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I’ve just been to Europe’s weirdest theme park – and came face to face with Josef Stalin
There aren’t many theme parks that place statues of Soviet leaders next to Snow White and her seven dwarfs, but you’ll find one in southern Lithuania. Keith Lowe takes us on a tour of one of Europe’s most bizarre – and controversial – tourist attractions
I am standing in a clearing in a Lithuanian forest, surrounded by guard towers and electrified fences. To all intents and purposes, it looks like I’m in a Soviet prison camp. Up above me a loudspeaker barks out orders in Russian. I hurry along a corridor of barbed wire. Up ahead, peeping ominously through the trees, I can see the barrel of an anti-aircraft gun. But all is not as it seems. It doesn’t take long to realise that the loudspeaker is playing some sort of recording on a loop. The guards in the towers are not real either, but poorly disguised mannequins in theatre costume. And who are they guarding? Beneath them, in the barbed wire enclosure, is a row of Communist statues and half a dozen grazing llamas. Further along there are emus, cockatoos, a depressed-looking brown bear, and some statues of mass murderers. As for the gun, when I reach it, I discover that the only thing it is guarding is a children’s playground. Rifles and roundabouts, cockatoos and cattle-trucks, Lenin and llamas: welcome to Grūtas Park, Europe’s weirdest open-air museum. Its combination of terror and kitsch is so controversial that it almost got shut down. I first came here in 2018 as part of my research for a study of Second World War monuments. But I felt compelled to return, because I still can’t quite believe that this place actually exists. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/1DSC1437-Lenin-Llamas-05-18c368a-e1772191107175.jpg" width="1506" height="1000" alt="A photograph showing a white llama grazing on the grass alongside a tall stone marble statue of a bust of man. In the background is a lake, several trees and a brown llama laying on the ground" title="A llama grazes next to a bust of Vladimir Lenin at Grūtas Park, Lithuania. The unconventional visitor attraction, opened in 2001, is filled with relics of the former Soviet Union (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> A brutal past Grūtas Park has its roots in Lithuania’s very troubled history. Like several of its Baltic neighbours, Lithuania began the 20th century as part of Russia and only gained its independence in the chaotic aftermath of the First World War. Just over 20 years later, at the beginning of the Second World War, it was invaded by Soviet troops all over again. Then came the Nazis, followed once again by the Soviets three years later – and with each new invasion came new brutality. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/42Y7B3TJ-ac517fe-e1772189389657.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black‑and‑white historical photograph of several military trucks driving down a city street lined with bare trees and tall buildings. The open‑back trucks are filled with uniformed soldiers wearing helmets, seated closely together as the convoy moves forward" title="Soviet troops enter the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, in June 1940. The country would be invaded by Nazi Germany a year later (Image by Alamy)" /> In 1945, the country was swallowed whole into the Soviet Union. Anyone who refused to accept the nation’s new Stalinist rulers was arrested, deported to Siberia, imprisoned or executed. Tens of thousands of Lithuanians resisted this new oppression. They took to the forests and fought pitched battles against the combined forces of the Red Army and the Soviet secret police but in the end the uprising was brutally crushed: according to the Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, around 300,000 Lithuanians were sent to Soviet gulags between 1945 and 1950, where between a third and a half of them died. Read more | Why did the Soviet Union adopt the hammer and sickle, and how did it become a symbol of communist revolution? The Soviets then embarked on a program of Russification throughout the country. Russian speakers began moving into Lithuanian territories in large numbers; their descendants still live there today. Lithuanian culture was thoroughly purged of its bourgeois influences, and replaced by Socialist literature, art and architecture. Statues of Soviet heroes began to spring up in every town square, along with victory monuments and memorials to the glory of the Red Army. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/5GettyImages-839288220-170ae8f-e1772189538619.jpg" width="1500" height="1001" alt="A black‑and‑white photograph of a neatly arranged camp made up of small, identical buildings with pitched roofs and white picket fences. The buildings sit in rows on either side of a straight central path that leads to a decorative entrance structure with patterned columns. A few people walk along the paths or stand near the buildings. The surrounding landscape is flat and open, with only a few distant structures visible beyond the camp." title="A Soviet gulag in the Komi Republic, in what is now northwest Russia. Around 300,000 Lithuanians were sent to such camps between 1945 and 1950 (Image by Getty Images)" /> Marx and mushrooms When the country finally regained its independence in 1990, almost all the monuments to Lenin and other Communist figures were torn down. Countless statues were decapitated, cut into pieces with blowtorches, or crushed into rubble. Some were even dynamited. In an attempt to save some of these sculptures for posterity, the new Lithuanian government decided to rescue some of them, with the vague idea that they might one day go on display in a museum somewhere. They invited institutions to bid for the right to display the statues, but unfortunately none of the nation’s museums was willing to take the project on without some kind of state funding. There was only one bid – from an entrepreneur named Viliumas Malinauskas – that did not ask for any government money at all. Malinauskas offered to pay all the transport, maintenance and restoration costs out of his own pocket. He was duly awarded the contract. This was where the controversy began. Because Malinauskas was not a historian, an art critic or a museum professional – or indeed anyone who had any background in this kind of work. In fact, he was a former wrestling champion who made his living as a mushroom farmer. He now has a multi-million-dollar business exporting his mushrooms all over the world. Some of his proposals for the sculpture park were quite bizarre. He wanted to build a special railway line, so that tourists from Vilnius could be brought here on cattle trucks, as if they were being deported to a Soviet-era gulag. He wanted to hire actors who would pretend to be soldiers, herding the tourists onto the trains. For the full gulag experience, Grūtas Park itself would be surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers, and the monuments would be displayed as if they were part of a Siberian prison camp. Unsurprisingly, critics began to call Malinauskas’s project a “Stalin theme park”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/6GettyImages-805141-514324c-e1772189666539.