Where the Map Ends

Oct 2, 2026

The Last Lantern on the Street

A field note on the jack-o'-lantern, from Stingy Jack's doomed coal-lit turnip to the one carved light that always seems to burn longest on the street.

Sep 25, 2026

The Boy Who Brings the Rain

A journal entry on Amefurikozō, the straw-cloaked yōkai said to walk the roads of Japan on rainy nights, and the uncertain business of blaming a child-sized spirit for the weather.

Sep 22, 2026

The Herds That Answer to No One

A look at Flidais, the Irish goddess who is said to herd and protect the wild deer of the forest, and at the old tale of the cattle raid that carries her name.

Sep 21, 2026

The Night the Black Horse Comes

A look at the púca, the shapeshifting night spirit of Irish and wider Celtic folklore, and the blackberry and harvest lore still tied to its name.

Sep 16, 2026

The Silence of the Stillhart

A record of hill-country testimony concerning the Stillhart, a stag so still that trees root in its antlers, and of the silence it lays upon those who see it.

Sep 8, 2026

The Beast Mistaken for Land

A journal entry on the hafgufa, the vast Norse sea creature said to be so still and so large that sailors mistook its back for an island, sometimes at fatal cost.

Sep 2, 2026

A journal entry on the bunyip, the water-dwelling being of Aboriginal folklore from the Murray-Darling basin, and how a warning about dangerous water became, in colonial hands, both a cryptid and an insult.

Aug 31, 2026

Pukwudgie Country

An account of the pukwudgie, the small and sharp-tempered woodland spirits of Wampanoag and Algonquian tradition, and the wary respect they still command in the pine barrens of southeastern Massachusetts.

Aug 30, 2026

Where the Whistlers Fly

On the old English belief in the Seven Whistlers, the unseen birds whose calls marked the boundary between the known road and the country beyond it, and on what the blank edges of old maps once meant to those who had to cross them.

Aug 28, 2026

Marginalia of the Deep

A journal entry tracing the sea serpent from Jörmungandr's coils around Midgard to the sightings and chart-drawings of Norwegian sailors and the naturalists who took their word seriously.

Aug 23, 2026

Where the Ink Runs Out

A look at terra incognita, the old cartographer's term for the unmapped edge of the world, and the dragons, monsters and blank spaces that filled it.

Aug 19, 2026

The Hare That Watches the Moon

A look at the moon-gazing hare of British and Celtic folklore, from Boudicca's battlefield augury to the shapeshifting hare-witches of the northern trials.