This version of the legend in all its melodramatic Victorian glory is adapted from the ‘Lancashire Burns’ Edwin Waugh’s dialect telling.[i] Most of the action takes place a little outside Calderdale, but I’ve decided to include it here. One snowbound mid-winter evening, a party of travellers were sheltering from the weather by the warmContinue reading “Brown Dick of Blackstone Edge”
Author Archives: Paul Weatherhead
Old Red Eyes ~ The Ghost of Todmorden Station
There was a great deal of alarm in Todmorden at the end of May 1864.[i] Rumours had circulated that one Saturday at midnight, the night watchman on the station platform had seen a ghost and that subsequently both the ghost and the watchman had disappeared. The following Sunday and Monday great crowds gathered round theContinue reading “Old Red Eyes ~ The Ghost of Todmorden Station“
Return of the Slasher… with Drugs?
In the November of 1938, reports began to emerge of a razor blade wielding maniac roaming the streets of Halifax and mounting violent and terrifying slashing attacks on his mostly female victims. The fear of this attacker led to vigilante mobs roaming the streets, businesses staying closed and widespread fear and panic. The attacks escalatedContinue reading “Return of the Slasher… with Drugs?”
Todmorden UFOs ~ Previously undiscovered historical UFO sightings from the 19th and early 20th centuries!
This experience can be found in a letter to the editor of the Todmorden Advertiser from 1932, and is perhaps the strangest of the pre-saucer era sightings I uncovered in researching Weird Calderdale. It is signed ‘Old Lydgatian’ and is reproduced below in full. A CURIOUS PHENOMENON “Sir,- One day this year, in about theContinue reading “Todmorden UFOs ~ Previously undiscovered historical UFO sightings from the 19th and early 20th centuries!”
Weird Calderdale Bonus Chapter ~ The Halifax Witch Doctor
Here’s a chapter about a strangely comic episode from the mid 19th century that didn’t make the final edition of the book due to space considerations…. The Halifax Witch Doctor ‘The plaster and the pills, and the bottle that I gave him would fotch t’ watter from him. The pills are harmless. I know whatContinue reading “Weird Calderdale Bonus Chapter ~ The Halifax Witch Doctor”
Weird Calderdale: New Edition available now!
Ghosts, aliens, vampires, witches, wizards, outlaws, mysterious deaths, horrible murders and hysterical mass panics in Halifax and the Calder Valley. This new edition of a local history cult classic has been fully revised and greatly expanded to include 20 chapters of fully referenced West Yorkshire weirdness. Support your local bookshop: buy Weird Calderdale from theseContinue reading “Weird Calderdale: New Edition available now!”
Paul Weatherhead 