Tag: supernatural

An exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, ‘Power and Protection‘ is “the first major exhibition to explore the supernatural in the art of the Islamic world”.  The exhibition also offers a rare chance to see one of the highlights of the… Continue reading

We’ve recently digitised a 350-year old manuscript. Nothing very unusual in that, but this one is really rather special. MS 3658 is a record of men and women accused of witchcraft in Scotland in 1658, at a time when the… Continue reading

John Dee (1527–1609) is a man who continues to fascinate us today. As discussed in a previous post, Dee was involved in a large and varied number of activities. He advised Queen Elizabeth I on astrological and scientific matters, published… Continue reading

Ross MacFarlane goes ghost hunting through the ages in the next of our series of Shakespeare-themed posts. This Victorian engraving captures a key scene in one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. Hamlet claims to have seen the ghost of his… Continue reading

In the Library’s Art Collection is a wealth of Japanese iconographic works. Of fiendish interest to us this Halloween, is one fascinating print featuring the demons of Japanese folklore and mythology. The woodcut print by Kunisada Utagawa above features six Japanese masks.… Continue reading

The Smithfield Ghost…[who] scared even the stalwart butchers of that neighbourhood in the 17th century, is probably now forgotten.   So wrote the author of The Mystery and Lore of Apparitions, a work from 1930 whose subtitle fulsomely describes its… Continue reading

To mark Halloween, the following post relates the story of the Hammersmith Ghost – one of the more famous ghost sightings of the nineteenth century. This case captured the public imagination and representations of the ghost through engravings (see left)… Continue reading