s his way or the highway, as the duo bicker over paths. Chris reveals how she almost became a Canadian road ghost on her vintage BMW R60/2....
• 
  Household Helper Spirits: from Brownie to Hob 01.07.2025 47dk

  Simon and Chris are pixelated by household helpers, those elusive, often hairy beings like Brownies, Tomten, and Skrats who muck out stables, scrub pans, rock babies, edit podcasts and occasionally fetch the midwife, all in exchange for a humble bowl of porridge. Our domestic duo explore why these spirits have such complicated relationships with clothing, what draws them to a home (or sends them storming off), and wonder aloud if you can still hire one in today’s difficult real estate m...
• 
  Supernatural Feathers: Death Beds, Witchcraft and Angels 01.06.2025 51dk

  Chris and Simon wing it through the strange world of feather folklore — from cursed peacock plumes to pillows that prevent the dying from slipping away. Do feather crowns signal a heavenly reward or a witch’s curse? Simon’s disturbed by beds hiding feather rats and spectral bouquets; Chris dares to suggest a rational explanation. There's a detour into swan-lined pits, angel relics, deer hunting and the suspiciously decorative world of Victorian featherwork. Listener beware: this one might lea...
• 
  The Deerness Mermaid: The Best Attested Nineteenth-Century Cryptid 01.05.2025 49dk

  Simon and Chris dive into a rare cryptid case from Orkney where hundreds of witnesses saw a 'mermaid' swimming in the sea, sitting on a rock, snacking on fish and eels, and tending to her child. Stories of the mermaid went viral in the press. What in the watery world was the creature? Manatee, mutant seal, giant otter or, say it quietly, an actual mermaid? And why, after several years of summer visits to the bay at Deerness, did it vanish from the papers and from history? The duo trade notes ...
• 
  Supernatural Serpents: Flying, Milking and Shape-Changing Snakes 01.04.2025 46dk

  Chris and Simon lift the stone on a nest of ancient terrors, with bosom serpents, snakes on tombs and in graves, helpful household ophidians, and the medicinal horrors of Asclepius’s temple. ('It did what to you?!') Simon tells of his own blood-chilling encounter with a poisonous hisser, while fake snake women, flying serpents, and the perils of vino alla vipera slither revoltingly into the podcast. The duo bicker over cryptozoological creatures’ credibility and ask whether a snake can suckle...
• 
  The Green Children of Woolpit: Fairies or Foreigners? 01.03.2025 45dk

  The Green Children of Woolpit: Fairies or Foreigners? Simon and Chris celebrate the new and definitive book by John Clark on the Green Children of Woolpit: two children with ‘leek-green’ skin who, in the middle of the twelfth century, said that they came from a twilight place called ‘St Martin’s Land’. They wore strange clothes of an unknown fabric and spoke a language none could understand. Strangest of all, they ate only beans. Had they strayed from fairyland into Suffolk or were they...
• 
  Supernatural Music: Fairy Bagpipers, Phantom Fiddlers, and The Choir Invisible 02.02.2025 44dk

  ***This episode has been our Jonah and has been cursed from the beginning! We are re-releasing it because the first version had fuzzy audio*** Chris and Simon wind up the old gramophone and share some numbers from angelic choirs, the nodding ones beyond the grave, and from the rarely good people in the hollow hill. Sing along with a banshee! Trill to a phantom air from Dartmoor! Rhapsodize over an orca’s mermaid song! And shake your tambourine at yellow bats, breeding foxes, Dolly Parton and ...