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A man in a blue suit and red patterned tie sits outdoors on a large stone bust of a bearded man. His hand rests on the top of the sculpture. Beside him is another stone bust of a different bearded figure. Both sculptures are set on the ground in a wooded area with tall evergreen trees in the background." title="Grūtas Park’s founder, Viliumas Malinauskas, poses for the camera in 2001. The former wrestler wanted to build a special railway line so that tourists could travel to the park as though they were being transported to a gulag (Image by Getty Images)" /> It did not take long for the complaints to come rolling in. Local politicians opposed the building of the park. National politicians opposed the building of the rail line. A petition was drawn up denouncing the whole idea of his sculpture park, which was signed by Catholic Church officials, national NGOs, prominent academics, art professors and over a million other people around the world. “This part of history is full of suffering,” said one member of parliament, Juozas Galdikas, in 2000. “It should not be used for show business.” Read more | Nazino was Stalin’s worst labour gulag. Its inmates knew it by another name: Cannibal Island Perhaps the strongest voice of opposition came from former victims of the regime. More than 30 groups of former partisans and political prisoners banded together to protest about the sculptures going on display. They accused Malinauskas of trying to profit from their misery and described the statues as “monsters from a horror film”. Some of them even went on hunger strike. “Imagine yourself as a resident in a small village,” said one former independence fighter named Leonas Kerosierius, “and someone came and attacked your village, killed your brother and raped your daughter. Would you allow your neighbour to build a park for these executioners and rapists, or make money off these crimes?” MPs pushed for a vote in parliament to take back the statues and keep them in State hands, and their resolution was accepted by a majority. But their victory was short-lived, because it was overturned by the Constitutional Court: Malinauskas had won the government contract fair and square, and Parliament had no right to take it away from him simply on a matter of taste. The most they could do was to create a government watchdog to oversee the construction of the sculpture park. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/2GettyImages-870579120-2d552aa-e1772189931245.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photograph of 5 stone busts of men in a line. Behind them is a forest of tall fir trees" title="A small portion of the park’s historic busts. From left to right: Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Vincas Mickevičius (Lithuanian communist leader) and Joseph Stalin (Image by Getty Images)" /> The whole controversy quickly became international news. Not only did it feature in newspapers throughout the Baltic countries, but also in other parts of Europe. It even made the newspapers in America, parts of Asia and Australia. “Miss the Soviet Era? Come to Stalin World” ran the headline in The Sydney Morning Herald. Snow White and Stalin Grūtas Park officially opened to the public in 2001 and immediately proved a hit with visitors from all over Lithuania and beyond. Even before the official opening it had already seen around 100,000 visitors. Since then, it has added to its collection and become quite a well-established tourist destination. People still occasionally call this place ‘Stalin World’, but there is actually only one full-size statue of Stalin in the whole park. I found him just beyond the zoo, peeping out between the trees like some fairytale troll. (The comparison to a fairytale is not made randomly: in a nearby glade, closer to the children’s playground, there is also a set of sculptures representing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The difference between folk tale and reality is not always scrupulously delineated here.) It is easy to see why so many people became upset when the creation of this park was first announced. Many dissidents had spent their whole lives struggling against the Soviet system. In 1991 they had torn down these icons of Soviet power with great joy: it must have been deeply painful to see them so lovingly restored and put back on their pedestals, regardless of the setting. The resurrection of Stalin’s statue was perhaps the most painful thing of all. This man had been responsible for tens of millions of deaths across eastern Europe, and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians. He had not been on public display for decades. (This particular statue had been taken down by the Communists themselves, back in 1960.) And yet here he was, standing in a sunny glade, waiting for tourists to come and take selfies with him. Read more | Cold War summits: how USA & USSR leaders worked to end the conflict Critics pointed to a worrying trend in contemporary Russia for the rehabilitation of Stalin’s memory, with brand new memorials to him being raised in many parts of Russia, particularly since the start of the current war with Ukraine. What if this trend were to spread to Lithuania and beyond? What if Grūtas Park, too, were to become a 21st-century shrine to this monstrous dictator? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/P1020458-Snow-White-7-dwarves-ad174d4-e1772190445583.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A group of dark wooden sculptures is arranged among tall pine trees in a sunlit forest. Most of the carved figures are seated or kneeling, some with helmets or rounded headgear, while one taller figure stands upright at the center. The sculptures are spaced evenly across the forest floor. In the background, there are a few simple buildings with wooden or metal siding, one marked with graffiti. Sunlight filters through the trees, casting long shadows across the ground." title="Sculptures depicting Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs can be found close to the park’s full-size Stalin statue. “The difference between folk tale and reality is not always scrupulously delineated here,” says Keith Lowe (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> The power of ridicule Had this statue, and all the others, been given to one of the other bidders for the monument park contract, perhaps there would have been less controversy. Europos Parkas, in Vilnius, wanted to exhibit the statues purely as works of art, alongside a whole variety of avant-garde creations by artists from all over the world. Here, perhaps, the aesthetic qualities of a Stalin statue might have been divorced from its political meaning. The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights in Vilnius also applied for the contract. It would have displayed the monuments in its main hall and courtyard. Had Stalin’s statue been placed here, it would have been seen alongside an extensive exhibition dedicated to his crimes. Many of those who protested against Grūtas Park wanted the museum to have won the bid precisely because it would have put the benign looking statues of figures like Stalin in a much, much grimmer context. But there is something about the way that Grūtas Park displays its statues that is enormously refreshing. Seeing Stalin with a squirrel on his head takes away some of the nightmarish power he continues to exercise over us from beyond the grave. When birds are nesting in Lenin’s fingers, and children are climbing over the guns that were once aimed at Lithuanian partisans, these symbols of state power no longer seem as frightening as they once did. This seems to be exactly what Viliumas Malinauskas is trying to achieve. In an interview with the Guardian shortly before the park opened, the proprietor was unapologetic about his peculiar approach to Lithuania’s troubled history. “People can come here and joke about the sculptures,” he said. “And that will mean Lithuania is no longer afraid of Communism.