Who Is David Castleton?
I’m a best-selling author of non-fiction, who explores the gothic, folklore, psychogeography and weird history.
My books include Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends (Shire/Bloomsbury) and the forthcoming Atlas Gothica: An Alternative Guide to the World’s Most Curious Destinations (Headline/Hachette).
I’m a winner of the Go Gothic Short Fiction Prize and author of the gothic/magical realist novel The Standing Water (Steel String Books).
To find out more about me, click here.
David Castleton – Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends
‘A valuable and fascinating read … the stories should delight and amuse.’
‘With colourful stories and gorgeous photographs … Castleton makes a convincing case in this enjoyable guide that British churches are delightfully weird.’
This fascinating book examines weird artefacts in churches across Britain and explores the strange stories and legends linked to them. From dragon-slaying spears and the ribs of monstrous cows to pagan altars and pyramid tombs, from reindeer-horned dancers to witches’ cauldrons and mummified skulls, Castleton proves Britain’s churches really are repositories of the bizarre and intriguing.
The Serpent’s Pen – Recent Blog Posts
Cleopatra’s Needle – London & New York’s Cursed & Haunted Egyptian Obelisks
In London and New York, stand two ancient and strikingly similar obelisks. Close to Waterloo Bridge, the London monument towers beside the Thames while in New York what seems to be its twin looms over [...]
Kensal Green Cemetery’s Strange Ghost Story – Grave 132 Please, Operator
One of the oddest London ghost stories I’ve heard concerns Kensal Green Cemetery, a story that somehow combines the usual elements of gothic tombs and crooked headstones with a macabre love interest and even the [...]
The Monstrous & Terrifying Wild Pigs of Hampstead’s Sewers
Today Hampstead is one of London's most exclusive districts. Home to politicians, rock stars, writers (more successful than this one), actors and TV personalities, Hampstead's houses can go for well over £2 million. Beneath the [...]
New York’s Towering Owl-Shaped Tomb – a Decadent Monument of the Gilded Age
Manhattan was once intended to host a most macabre monument, a monument that would dwarf the Statue of Liberty and other well-known landmarks. This monument, simply put, would have been an enormous and extravagant tomb [...]
Mummia – How Ground Egyptian Mummy Cured All Ailments & Painted Masterpieces
One of the weirdest substances in medical history – a substance Europeans once slathered on rashes and wounds and gulped down in drinks – was known as mummia. The word 'mummia' has a resonance of [...]
Baroness Demidoff – the Glass-Coffined ‘Vampire Princess’ of Père Lachaise Cemetery
Père Lachaise Cemetery is the largest necropolis in Paris and the world's most visited graveyard. This elegant city of the departed contains over one million interments and undulates across 44 tree-scattered hectares. It's famous for [...]
The Real Miss Havisham? Lady Lewson’s 116 Years amidst Cobwebs & Grime
One of the most gothic – and sinister – characters in the work of Charles Dickens is the wealthy recluse Miss Havisham. A bride jilted on the morning of her wedding day, Miss Havisham has [...]
The Richmond Vampire – Virginia’s Tunnel-Haunting Nosferatu
In Richmond's historic Hollywood Cemetery – in addition to the graves of presidents and Pulitzer Prize winners – is an infamous mausoleum. This tomb – incorporating Ancient Egyptian and Masonic designs and even marked with [...]
The Unlucky Mummy – Curse of the British Museum & Sinker of the Titanic?
If you were to wander into the Egyptian section of London's British Museum, you might notice – among the gloomy sarcophagi, huge stone pharaohs, bandaged mummies, sombre pillars and statues of aloof deities – a [...]
7 Really Weird Objects in British Churchyards
We may think there's nothing that unusual about the 'typical British churchyard'. The lines of worn and lichen-spotted gravestones, the land made bumpy by centuries of burials, the narrow path winding between the tombs [...]
Mother Damnable – the Wicked Witch of Camden Town Tube Station
Towards the end of the 1600s, in what would become the London suburb of Camden Town, the most incredible event is said to have taken place. At a crossroads – on the site of what's [...]
Joe Magarac – the Giant Superhuman Steelworker of American ‘Fakelore’
In the early 20th century, in the steel mills in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a strange folklore seems to have grown up – a folklore not of villages and forests and witches and ghosts, but [...]
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lizzie Siddal & an Infamous Exhumation in Highgate Cemetery
Late at night on 5th October 1869, a group were gathered around a graveside in London's Highgate Cemetery. As workmen dug down into the grave, a bonfire burned, providing an eerie flickering light and keeping [...]
Thomas Chatterton – Doomed Poet, Gothic Hero or Cynical Forger?
The poet Thomas Chatterton – who died in August 1770 in a London garret aged just 17 – would for decades afterwards be an icon for struggling artists and misunderstood wordsmiths. He'd be an archetype [...]
The Devil’s Footprints – Devon’s Diabolical Hoofmarks in the Snow
On the night of 8th-9th February 1855, a long and meandering trail of mysterious marks was left in the snow across the English county of Devon. The marks resembled hoofprints, somewhat similar to a donkey's. [...]