Episode 50 and 51: Boggarts

“As ‘th’ edge o’ dark’ threw its weird glamour over the scene, boggarts .. would begin to creep about.”

The 50th podcast episode! A huge milestone for me and I’m using it to concentrate on one of my favourite topics I’ve only touched on so far: Boggarts.

In episode 50 there are stories – while in episode 51 there is the first ever expert discussion section of the podcast! This consists of an interview with Dr. Simon Young, world expert on Boggarts and a number of another folkloric and supernatural phenomena. In that inter who talks all about what a boggart actually is what they are not and a whole host of other boggart related bits and pieces.

The stories themselves feature a surprising variety of supernatural sights – shrieking spectres, ghostly geese, inflatable sheep, ineffective graves and much much more.

Come to Boggartdom, meet the feeorin and found out more synonyms for terror than you ever thought you’d need!

These boggarts are very different from those that feature in most twentieth and twentieth century boggart tales! So enter a new word of Boggarts!

New Boggart Illustrations!

As a present to myself, and to anyone else who wants to make use of them I commisioned a set of artworks of boggarts from 19th century accounts, and the results can be see below.

These look very different from most boggarts you see depicted, and I’m incredible pleased with the results!

A massive thankyou to Jantiff Illustration, Rhi Wynter, Lino Folk by Fiona and Sian Ellis.

“The boggarts, with whose proceedings middle-aged East Lancashire people were made acquainted in their younger days, were, for the most part, undeniably a stupid, vulgar, purposeless assemblage of airy nothings….

…we have far less patience with the vulgarity of the man who laughs at the aged East Lancashire believer in boggarts, than we have with the so-called vulgarity of the man who has not yet wholly lost all power of belief in the supernatural.”

James Mckay, being somewhat incosistent on Boggarts

Boggart and Banshee podcast

If you enjoyed what you heard of Simon then you should check out the podcast that he does with Chris Woodyard here: https://www.strangehistory.net/podcast/, below on spotify or wherever you get podcasts. I really do think it’s one of the best out there for the sheer quality of the discussion and the range of topics covered and it’s given me a lot of ideas for future episodes.

I really do recommend checking out the rest of Simon’s work as well at https://www.strangehistory.net/ – there’s just so much stuff he’s covered that overlaps with Tales of Britain and Ireland – and so much beyond that that I feel you’re almost certain to enjoy it.

Thank you for the 50th

If you’ve read this far then a massive thank you for helping me to get to the 50th episode.

I really enjoy making these and it’s absolutely the support of all the people who have listened, subscribed on patreon, come to live events and given me encouragement over the years that’s meant that this very irregular podcast has survived as long as it has – and indeed hopefully looks forward to many more episodes yet.

A huge thankyou from the bottom of my heart. I absolutely love getting to do this, and I hope you enjoy it too.

Selected Sources

There are a huge of Boggart sources, but most of what I used in the episode was in The Boggart Sourcebook, a collection of accounts pulled together by Simon Young. Below are some of the sources that I used in preparing this episode.

• The Boggart Sourcebook – Dr Simon Young – the place to start if you want first hand accounts of Boggarts. Free accounts of Boggarts from a variety of nineteenth sources and the Boggart census .
• The Boggart – a History – Dr Simon Young – The definitive study on Boggarts
• The Evolution of the East Lancashire Boggart – James McKay (digitised by Simon Young)
• Gristlehurst Boggart in Lancashire Sketches Vol. 2 – Edwin Waugh, as featured in the episode
• Goblin Tales of Lancashire – James Bowker – A work featuring a numer of Boggart stories.