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/02/9P1020459-2-Playground-with-military-van-2d8059e-e1772190762404.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A colorful playground structure sits in a sandy, wooded clearing. It includes a red‑and‑green climbing frame, a curved yellow slide, and a green cylindrical tunnel element. Tall pine trees surround the area, casting dappled light on the ground. In the background, partly hidden by trees and bushes, an old green vehicle—possibly a van or small truck—rests near the edge of the clearing." title="A children’s climbing frame is sited metres away from a disused military vehicle. Does such a juxtaposition make Lithuania’s troubled past seem less frightening? (Image by Keith Lowe)" /> Grūtas Park is a bizarre mix of playground, zoo and atrocity museum. It trivialises the past in the most appalling ways, especially with its Disneyfied guard towers and barbed wire. Some of the museum displays in its barrack-style huts are more nostalgic than critical of the regime. And its commercial exploitation of Lithuania’s painful past is questionable to say the least: I managed to buy myself a Stalin mug and a Stalin keyring in the gift shop on my way out. In fact, there are so many things about Grūtas Park that could be considered offensive that I hardly know where to start; and yet somehow, through its sheer banality, it comes closer to freeing Lithuania from its history than any of the more serious and thoughtful monuments that have been so carefully produced in other parts of Europe. The magic ingredient is ridicule. I’m not sure how much this ridicule was ever intended by the park’s founder and owner, and how much is just a function of a ridiculous set-up. Nevertheless, it is there, and it is a powerful antidote to the atmosphere of fear that plagued this country for so many years. Keith Lowe is an author and former military history publisher who has spent more than 20 years writing about the Second World War and its aftermath. His most recent book is Naples 1944: War, Liberation and Chaos (William Collins, 2024)
Toilets through time, from sponges on sticks to medieval privies
What was it like to do your business in a Roman communal toilet? How did Romans really use a sponge on a stick? HistoryExtra's David Musgrove explains all
In this whistle-stop tour of how our ancestors have used the loo, HistoryExtra’s David Musgrove heads to the National Trust's Chedworth Roman Villa in Gloucestershire, to see what we can learn from the most universal of all experiences. With expertise from historians Hannah Platts, James Wright, Tracy Borman and Jerry White, he explores the ins and outs of how toilets have worked through time – from innovations in carrying away our waste to a remarkable ancient edict that demanded flatulence. View Green Video on the source website Find out more about the history of toilets in our podcast mini-series, when Musgrove revisits long-past lavatories in the company of leading historical experts to uncover what we can learn about our ancestors and their eras – from the sociable long-drops of Roman Britain and draughty medieval garderobes to the cesspits of the Victorian slums.
From maniacal horses to bat-men on the moon: 14 strange newspaper headlines from history
Muckraking journalists and money-hungry editors have been publishing sensational stories since newspapers first began. Hilary Mitchell flicks through the archives and reveals some of the weirdest press cuttings of all time
1. "German ghouls: corpses converted to soap and explosives” Yorkshire Telegraph and Star, April 1917 If you think that ‘fake news’ is a new phenomenon, think again. One of the most notorious pieces of misinformation actually dates to the First World War. During the conflict, a gruesome rumour spread that German leaders were using “Kadaververwertungsanstalten” – ‘corpse factories’ – to turn the dead bodies of their own soldiers into products such as soap, candles, and even bombs. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/German-Ghouls-0741ad1-e1769765897344.jpg" width="620" height="411" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline GERMAN GHOULS across the top" title="German leaders were creating soap and explosives out of corpses, claimed this 1917 newspaper article. In reality, they were victims of a deliberately shocking propaganda campaign (Image by the Newspaper Archive)" /> The lurid story unsurprisingly sparked widespread outrage, but it wasn’t true. It was a purposefully shocking piece of war propaganda, and the German government protested in the strongest terms against the “loathsome and ridiculous” claims. However, that didn’t stop the Yorkshire Telegraph and Star gleefully reporting on the hoax in April 1917, in an article that claimed the Germans were making “dividends from death” by distilling glycerine from dead bodies “and so obtaining some portion of their explosives.” 2. "O Dammit wants his name changed" The Richmond Climax, 6 June 1913 Orlando Dammit was featured in the 6 June issue of the equally curiously named Richmond Climax newspaper. The short article explained that the man wanted to change his name from “O. Dammit” because he “can’t tell whether people are calling him or merely venting injured feelings when they say ‘O, dammit.’” It’s not clear what he wanted to change his name to, or if he was successful in his attempts to change it, but presumably he would have been happy with anything that didn’t begin with the letter ‘O’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Vampires-in-Rhode-Island-Public-Domain-3e1421d-e1769766218331.jpeg" width="620" height="413" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline BELIEVE IN VAMPIRES across the top" title="Rhode Islanders were convinced the undead were sucking the blood of their own relatives and causing consumption – sparking ‘vampire hysteria’ throughout the state" /> 3. "Vampires in Rhode Island" Boston Evening Transcript, 18 January 1896 On 18 January 1896, a particularly strange story ran in the Boston Evening Transcript. The headline was ‘Vampires in Rhode Island’, and the story went on to explain: “Respectable people [are] digging up the bodies of defunct relatives… The belief is that persons dead of consumption leave their graves and suck the blood of members of their own families.” This outbreak of ‘vampire panic’ was sparked by a wave of tuberculosis (then known as consumption) in New England. Some rural communities decided that the often-fatal illness was the work of the undead and began exhuming bodies, looking for what they believed were signs of vampirism, such as fresh blood in the heart. The most famous case occurred in 1892 in Exeter, Rhode Island, when the body of a young woman called Mercy Brown was exhumed. Her heart was reduced to ashes and given to her sick brother as a remedy for his own illness. He died anyway – after all, burned organs aren’t a cure for TB – but the story became a lasting symbol of the panic. