Ghost, paranormal and folklore books
Books about ghosts, folklore, witchcraft, paranormal research, dark history and the unexplained across Britain and Ireland.
1,217 books found
Cover unavailableThe Pennine UFO Mystery
The Pennine UFO Mystery investigates a reported wave of UFO activity across Northern England, concentrating on events around Todmorden and the wider Pennine region. Jenny Randles begins with the death of Zigmund Adamski, whose body…
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Cover unavailableThe Personnel of Fairyland
The Personnel of Fairyland presents a classification of the fairy people found in British and Irish tradition, arranged for those who tell stories to children. Katharine Briggs distinguishes groups such as Trooping Fairies and Homely…
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Cover unavailableThe Phynodderree, and Other Legends of the Isle of Man
Edward Callow’s collection presents four literary retellings of Isle of Man legends, drawing on fairy lore, historical tradition and church-centred supernatural belief. The opening tale concerns the Phynodderree, a fairy figure associated with love, exile…
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Cover unavailableThe Police and the Paranormal
Andy Owens collects reports from police officers who say they encountered phenomena they could not readily explain. The book considers the tension between their professional role as observers and the risk of ridicule when describing…
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Cover unavailableThe Poltergeist Casebook
John West reviews notable poltergeist cases, drawing together historical records, witnesses’ accounts and later investigations. The selection includes Cock Lane, Epworth, Enfield, the Black Monk of Pontefract and the Bell Witch. Alongside descriptions of alleged…
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Cover unavailableThe Poltergeist Prince of London
The Poltergeist Prince of London recounts the reported haunting that began in 1956 at the Hitchings family home in Battersea. The disturbances started with an unidentified silver key on Shirley Hitchings’ bed, followed by tapping…
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Cover unavailableThe Premonitions Bureau: A True Account of Death Foretold
Sam Knight’s book recounts the story of John Barker, a British psychiatrist whose interest in clairvoyance led him to establish a Premonitions Bureau with Evening Standard science editor Peter Fairley. Their project followed reports that…
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Cover unavailableThe Prophecies of the Brahan Seer
Andrew MacKenzie examines the traditions surrounding Coinneach Odhar, the Highland figure remembered as the Brahan Seer. The book considers the prophecies attributed to him and the tradition of second sight in which those accounts are…
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Cover unavailableThe Psychic Detectives
The Psychic Detectives examines psychometry, the claimed ability to obtain impressions from objects linked with people, places or events. Colin Wilson places this practice within the broader history of psychical research, considering how psychic perception…
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Cover unavailableThe Quest for the Green Man
John Matthews examines the Green Man as a recurring figure in mythology, folklore and the imagination of the natural world. The book follows his changing forms through British traditions, medieval architectural carvings and Arthurian material,…
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Cover unavailableThe Quiet Moon
The Quiet Moon follows a year through changing moons, seasonal turning points and the living landscape of Britain. Kevin Parr draws on ancient Celtic beliefs about the moon, placing January’s Quiet Moon amid the Dark…
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Cover unavailableThe Rational Demonologist
The Rational Demonologist examines demonology from its historical origins to the beliefs surrounding alleged demonic activity today. Steve Higgins considers ideas of possession, attachment and identification, while also outlining approaches to protection, summoning and exorcism.…
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Cover unavailableThe Realm of Ghosts
The Realm of Ghosts traces ghost lore and reported hauntings from ancient societies to the recent past, placing apparitions within a long history of belief. Eric Maple considers the traditions of primitive and pagan peoples,…
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Cover unavailableThe Reign of Arthur
Christopher Gidlow examines the evidence for Arthur as a possible ruler of post-Roman Britain, setting early accounts against the political and military realities of the 5th and 6th centuries. The book considers Arthur’s reported battles,…
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Cover unavailableThe Riddle in the Tale
The Riddle in the Tale brings together magical folk tales built around riddles and shorter challenges designed to be solved along the way. Its stories include a farmer who must answer the fairies’ riddles to…
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Cover unavailableThe Rise and Fall of Merry England: The Ritual Year 1400–1700
Ronald Hutton examines the religious and secular rituals that shaped the English year between 1400 and 1700. The book traces seasonal celebrations, communal festivities and local customs through periods of major religious and political change,…
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Cover unavailableThe Rise of the Silver Hatchet Gang
