***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 finger-chewing nereids! Are our listeners in harmony with the Music of the Spheres or are these mysterious melodies something more mundane? Kudos also to our organ player from Ohio and to the poltergeist who follows us through the recording

Bibliography

Paracoustics: Sound & The Paranormal, edited by Steven T. Parson s & Callum E. Cooper

Music from Elsewhere, Haunting Tunes From Mythical Beings, Hidden Worlds, and Other Curious Sources, Doug Skinner, 2024. Has music notation. “anomalous music” including fairy, trow [troh or trouw ow and troll music, Spiritualist music, “music of the sky people”

No Earthly Sounds- Faery Music, Song & Verse, John Kruse
Music and the paranormal : an encyclopedic dictionary

Melvyn J. Willin (Author)

Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night

By Wolfgang Behringer chapter on unearthly music in the Alps

The Music of “An Adventure”, Ian Parrott, 1966

Barbara Hillers: “Music from the Otherworld: Modern Gaelic Legends about Fairy Music” in Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, Vol. 14 (1994), p59

Ríonach Uí Ógáin: “Music Learned from the Fairies” in Béaloideas Bay la Gish 60-61 (1992-3), pp197-214

Chapter on fairy music in The Peat-Fire Flame: Folk-Tales and Traditions of the Highlands & Islands, Alasdair Alpin MacGregor 1937

https://archive.org/details/peatfireflamefol00macg/page/30/mode/2up?q=gigha&view=theater

Lovely and Mysterious: The Music of Fairyland, Chris Woodyard, Fortean Times October 2014

NAD A study of Some Unusual “Other-World” Experiences, D. Scott Rogo

NAD Vol. 2 A psychic study of the “Music of the Spheres”, D. Scott Rogo

Musica Trascendentale, E. Bozzano, 1943

Get lost in familiar places? You're not alone! Simon and Chris are bewildered by supernatural disorientation, including cases of people being pixy-led by Newfoundland fairies and Balkan witches. Discover traditional defenses against non-human misleaders, from carrying bread to wearing clothes inside out (and yes, sometimes even stripping naked!). While our hosts consider scientific explanations - glitches in human compasses, they grapple with bizarre reports of impossible landscapes: gardens without paths, eighty foot hedges, and fields that trap their victims. Plus, one host recounts their own uncanny pixy-led experience in a car. Care to guess who?

Our readings from this month
Janet Bord, Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People

Dermot Mac Manus, The Middle Kingdom [stray sod]

John Gregorson Campbell, Superstitions of the Highlands & Islands of Scotland, - Gaistig on the Island of Coll

Jeremy Harte, Explore Fairy Traditions

Mirjam Mencej, '‘Something Came Over Him’: Narratives on Being ‘Carried by Witches’ and Their Possible Connection to Altered States of Consciousness', Preternature 7 (2018)

Barbara Rieti, Strange Terrain: The Fairy World in Newfoundland

Chris Woodyard, http://hauntedohiobooks.com/news/the-lost-children/ - disorientation in the woods

S. Young, ‘Pixy-Led in the South West’, Transactions of the Devonshire Association 148 (2016), 311-336 https://www.academia.edu/35045282/Young_Pixy_Led_in_Devon_and_the_South_West

S. Young, ‘Four Neglected Pixy-Led Sources from Devon’, The Devon Historian 85 (2016), 39-49 https://www.academia.edu/33316277/Young_Four_Neglected_Pixy_Led_Sources_from_Devon

Any others to recommend?

Chris and Simon ring the changes on bell folklore: bells mysteriously rung by polts (or rats or monkeys or blackbirds), bells ringing in churches beneath the waves and in coalmines, and bells with the power ('supernatural bleach') to drive away plague, the Devil and the Fae. Bells toll as death omens the 'death-bell' or ringing in the ears predicts imminent death, and Big Ben chimes thirteen when a royal is about to die. Chris finds a-peal in some physics experiments testing whether bells drive away thunderstorms and Simon chimes in with mermaids and their watery bells. Also, Great Aunt Moll, fierce disagreements over servants, and tips on how to keep your teenage kids in at night...

Simon and Chris focus in on the new collection of essays on The Cottingley Fairy Photographs, developing the psychic experiences that inspired the images. The two clash over Elsie and Frances’s personalities, recounting Frances’s sightings of “little men” and Elsie’s run ins with a ghost family haunting her own home. They also trade blows over Cottingley conspiracies. And stay tuned for the unexpected dog invasion!
Available from all good online booksellers, fifteen authors from six nations: The Cottingley Fairy Photographs.

From Tinseltown to Windsor: tales of mysterious encounters with James Dean, Rudolph Valentino, Elvis Presley, Lord Byron (in Florida), Elizabeth the first and second! Does the late Princess Diana visit her butler in Cheshire to console him? Has Marilyn Monroe reincarnated to marry the ghost of Michael Jackson? Are these tulpas, “real” ghostly encounters, or para-social fantasies—where an intimate connection is claimed with a celebrity? How do the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and the Jolly Green Giant fit into the puzzle? Join Chris and Simon as they unravel bizarre celebrity connections—including Chris’ movie star crush and that unforgettable moment at Rome airport (which Simon would rather forget).

Simon has just published a book on European fairies, trolls, and other supernatural creatures, who like humans live in societies: going to war, dancing, seducing, holding weddings and funerals, burying the elderly alive....

Looking at beliefs from Ireland to Ukraine and from Iceland to the Balkans, Simon and Chris debate the merits of trying to classify supernatural beings, find chilling parallels for the ‘fairy blast’ in Croatia and Greece, and shudder at the vengeful Nixen of Germany’s rivers. They also clash about vampires and werewolves in Ohio, but that is another story...

Sometimes these social folklore beings look human, but are given away by their hollow back or a wet hem dragging in the road. They may be helpful to humans, or they may be vampiric, luring young men and women to their doom.

Chris and Simon take a quantum leap as they ponder the mysteries of vanishing houses and time slips. Did two English ladies walk back in time at Versailles? Is there a street in Liverpool where visitors are transported to the 1950s? Did three Royal Navy cadets find themselves in a 14th century plague village? Vanishing hotels and diners, mysterious visions of medieval Paris, and inexplicable forests in Newfoundland: are faulty memories—or fairies—responsible?

Chris and Simon, don their snorkels and flippers to explore the world of mermaids. Join them as they sail past shaved monkeys, triton hot-spots and a prized vintage tuna doll. Dive in, with our daring duo, to search out mermaid fakes in Belfast, the only living Fish woman, and a singing mer-vicar in Cornwall. Then we navigate around mermaid graves in Scotland, murdered sirens in Germany, and inexplicably, a turnip in a bag on Tyneside. Whether you're a folklore buff, a Weeki Wachee groupie, a wet-suit-wearing cryptozoologist or just like the occasional splash this, dear listener, is the episode for you.