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Ouija-boardPublic-Domain-7d2ac73-e1769766295767.png" width="904" height="1000" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline CONSTANT USE OF OUIJA BOARD DRIVES SEVEN PEOPLE INSANE across the top" title="Rooted in the Victorian obsession with spiritualism, encounters with ouija boards were common. The story of Adeline Bottini, featuring an alleged séance in the nude, was particularly dramatic" /> 4. "Constant use of ouija board drives seven people insane" The Long Beach Telegram and The Long Beach Daily News, 4 March 1920 In 1920, Long Beach newspapers reported that a 15-year-old girl in California had introduced “the [ouija board] and convinced other six [people] of its spiritual power”. The story went on to claim that all seven of the people involved were now under observation in the “insane ward”. The girl at the heart of the scandal was one Adeline Bottini, who police alleged was performing séances in a state of undress, “the better to communicate with the spirits”. Ouija boards were first commercialised in 1890 by a businessman from Baltimore, towards the tail end of the Victorian obsession with spiritualism: the belief that the living could communicate with the spirits of the dead. The craze began in 1848 with the Fox sisters in New York state, whose séances drew wide attention, and it didn’t take long before copycat socialites started to host similar gatherings. At these, participants were – unlike poor Adeline Bottini – always fully clothed. Read more | Fake news and the Dreyfus affair: the media-fuelled scandal that divided France <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Boy-Eats-BibleGettyImages-164563808-960838d-e1769766508270.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A cartoon of a boy wearing a pink T shirt, green trousers, a blue backwards cap on his head, and blue shoes, eating a blue Bible" title="In one of the more trivial stories from rural 1920s Hilton, Mellzo McCoy munched on the family Bible, resulting in an appearance in the newspaper – and a stomach ache" /> 5. "Boy eats Bible" The Hilton Record, 17 June 1926 “Unknown to his parents, Mellzo McCoy ate the family Bible with the exception of the covers and a few pages. The loss was only discovered when Mellzo complained of a stomach ache.” This 1926 snippet in The Hilton Record – the weekly community newspaper for the village of Hilton in Monroe County, New York – definitely won’t win any awards for the most detailed news article of all time. This is probably why it was buried on page eight of the publication, alongside another article (‘Bee Causes Wreck’) about a man losing control of his vehicle after a bee got into it. When it comes to stories like this, it’s important to understand how local papers worked at the time. Rural weeklies like the Record often had unpaid neighbourhood correspondents who contacted them with (fairly trivial) stories about what had happened in their neck of the woods. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Terrified-by-Donkey-f14e9ba-e1769766740393.jpg" width="620" height="414" alt="A black and white illustration shows a woman falling to the floor in front of a donkey" title="Scared to death by the sound of a donkey’s footsteps behind her, a young woman’s sad demise ended up in the Illustrated Police News, known for its lurid coverage (Image by The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive)" /> 6. "Trampled to death by a donkey" Illustrated Police News, 21 July 1883 The Illustrated Police News was a sensationalist Victorian weekly newspaper published in Britain, infamous for its lurid crime coverage and emotive illustrations. It launched in 1864 and this rather sad story ran in their 21 July 1883 edition. It recounts the final hours in the life of a young woman who had set off to visit her grandparents and heard footsteps behind her. She ran for her life. Her grandfather found her body the next day, noticed his donkey standing close by and concluded that she’d been frightened by the sound of the animal following her home. Although the stories featured in the Illustrated Police News were reported in a very melodramatic way, they were, unlike the German ‘corpse factory’ article above, completely true. The publication’s content, though bombastic, was based on police reports, coroners’ inquests and court reporting. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Children-Not-Fish-Public-Domain-889d371.jpg" width="299" height="258" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline CHILDREN NOT "FISH" SO CAN'T BE MAILED across the top" title="After at least two separate attempts to send children via mail, the postal department had to step in. Children, they said in 1920, were not “harmless animals” so couldn’t be mailed" /> 7. "Children not 'fish' so can't be mailed" Des Moines Tribune, 16 June 1920 “Children do not come within the classification of ‘harmless animals’, and therefore are not mailable,” the Des Moines Tribune reported the postal department as saying in 1920, apparently prompted by two applications to ship children around the country inside packages. Parcel post was still a relatively new phenomenon in 1920, having been introduced in 1913. Some inventive parents realised that the cost of sending a package was often cheaper than a train ticket and news reports of the time carried stories about attempts to mail children: for example, in St Louis in 1913, a mother allegedly tried to mail her eight-year-old to relatives a few hundred miles away and in 1914, a 10-year-old-boy was purportedly mailed as a parcel to his grandmother. 8. "Battle with a bald eagle" San Francisco Call, 9 October 1891 The San Francisco Call was known for its flamboyant coverage, and this thrilling tale of a balloonist’s high-altitude encounter with an eagle, published in 1891, is a great example. The article describes the ascent of a 24-year-old named Arthur Cleveland in a hot air balloon. Once he had climbed to 3,000 feet, “he saw a huge bird flying swiftly toward him” and became aware it was a bald eagle. The article goes on to describe Cleveland’s daring – and victorious – battle with the rogue bird. He later retrieved the dead eagle, only to discover the local constable wasn’t too impressed; he suggested Cleveland be fined $550 for killing a protected species. Read more | A Victorian-era journalist snuck into an infamous asylum, and what she exposed shocked New York <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Real-Puppy-Love-Public-Domain.jpg-f48d0e7-e1769767410147.png" width="620" height="413" alt="A newspaper clipping with the headline REAL PUPPY LOVE HERE AS DOGS GO ELOPING across the top" title="Canines under the spell of Cupid were the news of the day in 1910s Minneapolis – showing the sensationalism of early 20th-century press" /> 9. "Real puppy love here as dogs go eloping" The Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 2 March 1911 It must have been a slow news day in Minneapolis on 2 March 1911, as one of the headlines in the Tribune appears to have been about dogs having sex. The rest of the headline reads: ‘Canines Fall Under Shafts of Cupid and Kennel Society is Stirred, Four Hundred of Dogdom Buzzes over Scandals Among Young Set, Irate Husband of French Poodle on Warpath after His Rival.’ Although the full details of the story are lost in the mists of time, it’s another good example of early 20th-century press sensationalism, one which also documents the rise of pet culture we still have today. The early 1900s saw a rise in the popularity of organised dog breeding, which in turn led to the formation of kennel clubs; these sometimes became embroiled in controversies and rivalries, which were equally good tabloid-fodder. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Bat-Men-GettyImages-1397982878-a7ec22c-e1769767491349.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white illustration of large winged creatures flying around a mountainous area with a river running through it" title="A lithograph depicts the lunar civilisation that New York newspaper The Sun claimed had been found on the moon (Image by Getty Images)" /> 10. ”Bat-men on the moon” The Sun, New York, 1835 In August 1835, New York newspaper The Sun published a series of six articles claiming that life had been discovered on the moon. Not only life, in fact, but an entire lunar civilisation. The stories, credited to the famous astronomer Sir John Herschel and supposedly sourced from a (non-existent) Edinburgh paper, detailed lunar landscapes populated by bison, goats, unicorns, tail-less beavers, and bat-like humanoids called ‘Vespertilio-homo’ who built temples. The articles claimed that discoveries had been made using a revolutionary new telescope. It turned out that the hoax was the work of one of The Sun’s reporters who later admitted to inventing the stories to boost sales. However, The Sun never issued a formal retraction, making the ‘Great Moon Hoax’ one of the most famous examples of 19th-century ‘fake news’. 11. "Man doesn't trust horses" Amador Ledger, 3 October 1902 Letters to the editor aren’t a new phenomenon, as this extract from the Amador Ledger, itself lifted from Harper’s Weekly, shows. In this example, a man from Kentucky wrote into Harper’s to share his opinion that, in his long experience, “every horse at some time in his life develops into a homicidal maniac… I have driven one commonplace horse every other day for six years over the same road and then had him go crazy and try to kill himself and me because a leaf fluttered down in front of him.” The entry had the subheading: ‘Part maniac and part idiot, is what one man calls them’, which many present-day horse owners will no doubt relate to. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/TypistGettyImages-97226313-cb961e1-e1769767620435.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white cartoon of a woman sitting at a typewriter" title="In an eerie ‘true ghost’ story, a woman reportedly saw a ghost fall from a building in Aldwych, London – the same building from which a woman had previously fallen to her death (Image by Getty Images)" /> 12. "Girl typist saw a ghost fall in city street" Sunday Mirror, 29 July 1934 In July 1934, the Sunday Mirror reported the case of a typist who claimed to have seen a ghost fall from a building in Aldwych, London. She fainted and was carried into a nearby chemist’s shop. When she regained consciousness, she told reporters she’d seen a girl fall from a high window and land at her feet. Interestingly, 18 months earlier, a young woman had actually fallen from an upper storey at that very location and was killed. The typist claimed she had no prior knowledge of the tragedy – whether you believe her is entirely up to you. As noted above, the mid-19th century saw a rise in spiritualism and séances. As a result, papers often reported ‘true ghost’ stories or mysterious happenings. However, by the 1920s and 30s these stories had begun to decline in mainstream tabloids, so this 1934 Mirror story is a bit of a (spooky) outlier. Read more | Did he photograph the ghost of a president? Meet the scheming Victorian who exploited a grieving America <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Devil-WorshipGettyImages-1387752195-62248fc-e1769767805608.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Seven people are standing in a line with their heads bowed slightly forward. Each is wearing a black hooded gown and a red devil mask on their faces" title="The global ‘satanic panic’ of the 1980s led to many stories of witches and ritualistic practices. In Utah, a 12-part series in the Provo Daily Herald was dedicated to devil worship (Image by Getty Images)" /> 13. "Satan worship in Zion" Provo Daily Herald, July–August 1985 No, this isn’t a particularly far-fetched plot from hit Netflix series Stranger Things: the US newspaper Provo Daily Herald really did publish a series of 12 articles in 1985 alleging widespread devil worship in Utah Valley. The articles were written by two reporters, Patrick Christian and Vicki Barker, who claimed to have interviewed “dozens” of psychologists, therapists and law-enforcement officers so they could “educate readers about the prevalence of Satanic worship in this area”. Subjects of the articles included a teenager who, it was claimed, drank animal blood after meeting a Satanist in seventh grade. Also, two Utah County Sheriff's deputies reported on “covens of witches” operating in abandoned buildings. Proof of these claims was lacking, to say the least, and the Provo Daily Herald faced criticism for adding fuel to the global ‘satanic panic’ that gripped the media in the 1980s. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/Tiger-WoodsGettyImages-1097899790-f941754-e1769767906185.jpg" width="620" height="747" alt="A man wearing a black Nike sports jacket and black Nike cap stands holding multiple white golf balls in his hand" title="Tiger Woods holding his custom-made golf balls, which caused a stir following his endorsement of Nike Tour Accuracy ones (Image by Getty Images)" /> 14. "Tiger Woods plays with own balls" Associated Press wire story, 2000 The editor of this news story by journalist David Kravets was either very naive or purposefully channelling their inner Carry On scriptwriter when they crafted this saucy headline in the year 2000. The story is about the fact that pro golfer Tiger Woods had endorsed Nike Tour Accuracy golf balls in adverts, when (shock horror!) he actually played with custom-made balls unavailable to amateur players. Nike was eventually forced to confess that the balls Woods played with had a slightly harder inner and outer core than the balls sold to the public. It wasn’t exactly the most exciting story of all time, which is possibly why it was given such a cheeky, Barbara Windsor-esque headline.
