Signe Maene
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signemaene.com
Signe Maene
@signemaene.com
Belgian writer of stories inspired by Flemish folklore. Loves spooky woods, fairies, selkies, poetry and pretty shoes :-) BookWormSat with Rachel Deering.🖤 OUT NOW: Flemish Folktales Retold. signemaene.com/links/
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The witches of Flanders are everywhere. Their tales may be forgotten, their voices unheard, but they are anything but quiet.

Step into the darkness and help us give a voice to Flanders' witches! 🌙 kck.st/492NqKt 🌙 #WyrdWednesday
Winter Music, Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946).
January 12, 2026 at 10:32 AM
A Milkmaid on Ice Skates by a Sledge, Henri van Seben (1825-1913)
January 12, 2026 at 10:28 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
Wall hanging (detail) of Blossoming Tree (or Blütenbaum) created by Hermann Obrist around 1895. The work was executed by Berthe Ruchet.
January 11, 2026 at 12:26 PM
Reposted by Signe Maene
“Once in his life may a man send his Soul away, but he who receiveth back his Soul must keep it with him for ever, and this is his punishment and his reward.”

(Oscar Wilde “The Fisherman and his Soul”)

🎨 Jane Kupr

#booksky
January 11, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Reposted by Signe Maene
Garden fresco in the dining room of the villa of Livia at Prima Porta outside Rome.
January 12, 2026 at 6:42 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
Today is Plough Monday, the day when work begins anew after Yuletide has ended on Epiphany in the previous week.

But some find, traditions are a bit... too much.

Read our "Plough Monday" #winterfolklore story below

🎨 Clare Leighton
January 12, 2026 at 6:15 AM
The Saint Martin church in Beauvechain. ❄️🤍❄️
January 10, 2026 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Signe Maene
‘By the grey woods,—by the swamp   
Where the toad and the newt encamp,—   
By the dismal tarns and pools
   Where dwell the Ghouls’ ~ Poe for #BookWormSat
January 10, 2026 at 12:50 PM
Reposted by Signe Maene
“She herself is a haunted house. She does not possess herself; her ancestors sometimes come and peer out of the windows of her eyes and that is very frightening.”

(Angela Carter “The Lady of the House of Love”)

🎨 Igor Karash

#bookwormsat
January 10, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Signe Maene
'I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.'
~Joyce Kilmer

🎨G. M. de L'Aubiniere
#BookWormSat
January 10, 2026 at 6:51 PM
Reposted by Signe Maene
"The house was a sepulchre, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection.”

(Daphne du Maurier)

🎨 Ferdinand Knab

#bookwormsat
January 10, 2026 at 11:00 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
"They see no light and dwell in darkness,
they are clothed like birds in wings for garments,
and dust has gathered on the door and the bolt."

Extract from Ishtar's Descent into the Underworld #BookwormSat

🎨 'Babylon Fallen' by Gustave Doré, 1866
January 10, 2026 at 11:16 AM
'Flowers may open, buds may blossom,
Bud and flower alike are vain;
Her days shall pass like a mournful story in
care and tears and pain.'
-Emily Brontë

🎨Gabriel Ferrier
#BookWormSat
January 10, 2026 at 10:21 AM
'...and I fall into melancholies of honey and roses which are none the less melancholy.'
-George Sand

🎨Kenneth Frazier
#BookWormSat
January 10, 2026 at 10:17 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
“Between the foot of the bed and the closet door, I saw a person in my room. The person was a woman, standing looking at me, with a knife in her hand. It does no credit to my courage to confess it— but the truth IS the truth."

(Wilkie Collins)
 
🎨 Edward Gorey
 
#phantomsfriday
January 9, 2026 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Signe Maene
Blow on, wild wind, thy solemn voice,
However sad and drear,
Is nothing to the gloomy silence
I have had to bear.'
-Anne Brontë

@signemaene.com welcomes you to a sad and bleak #BookWormSat! And on that note, Happy belated New Year!

🎨J. W. Waterhouse
January 10, 2026 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
"As all partings foreshadow the great final one, so, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper what your room and what mine must one day be."

-Bleak House
Charles Dickens
#BookWormSat
January 10, 2026 at 6:04 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
'a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light'

Jonathan Harker describes Castle Dracula as he first encounters it in the Carpathian Mountains in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel.

#BookWormSat #gothic
January 10, 2026 at 8:52 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
“Then I beheld a thousand faces, made
    Purple with cold; whence o’er me comes a shudder,
    And evermore will come, at frozen ponds.”

(Dante, Inferno, Canto XXXII)

🎨 Gustave Doré

#bookwormsat
January 10, 2026 at 9:00 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
The Snow Queen, Thomas Bromley Blacklock, 1902.
January 10, 2026 at 5:38 AM
'I would not exchange the sorrows of my heart
For the joys of the multitude.
And I would not have the tears that sadness makes
To flow from my every part turn into laughter'
-Kahlil Gibran

🎨Anne-Marie Zilberman
#BookWormSat
January 10, 2026 at 9:56 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
A crane that once was a bride, dancing in the snows of the Hidaka Mountains and luring men to their death.

Our 4th #winterfolklore story brings us to Hokkaido today – read it below.

🎨 Utagawa Hiroshige
January 10, 2026 at 6:15 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
‘(L)ike the blackened shrubs of broom, bent by the force of a wind that never ceased, blow as it would…Their minds would be twisted, too, their thoughts evil, dwelling as they must amidst marshland and granite, harsh heather and crumbling stone.’ ~ Daphne du Maurier
#BookWormSat
January 10, 2026 at 6:49 AM
Reposted by Signe Maene
"Cauld blaws the wind frae east to west,
The drift is driving sairly;
Sae loud and shrill's I hear the blast
I'm sure it's winter fairly."
- Robert Burns

This painting by Joseph Farquharson is called 'Cauld Blaws The Wind From East To West' in reference to the poem
#BookWormSat #ScottishArt #poetry
January 10, 2026 at 9:20 AM
According to a Flemish folktale, a rich, greedy farmer who stole from his farmhands was condemned to haunt this world in the shape of a duck after his death. Sometimes he appeared as a dog that bullied the non-ghost animals. Eventually, the ghost was banished to a woodshed.

#PhantomsFriday
January 9, 2026 at 9:50 AM