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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 16h

Prescient: this year's Wimbledon had a bunch of preening, 'look-at-me' spectators who probably cared little about the tennis but wanted to be seen on TV.

Not saying Nancy's the same, but ...

Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 18h

We recently had a bunch of racist clowns turn up for their organised promotional 'event' and they were completely ignored by the locals.

Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 1d

Found a witch bottle in my Spanish house under the first step of some stairs.

The seal - probably made of wax or resin - is unbroken. Have no idea what’s inside and will get some advice.

Hope the evil spirits keep away.

A small glass bottle with a black seal - it is placed on a blue and gold tile

A small glass bottle held up to the light giving a hint of its contents

A close up of an old glass bottle showing its orange-coloured resin-like contents

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 2d

Thank you. I live in Spain and we have already found a large, carved 'guardian angel' stone during renovation that once sat on the corner of a window. If you (briefly?) follow me I think I can send some photos. It's fascinatng.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 2d

I recently found a sealed witch bottle in my house under the first step of some stairs.

Not quite sure what to do with it.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 2d

Cue: 'You too can have doughnuts like Fanny's ...'

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 2d

Lucky not many of your patients have Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis *

* this is a real condition/disease

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 2d

Well ,without the 'family' connection dating back decades it would probably have been Crystal Palace - but as my grandfather lived in Kentish Town (after the club had moved) it was the family tradition that won the day.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 2d

What, so you support Liverpool one year, then switch to Arsenal, then …

I’m from south London but my grandfather starting supporting Arsenal in the 1930s and it has continued ever since.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 3d

It’s about supporters, not players.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 3d

The house did eventually sell and her parents became aquainted with the new owner over the years.

Interested in the property's history, they once asked: 'Who is that elderly man we occasionally see leaving by the front gate?'

An old photo of a family outside a stone house. They are looking at the camera with one of the children at the top of a ladder

Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 3d

During house viewings – with a slow stream of potential buyers creeping around the place – the normally freezing house was heated a few degrees. Using rudimentary central heating, it made the house more appealing – but it also warmed the rotting flesh of a dead rodent, trapped under a floorboard.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 3d

No priest had ever visited to exorcise the spirit, nor any ouija board used to try and make contact. The old man, it seemed, was part of the house's DNA, like the woodworm and drafts.

But there was no ghost.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 3d

When it came to selling the house thirty years later, the ghost made a new 'appearance'. Every time a potential buyer was shown around, a foul smell filled an upstairs corridor.

So revolting, and no matter how many windows were thrown open, the visitors left. The ghost just didn't want them to go.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 3d

Despite the ghostly happenings, she was reassured by a treasured childhood book, 'The Supernatural Explained'.

There was always a natural explanation for most things: drying beams creaking as they shrunk, a ticking clock sending vibrations along a pipe in the floor to a distant part of the house.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 3d

The ghost appeared (or was heard) mainly in an upstairs corridor of the house, and, once in a while, by the front gate.
In the bleariness of sleep, her brother once saw an old man sitting on the end of his bed.

Other odd happenings – mainly scratching sounds – were attributed to the ghost.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 3d

Surrounded by tall, whispering trees it was certainly spooky – even the Halloween trick 'r treaters avoided the place.

People who'd lived in the area for years would turn up at the door saying the house had always been haunted, their chilling memories stretching back to their youth.

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Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · 3d

* A ghost story for Halloween *

This is a true story about a ghost who didn't want my family to move house.

When my partner was aged ten her family moved to an old farmhouse in County Wicklow, Ireland. It was a lovely place at the edge of the village, extended over the years.

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Reposted by Fish Shambles

Fish Shambles @fishshambles.bsky.social · Nov 12

My great-grandmother, Nan (bottom left) outside the Rose & Crown pub, Kentish Town, London, 1927.

A day out – perhaps to the coast – on a charabanc (a type of early motor coach).

The pub is still there as is the house opposite where my family lived.