Boggart and Banshee: A Supernatural Podcast Chris and Simon

Prepare to be haunted by the evidence as star witnesses Chris and Simon summon compelling arguments for paranormal claims in court. Our learned friends cross-examine the standard of proof for mermaid and sasquatch affidavits, exhume the details of changeling murder cases, and put a rapping medium on trial for disturbing the peace in church. The dearly departed won't escape scrutiny either, as our hosts investigate cases of defamation from beyond the grave and leave no tombstone unturned in th...

Simon raps once for ‘yes’ and Chris raps twice for ‘no ‘over the results of the five-year ‘Philip Experiment’. Canadian parapsychology researchers invented a fictional character, the dashing but suicidal cavalier Philip. Then they began to receive communications from Philip through rappings and table tippings. Expect to learn how you can best create a ghost at home: glasses of wine, sing-songs and wishful thinking top the list. The correct pronunciation of Tibetan tulpa (sorry sprulpa). And a...

The first rule of fairy gifts is you don’t talk about fairy gifts. Chris and Simon recklessly flout that rule in this look at artifacts stolen from or given by the fairies to human neighbours. Some are exotic, like The Luck of Edenhall and the Fairy Flag of Dunvegan. Others, like elf shot and tiny tobacco pipes, are common field finds. Chris waxes lyrical about fairy textiles, and the connection between Huldrefolk bridal crowns and the Virgin Mary. Simon shoe-horns in a discussion of tiny foo...

Simon and Chris are all atwitter over stories of supernatural birds: spectral ravens, death-predicting rooks, ghostly-bloodied doves, glass-smashing partridges and, the horror, housebound robins. Chris causes a flutter with an intolerably creepy magpie rhyme; our thoughtful pair wonder at phantom birds often being heard and not seen; and why oh why do birds keep attacking Simon?

Chris and Simon cross swords over a medieval X-files collection: necromancers, monsters emerging from graves, an encounter with a fairy-like Woman in White, the walking dead, and, best of all, a trustworthy demon named Oliver, all found in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s thirteenth-century Dialogue on Miracles. Although Caesarius’s purpose was to instruct Cistercian novices, these stories of medieval high strangeness can still delight the Fortean, the anomalist and anyone else interested in the su...

In the 1880s, two sisters had an encounter with three gyrating, squeaking, white veiled supernatural women at Sennen Cove, Cornwall. Chris and Simon dance around the topics of Cornish otherworldliness, supernatural languages and circle jigs. Were the women goddesses, fairies, vestal virgins or amorous cats? Where do fairies 'foot it all the night'? Why do so many supernatural encounters report high-pitched voices? And most importantly did the ladies of Sennen Cove mess with Simon's mike, whic...