Covell investigates the stories surrounding the Silver Hatchet Gang, tracing a feared group’s reported activities from London to Hull. Theft, intimidation, prostitution and violent crime feature in an account of the gang’s emergence and eventual…
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Cover unavailableThe Robin Hood Handbook
The Robin Hood Handbook examines how the outlaw has been shaped by history, myth and legend, asking whether a real person lies behind the familiar stories. Mike Dixon-Kennedy considers Robin Hood’s traditional exploits, including his…
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Cover unavailableThe Romance of Dracula
Charles E. Butler traces Dracula across literature and cinema in a personal exploration of the Count's enduring appeal. The book looks at major screen interpretations, performers and the changing image of the vampire, making it…
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Cover unavailableThe Ruin of All Witches
The Ruin of All Witches reconstructs a witch-hunting episode in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1651, where illness, failing livestock, spoiled food and missing property fuel suspicion. Reports of fits, disturbing dreams, visions and children’s deaths deepen…
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Cover unavailableThe Sacred Isle: Belief and Religion in Pre-Christian Ireland
The Sacred Isle examines religious belief in Ireland from its earliest human settlement through the arrival of Christianity in the 5th century. Dáithí Ó hÓgáin brings together archaeological evidence, Irish literature and folklore to assess…
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Cover unavailableThe Science of Weird Shit
The Science of Weird Shit examines paranormal beliefs and bizarre experiences through the lens of anomalistic psychology. Chris French considers ghostly encounters, communication with the dead, alien abduction, reincarnation and UFO sightings, alongside out-of-body and…
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Cover unavailableThe Scole Report
The Scole Report records an investigation into a mediumistic group holding séances in a private house in Scole, Norfolk. David Fontana, Montague Keen and Arthur Ellison describe sittings conducted between 1995 and 1997, detailing reported…
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Cover unavailableThe Screaming Skulls, and Other Ghost Stories
The Screaming Skulls, and Other Ghost Stories gathers purportedly true ghost tales alongside traditional legends collected under Elliott O'Donnell's name. Its accounts describe apparitions, haunted houses, creeping hands, vengeful phantoms and tortured wraiths, with several…
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Cover unavailableThe Search for Harry Price
The Search for Harry Price is a critical biography of the British psychical researcher and public ghost investigator Harry Price, who died in 1948. Trevor H. Hall examines Price’s background, career and published claims, questioning…
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Cover unavailableThe Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies
Robert Kirk’s account presents Scottish traditions about elves, fauns, fairies and other subterranean beings, described through reports linked to Highland communities and second-sight seers. These entities occupy a position between human and angelic nature, with…
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Cover unavailableThe Secret Country: An Interpretation of the Folklore of Ancient Sites in the British Isles
The Secret Country examines folklore attached to ancient and prehistoric places across the British Isles, treating monuments and landscapes as centres of traditional belief. Janet and Colin Bord gather accounts connected with antiquities, prehistoric peoples,…
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Cover unavailableThe Secret Middle Ages
The Secret Middle Ages reconstructs everyday medieval culture through the objects and images encountered by ordinary people between 1200 and 1550. Malcolm Jones draws on little-known and recently discovered artefacts, looking beyond courtly and ecclesiastical…
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Cover unavailableThe Seen and the Unseen
The Seen and the Unseen examines reported presences, apparitions and other experiences gathered under the broad heading of psychical research. Its 30 chapters are arranged in five sections, beginning with sensed presences and moving through…
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Cover unavailableThe Silver Bough
The Silver Bough is the first volume of F. Marian McNeill’s four-volume study of Scottish folklore, folk-belief and festival tradition. It considers the survival and transformation of older beliefs within Scottish culture, including material connected…
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Cover unavailableThe Sixth Sense
Sixth Sense: Psychic Powers and Your Five Senses examines claims of psychic ability alongside the ordinary sensory faculties used in everyday life. Jenny Randles considers how experiences described as extrasensory perception might relate to seeing,…
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Cover unavailableThe Snow Witch
A woman fleeing a traumatic past arrives in Portsmouth as an extraordinary snowstorm cuts the city off. Encounters with its residents offer the possibility of belonging, while an obsessive man threatens her precarious new life.…
