Boggart and Banshee: A Supernatural Podcast
So a Brit and a Yank walk into a supernatural podcast… Nattering on fairies, folklore, ghosts and the impossible ensues. Cross your fingers, turn your pockets inside out and join Simon and Chris as they talk weird history, Fortean mysteries, and things that go bump in the night.
Episodes
45 episodes
Supernatural Serpents: Flying, Milking and Shape-Changing Snakes
Chris and Simon lift the stone on a nest of ancient terrors, with bosom serpents, snakes on tombs and in graves, helpful household ophidians, and the medicinal horrors of Asclepius’s temple. ('It did what to you?!') Simon tells of his own blood...
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Season 4
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Episode 7
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46:46
The Green Children of Woolpit: Fairies or Foreigners?
The Green Children of Woolpit: Fairies or Foreigners? Simon and Chris celebrate the new and definitive book by John Clark on the Green Children of Woolpit: two children with ‘leek-green’ skin who, in the middle of the twelfth century, said that...
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Season 4
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Episode 6
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45:42
Supernatural Music: Fairy Bagpipers, Phantom Fiddlers, and The Choir Invisible
***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 nodd...
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Season 4
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Episode 5
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44:49
Pixy-Led? The Truth about Fairy Disorientation!
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-h...
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Season 4
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Episode 4
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48:21
Hells Bells: Polts, Underground Cities and Supernatural Disinfectant
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...
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Season 4
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Episode 3
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46:34
The Cottingley Fairies Exposed: Beyond Photos and Fakes
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 sight...
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Season 4
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Episode 2
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53:16
Dead Famous: Celebrity Ghosts from Mary Queen of Scots to Michael Jackson
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...
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Season 4
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Episode 1
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43:48
Fairies, Nereids and Trolls: Welcome to the Social Supernatural
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 bel...
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Season 3
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Episode 12
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43:01
Time Slips: Ghosts, Fairies or Black Holes?
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 R...
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Season 3
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Episode 11
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54:57
Mermaids 101
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...
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Season 3
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Episode 10
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48:39
Sex and the Supernatural
Things get steamy in this R-rated episode where Simon and Chris discuss the hot topic of sex and the supernatural. The duo passionately debate the forbidden thrills of witch orgies, fairy intercourse (with one of the seven sisters), spirit marr...
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Season 3
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Episode 9
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45:10
Spectral Evidence: The Supernatural in Court
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...
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Season 3
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Episode 8
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49:19
How to Create a Ghost: the Philip Experiment, 1972-1977
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 rece...
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Season 3
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Episode 7
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49:17
Fairy Gifts and Fairy Heirlooms: Treasures from the Hidden People
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 ...
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Season 3
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Episode 6
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50:07
The Birds: A Flight into the Avian Supernatural
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 creep...
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Season 3
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Episode 5
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47:57
Medieval X-Files: Experiencing the Impossible in the Middle Ages
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 Caes...
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Season 3
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Episode 4
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49:02
The Dancing Fairies of Sennen Cove: An Encounter with the Impossible in Late Victorian Cornwall
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. We...
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Season 3
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Episode 3
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46:53
Shrouded in Mystery: The Origins of the Iconic Sheeted Ghost
Chris and Simon embark on a quest to uncover the origins of the archetypal ghost in a sheet, tracing its lineage back to the death shroud. With a dash of sartorial flair, they explore sheet chic, evolving trends of ghostly attire through the ag...
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Season 3
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Episode 2
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42:43
Haunting Horses: Equine Ghosts, Portents and Shape-Changers
Hold your horses for the latest episode of Boggart and Banshee. Simon and Chris gallop headlong into the world of horse spirits with headless ponies, phantom hoofbeats, and equine shape-changers, including the mischievous colt-pixie and the dre...
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Season 3
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Episode 1
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46:55
Up Up and Away! The Mysteries of Levitation and Teleportation
Chris and Simon set the bar high in this uplifting episode on the mysteries of levitation. Watch our intrepid pair as they soar through cases of saintly and fairy levitation. Simon floats, too, the unbearable lightness of mystic beings, while C...
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Season 2
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Episode 12
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50:41
Do You Believe in Fairies? The Fairy Census 2023
Join hosts Simon and Chris as they delve into modern fairy encounters in a special episode dedicated to the Fairy Census. The Census (freely available online) now brings together almost 1000 records of bizarre, moving and sometimes terrifying c...
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Season 2
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Episode 11
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52:23
The Immortals Among Us: The Wandering Jew and Other Undying Ones
Embark, with Simon and Chris, on a journey to meet the immortals who hide among us. Marvel as the duo unravel the mysteries around elusive figures like the Wandering Jew: he who defies time while indulging in cliff jumps, beer...
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Season 2
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Episode 10
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51:28
Bride and Doom: Sex, Death, and Wedding Superstitions
For the bridal month of June, Chris and Simon discuss wedding divination and love charms both racy and grim, as well as the links between weddings and death. Unlucky wedding omens and dress superstitions, brides stolen by the Good People, trous...
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Season 2
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Episode 9
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54:18
The Fairy Corpses of Arthur's Seat: the Case for Scottish Voodoo
Chris and Simon delve into the mystery of the miniature coffins and their doll-corpses, found on Arthur’s Seat in 1836. Who made them and why? Are they murder memorials, malign magic, or outsider art? The redoubtable pair look at funerary fashi...
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Season 2
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Episode 8
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52:46
The Zombies and Shapeshifters of Medieval Yorkshire
Zombies and Draugar and Byland, oh my! Simon and Chris discuss a series of unique supernatural tales from Byland Abbey and fifteenth-century Yorkshire. There are revenants who talk through their entrails, very busy shapeshifters, and a revolvin...
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Season 2
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Episode 7
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46:08