Broomstick Accidents
A simple question today. Are witch’s broomsticks dangerous? Well, anything that takes human beings out of the natural element, namely the earth and places them with the birds could go wrong and...
View ArticleFlying with the Devil or with the Mind?
This account dates to southern England and 1873, but to judge from some dating clues in the texts the old man who wrote this extract was probably a boy in the early part of the nineteenth century when...
View ArticleFlying Girlfriend, Frightened Boyfriend and the Witch Orgy
Beach has recently become obsessed with stories about witches’ flying exploits. Here is a tale (sounds almost a folk tale) from the pen of the dreadful Jean Bodin, one of Europe’s most important...
View ArticleWatchers of the Sky: The Modern UFO Cult
The sky was not a big thing in the supernatural before the early modern period. Yes, there were the odd wild hunts, some dragon flights (aurora borealis?) and some airy elementals. But there was no...
View ArticleEarliest Manuscript Broomstick Witches
A few months ago Beach offered the evidence for early images of broomstick riding witches. There are three important manuscript sabbats that come down to us from the period 1450-1500 and that offer the...
View ArticleDeath by Plane
Death by plane, the latest in the unusual execution series. Imagine, you are bundled, for a terrible crime, into a bomber bay and tied to a bomb. The bomb is, then, dropped, after a terrifying wait,...
View ArticleIn Search of the Earliest Fairy Wings
Next year Beach has to write an article on the history of fairy wings, something that he is greatly looking forward to: for absolute beginners fairies were not shown with wings until relatively recent...
View ArticleMaking Fairy Wings
After yesterday’s post on the origin of fairy wings, Beach now asks a parallel question. If from the later 19C children were wearing fairy wings at parties who actually made the damn things. Today...
View ArticleFairy Wings: Bat, Bird or Insect?
Another fairy wings question thinking of the last two posts on the origins of fairy wings and on the production of fairy wings: what do fairy wings look like? Here Beach is going to start wide by...
View ArticleGreek Hot Air Balloon?
This little tale appears in a vaguely sceptical Aulus Gellius, whose Attic Nights provides some very enjoyable reading for those wishing to travel back into the ancient world. that which Archytas the...
View ArticleNotre Dame to Montmartre by Bird Wings in 1840
Beach tries not to exaggerate – at least in this place* – but of his forty odd flight stories this is perhaps his favourite. Not a mean feat given that those stories include flying Anglo-Saxon monks...
View Article1816 Flight Attempt in Paris
Prepare to be humiliated. Your name is Guillaume, the years is 1816, and you have convinced yourself that it is possible to fly with wings attached to your puny arms. Yes, this is the age of balloons,...
View ArticleFlight Hoaxes at Norwich
Beach recently came across this remarkable hoax from Norwich UK from 1826. The public are respectfully informed that Signor Carlo Grain Villecrop [these sound like foreign names made up by an English...
View ArticleFlight with Wings in France 1858
Another in our series of early flight stories. This one comes from France and appeared in the Bradford Observer in 1858. We are informed that a shepherd, residing in a village in the neighbourhood of...
View ArticleAssassination by Plane
Assassination by plane. This is opening a new tag on instances where state actors have deliberately killed marked individuals by shooting down or, otherwise destroying, the plane that they happened to...
View ArticleSmuggling by Hot Air Balloon, 1838
Humans adapt new technologies quickly to almost every imaginable use. This was true with flight. The first manned hot air balloon flew in 1782. The first military use of hot air balloons came at the...
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