Medieval vampire slayers: why did our ancestors dig up and dismember the dead?
At the turn of the 12th century, two men from a Staffordshire village died suddenly. A few days after they were solemnly laid to rest, they were spotted walking around the village, with their coffins on their backs. John Blair investigates the medieval terror of the living dead
In the last decades of the 12th century, the townsfolk of Annan in the Scottish borders were terrified by a sinister nocturnal revenant that stalked the dark byways. “Each night his corpse, driven by Satan, left his grave and wandered through the streets” accompanied by howling dogs and spreading sickness and death, according to the contemporary chronicler William of Newburgh. Desperate to put an end to the unholy scourge, two brothers whose father had been carried off by the plague opened the grave and “exposed the corpse, which was distended to a huge corpulence, with a swollen, livid face. It was observed that the shroud, which had been wound around it, was completely shredded up. Too angry to be frightened, the young men struck a blow at the lifeless corpse, whereupon such a flow of blood gushed out that they understood it to be a sucker of many people’s blood. Dragging it out of the town, they quickly built a pyre.” Recalling the accepted wisdom that such a being would burn only after they’d cut out its heart, the brothers took their shovels and hacked out the organ – after which the cadaver was immolated. The curse was finally over. Walking corpses To modern ears, this story stretches credulity far beyond breaking point. Not so to William of Newburgh: he recorded another three such tales, and hinted at many more. There are “numerous modern cases and abundant reports”, he wrote, but “it would be just too laborious and burdensome to write down all episodes of this kind that I have heard to have happened in our own times”. Yet though walking corpses were boringly commonplace in the 1190s, they had almost vanished from the English scene only a few decades later. Apparently they retreated northwards, leaving only occasional traces south of the border with Scotland. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/W45702webready-05b1689-e1769699879666.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration shows two people standing over a cut up body, with the person on the left handing the decapitated head of the body to the person on the right" title="A corpse is dismembered in a medieval illustration. During the Middle Ages, mutilation was inflicted on cadavers believed to be restless (Image by Alamy)" /> This spotlight on high medieval Britain illustrates a basic fact about ‘vampire’ beliefs in many periods and places across the globe: they tend to come and go. Though some societies retained low-level fears about dangerous corpses over many centuries, there have also been many short, sharp episodes of corpse-killing that reached an intensity justifying the label ‘epidemic’. Some are described in medieval texts such as William of Newburgh’s, covering a period from about 1050 to 1200. Others leave no written evidence, and must be inferred from distinctive patterns of mutilation found in excavated burials: corpses turned upside-down, hearts pierced or removed, limbs broken or bound, heads removed, craniums and jaws separated. Read more | Long before Dracula, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation raised the world's oldest vampires Why do communities suddenly erupt into frenzies of corpse-killing? Fundamentally, the act reflects fear of social disruption, fear of political or religious change, or fear of disease. In fact, it can be defined as a form of persecution mania – that tragic, paranoid reaction that makes people turn against minority groups in their midst. But there is a crucial difference: unlike witches or heretics, corpses cannot suffer because they are dead already. Killing the dead is better than killing the living. Archaeological evidence from late Roman and early Anglo-Saxon England suggests several persuasive cases of posthumously ‘killed’ corpses. There are too few of them to suggest clear patterns – until we reach a group of distinctive female burials in Yorkshire and County Durham from c550–80 AD. These women were buried face-down – often accompanied by charms and other ritual items – in strange, contorted attitudes, often with one leg or arm raised so that it almost touched the surface of the grave. It looks as though these were traditional healers or ‘wise women’ – powerful in life and potentially troublesome after death, so measures to restrain them were necessary. In that society, as in many others, the dangerous dead were mainly female. Unholy nuns From around 650, that perception carried over to the new world of royal nunneries that dominated early Christian England. Traditionally powerful women could reinvent themselves as holy nuns and abbesses, exercising something like their erstwhile supernatural powers within the new belief system. One narrative from Wimborne nunnery in the 720s hints at corpse fears. It recounts the story of a sadistic prioress who died unreconciled with the young nuns whom she had tormented. They gleefully danced on her grave – but then, to the abbess’s horror, the grave-earth sunk, a phenomenon explained in later eastern European folklore as a sign that the corpse has climbed out. In England around 650–700, a series of non-monastic burials – almost entirely of young women – were mutilated in a consistent way: the corpse was pulled over onto its front, the heart was possibly removed or pierced, the head was removed, and the cranium and lower jaw were thrown back in different parts of the grave. Read more | Marvellous medieval medicine: why their curious cures were better than you think The seventh century was a period of rapid religious change and social transformation, so it is unsurprising that people felt disorientated, and that their fears focussed on certain ‘special’ women who were perceived to be reservoirs of supernatural power. Corpse anxieties seem to have died down across the eighth century, but did not disappear entirely. Young women were still sometimes targeted, their trussed and mutilated corpses laid face-down in boundary ditches. The gender balance then shifted. In a ninth to 10th-century cemetery at Godalming in Surrey, it was mostly male corpses that had nails and iron spikes driven into their shoulders, necks and knees. The age of castles, military power and ‘feudal’ dominance was approaching in northern Europe, and there was no lack of disruption and psychological trauma to breed paranoid fears. In this increasingly man’s world, as traditional wise women declined in power and status, violent corpses were increasingly envisaged as male. That brings us back to the lurid prose of William of Newburgh and his contemporaries. The high medieval British epidemic coincided with a period of greater theological sophistication in north-western Europe (including, for instance, the elaboration of the idea of purgatory), more complex scholastic thought, and higher levels of literacy. Accordingly, there was more questioning of received doctrine, and more concern by the clerical establishment to define, stigmatise and punish ‘heresy’. It is very interesting that, whereas the French persecuted heretics and not corpses, England saw virtually no heresy trials but widespread corpse-killing – an excellent illustration of how attacks on the dead can help to spare the living. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL1278768webready-497e003-e1769698475877.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A red, blue and black stained glass window showing four people sitting alongside one another, praying" title="Souls in purgatory, shown in a 14th-century French stained-glass window. The Catholic doctrine of purgatory may have shaped medieval concepts about the dead who had not moved on (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> Noxious corpses Ten stories survive from 12th-century England, all concerning noxious male corpses: excommunicates, oath-breakers, corrupt judges, dissolute priests. One Buckinghamshire man paid unwelcome night-time visits to his widow, “took to dancing around wildly among the animals”, and finally “started wandering around by day, frightening everyone though visible only to some”. For sheer excitement, a story recorded by a monk of Burton-upon-Trent, and set in a nearby village around 1100, is in a class of its own. Two perjured villagers died suddenly and were buried. They then appeared walking around the village, sometimes carrying their coffins on their backs and sometimes in the shape of animals. They behaved threateningly and spread disease, causing many deaths. When their graves were opened, the corpses proved to have resisted natural decay, and the cloths over their faces were “very horribly bloody”. Their heads were cut off and placed between their thighs, and their hearts were cut out and burned on a hilltop, where they crackled with a loud noise; a black crow flew up from the flames. Read more | “Ghoul-like beyond nightmare dream, they were the living dead”: belief in Vampires through history After 1200, most of the British evidence comes from Scotland. A story set in the Clyde Valley west of Glasgow in 1295 describes how an evil-living monk returned from his grave to visit a knight’s house. “Having assumed a body – it is uncertain whether natural or aerial, but it was dank, gross and tangible” – he appeared in broad daylight in his monastic habit, and took to climbing around on the roofs. People tried to shoot and stab him, but anything penetrating “that damned substance” immediately burned up. No later Scottish stories are quite so lurid, but a resilient substratum of belief can be seen in the many post-medieval oral ballads that describe dead relatives and lovers coming home in bodily form. A strand survived the Reformation and was assimilated into Calvinist theology in the idea that the devil could occupy the corpse of even a virtuous person. In his Daemonologie of 1597, King James VI (later I of England) observed reassuringly “that the Devil may use as well the ministry of the bodies of the faithful in these cases as of the unfaithful, there is no inconvenient: for his haunting with their bodies after they are dead can no-ways defile them, in respect of the soul’s absence”. Beliefs about the dangerous dead didn’t disappear from England entirely. There seems to have been an undercurrent of low-level but persistent anxiety that surfaced at different times and in different places. A 14th-century story from Byland Abbey in Yorkshire recounts that a local rector who died and was buried near the abbey’s chapter house developed “the habit of going out by night, and one night he put out the eye of his concubine”. His body was dug up and dumped in a local lake – though the oxen pulling the cart carrying the corpse “almost sank through fear”. Stone dead Some suggestively mutilated bodies from later periods have also been discovered. Perhaps the latest and strangest was a victim of the 1665–66 plague who was buried in a London church. He was later found to have a large stone in his mouth – a mode of corpse-killing that was standard in Lutheran Germany at the time but unknown in England. Was he a member of the immigrant mercantile community? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/BAL5864439webready-7cd79c8-e1769698055247.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white engraving showing a man standing facing a skeleton, representing Death." title="Death meets a German mercenary in an engraving. Beliefs in the dangerous dead led to stones being placed in the mouths of corpses to quell them (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> It’s not entirely clear why such beliefs were so rare in late medieval and early modern England at times when they assumed epidemic proportions in some parts of central Europe. For instance, the Black Death plague pandemic of 1347–51 seems to have whipped up corpse fears in Greece and Serbia – so why did it have no such effect in England? It may be because the people of England now widely believed in the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which offered a different framework for conceptualising the dead who had not quite moved on. Another factor could be the English enthusiasm for persecuting witches at points in the 16th and 17th centuries. Except in a few locations – Scotland and Moravia, for example – witch-killing and corpse-killing tended to occupy different spaces in early modern Europe, and seem to have provided alternative outlets for the same anxieties. European beliefs in the dangerous dead were never the same again after a series of lurid corpse-killings in Serbia in 1725–32 were widely reported for the first time in the western press. These reports brought with them a new word – vampire – that quickly drove out all synonyms. From that moment, folklore and fiction became inextricably entwined. Sensational novelists embroidered what they read, and their own readers in turn assimilated their work into popular beliefs. Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1871–72 novella Carmilla sensitively reworked the idea of a loving but predatory dead female derived ultimately from ancient Chinese tradition. But it was of course Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) that imposed an indelible – if highly misleading – image of the ‘European vampire’, overlaying and ultimately obliterating the last traces of genuine English popular belief. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/RJGAYDwebready-0963212-e1769700002267.