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Cover unavailableThe South Shields Poltergeist
The South Shields Poltergeist documents a reported outbreak of disturbing activity in a South Shields family home between 2005 and 2006. Darren W. Ritson and Michael J. Hallowell investigate claims that objects moved without explanation,…
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Cover unavailableThe South Shields Poltergeist: One Family's Fight Against an Invisible Intruder
The South Shields Poltergeist recounts a reported haunting that began in 2005, when a young family in South Shields noticed doors opening, chairs moving and their son’s toys behaving violently. The disturbances escalated to scratches,…
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The Spooky Isles Book of Horror Vol. 1
Edited by David Saunderson and Andrew Garvey, The Spooky Isles Book of Horror Vol. 1 brings together 20 stories and essays from 18 writers. The collection explores horror and folklore from Britain and Ireland, including…
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Cover unavailableThe Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain
Ronald Hutton traces the ritual year across Britain, following seasonal customs from the earliest written records to the present day. The book considers how communities marked Christmas and the Twelve Days, Valentine, Shrovetide, Easter, May…
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Cover unavailableThe Story of Witches: Folklore, History and Superstition
The Story of Witches traces changing ideas about witches through myth, legend, fairy tale, history and superstition. Willow Winsham begins with figures and motifs including Hekate, Baba Yaga, shape-shifting hares and the witches of Macbeth,…
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Cover unavailableThe Storyteller's Supper
The Storyteller’s Supper brings food, folklore and oral storytelling together in a collection of traditional tales, rhymes and riddles. Its stories move through field and furrow, orchard and hedgerow, farmyard and dairy, linking ingredients and…
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Cover unavailableThe Strange but True Casebook
The Strange but True Casebook gathers reported paranormal cases associated with the ITV series Strange But True? Its subjects range across reincarnation, UFO sightings, poltergeist activity, miracle healers and psychic detectives, bringing together accounts presented…
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Cover unavailableThe Supernatural
Rupert Matthews surveys a range of reported psychical phenomena, introducing claims and beliefs that have long surrounded the supernatural. The book covers extrasensory perception, reincarnation, foretelling the future, dowsing and levitation, presenting these subjects in…
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Cover unavailableThe Three Ravens Folk Tales
The Three Ravens Folk Tales gathers 39 retold stories, one for each of England’s historic counties, drawing on the folklore shared through Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux’s podcast. Each tale is accompanied by an introduction…
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Cover unavailableThe Three Ravens Folk Tales of Wales
The Three Ravens Folk Tales of Wales gathers new tellings from the 13 historic counties of Wales, bringing together stories of loyalty, fear, enchantment and mischief. Among them is the tragic account of Gelert, the…
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Cover unavailableThe Three Ravens Ghost Tales
The Three Ravens Ghost Tales gathers 20 original ghost stories by Eleanor Conlon and Martin Vaux, moving between historical unease, modern anxieties and speculative horror. Its stories include a medieval revenant seeking revenge, a Victorian…
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Cover unavailableThe Tragic Tale of William Papper
Fourteen-year-old fishing apprentice William Papper did not return when the Rising Sun reached Hull in January 1882. Covell reconstructs the investigation that exposed his murder, using contemporary statements and press reports. The account follows the…
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Cover unavailableThe Traveller's Guide to Fairy Sites
The Traveller's Guide to Fairy Sites examines reported fairy locations across England, Wales and Scotland, bringing together local landscapes, folklore and accounts of encounters. Janet Bord focuses on places where the traditions are tied to…
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Cover unavailableThe Treasury of Folklore: Waterlands, Wooded Worlds and Starry Skies
The Treasury of Folklore: Waterlands, Wooded Worlds and Starry Skies gathers myths, legends, folk tales and traditions shaped by seas, skies and woodlands. Dee Dee Chainey and Willow Winsham range across countries and continents, tracing…
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Cover unavailableThe Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
The Triumph of the Moon traces the development of modern pagan witchcraft, examining how a religion that emerged in England drew upon older ideas about paganism, magic, folklore and ritual. Ronald Hutton places its formation…
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Cover unavailableThe Truth About The Leprechaun
The Truth About The Leprechaun considers the leprechaun as a figure within the wider fairy traditions of Ireland and the Celtic world. Bob Curran examines reported origins, physical appearance, habitats, habits, occupations, social organisation and…
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