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white engraving of a woman creeping towards a person laying in a bed, with her arm reached out towards them" title="An illustration from the 1871–72 Gothic novella Carmilla shows the eponymous bloodsucker approaching her victim. Sheridan Le Fanu’s tale drew on ancient stories of predatory dead women (Image by Alamy)" /> Remarkably, the idea of turning a potentially dangerous corpse upside-down survived a decade or two longer. In rural Devonshire sometime around the turn of the 20th century, a farmer was recorded telling the tale of a wicked local woman who had recently died “cussin’ and dam’in”, and whose coffin had been turned over. “Her ’ont be troublesome then, ’cause if her do begin to diggy her can on’y diggy downwards,” he claimed. The grim finale to this particular English superstition was acted out during the First World War, after a slim English youth had killed a “huge, scowling” German soldier. “Later,” an officer observed, “I found our men burying him most carefully – face downwards. You know why. If he began digging his way out, he would only go deeper.” Epidemics of the undead Five periods when fears of living corpses terrified societies around the world Ancient Mesopotamia: eternal non-sleeping Fears of the dead plagued inhabitants of the neo-Assyrian empire in the near east between c911 and c605 BC. An inscription (left) in the tomb of eighth-century BC queen Yabâ of Nineveh curses any robber by imposing “eternal non-sleeping on his corpse and ghost”. And an omen text of the mid-seventh century BC describes what will happen if one sees “a dead person restrained with cloths, uprising, complaining”. The silence of earlier and later sources suggests that this may have been an epidemic generated by the violence and trauma of imperial expansion in the provinces. Early 18th-century Serbia: dawn of Dracula In the western Balkans after 1700, the central European tradition of dangerous-dead beliefs converged with a Caucasian one. This highly coloured mixture of fantasies reached an epidemic scale on the violent, unstable military frontier between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. Cases in 1725–26 and again in the 1730s came to the attention of the Habsburg authorities, whose reports created a Europe-wide sensation. The details were actually rather atypical – for example, in their emphasis on bloodsucking – but inspired a series of fictional works culminating in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. 16th-century Saxony: rise of the chomping dead Devastated by plague and destabilised by the Lutheran Reformation, after 1540 the German electorate of Saxony suffered the strange visitation of the ‘chomping dead’. It was widely believed that some corpses lay in their graves noisily eating their own shrouds, and that they spread plague among the living. This idea had older roots, but it reached epidemic levels in this traumatised society. The remedy was to open the grave to check for shroud-eating and, if evidence mandated action, to behead the corpse with a spade. Martin Luther himself spoke out against the belief, but it endured for several decades before dying away naturally around 1600. 19th-century New England: a war on organs As tuberculosis swept the US between the 1780s and 1890s, the strange idea developed that internal organs of buried victims were spreading the disease. Between 1784 and 1892, at least 70 exhumations are known to have been undertaken in New England, mostly involving turning the corpse face-down, extracting the heart, liver and lungs, and occasionally burning the body. At Altoona, Pennsylvania in 1949, the exhumation of a soldier to burn his uniform represents the last known ‘corpse-killing’ in any non-Balkan and non-Aegean western society. Independent Haiti: zombie slaves In the 19th and 20th centuries, many Haitians believed that some apparently ‘dead’ people had actually been poisoned by sorcerers to induce a death-like trance. The ‘corpses’ were then reputedly stolen from their graves, revived and made to work on sugar plantations. Famously, Clairvius Narcisse (1922–94), who claimed to have escaped from such a plantation, was photographed sitting on his own tomb (above). This strangest of variants – walking ‘corpses’ that had never died – had roots in African beliefs, but developed a unique twist in this fragile republic with its tragic origins, where the unquiet dead were enslaved. Professor John Blair is emeritus fellow in medieval history at Queen’s College, University of Oxford. His latest book is Killing the Dead: Vampire Epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World (Princeton University Press, 2025) This article was first published in the January 2026 issue of HistoryExtra magazine
From krakens to serpents: 5 fearsome sea monsters from history
Sea monsters have haunted human imaginations for millennia. From the kraken to killer serpents, Prema Arasu explores what five mythical creatures reveal about our deepest fears
1. Armed and dangerous The writhing tentacles of the kraken inspired horror and disgust Sea monsters have fired our imaginations – and chilled our blood – for as long as humanity has sailed the seas. The Babylonian epic Enūma Eliš, which dates back to at least 1200 BC, describes the creation of the world from two fearsome primordial beings: Apsû, the embodiment of subterranean fresh water, and Tiamat, the sea. Like the many mythical aquatic creatures that have occupied our dreams and our nightmares, Apsû and Tiamat reveal much about how the Babylonians saw the world, acting as projections through which their anxieties about nature could be expressed, examined and, perhaps, mastered. Fast forward more than a thousand years and, in Naturalis Historia (c77 AD), the earliest extant work of natural history, the Roman author Pliny the Elder argued that the largest animals found in the sea “exceed in size any of the terrestrial animals” because of the “superabundance of moisture with which they are supplied”. One such giant creature is the kraken, its origins lying in Nordic mythology and folklore. In his 1752–53 proto-scientific work The Natural History of Norway, Danish bishop Erik Pontoppidan described the “Kraken, Kraxen, or, as some world name it, Krabben” as an island-sized creature, “round, flat, and full of arms, or branches”. Alfred, Lord Tennyson was so energised by reports of this monster of the deep that, in 1830, he wrote a poem in its honour, describing an ancient, giant-armed creature slumbering “Below the thunders of the upper deep; Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea.” British naturalist Henry Lee offered a more rational perspective. In Sea Monsters Unmasked (1883), he stated that kraken sightings by sailors were most likely exaggerated reports of giant squid (Architeuthis dux), described a quarter of a century earlier by the Danish biologist Japetus Steenstrup. Even after that, though, kraken and other squid-like monsters proliferated in literature. Herman Melville dedicated a chapter of Moby-Dick (1851) to the giant squid. Ishmael, Moby-Dick’s narrator, references The Natural History of Norway in his description of the creature, offering up the possibility that the kraken might not be a mythological beast but a taxonomically recognised species. Myth and reality continued to amalgamate in the science-fiction genre. Jules Verne’s battle with a giant squid in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869–70) was based on reports of an encounter between a French corvette, Alecton, and a squid in 1861. As Verne puts it: “Before my eyes was a horrible monster worthy to figure in the legends of the marvellous. It was an immense cuttlefish, being eight yards long… Its eight arms… were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the furies’ hair.” The uncanny undulations of kraken continue to fascinate. Roger Luckhurst, a scholar of the field of horror, links this to our innate “response to things that overwhelm our senses, stick too close, ooze across borders, or refuse to keep a stable shape”. Read more | Water gods and sea goddesses: 17 water deities from world history 2. A feminine fantasy Aquatic half-humans enchanted men and attracted women seeking new freedoms Sirens, tritons, nereids, merfolk, nymphs… part-fish, part-human creatures have gone by many names over the millennia. These alluring beings have glided gracefully into cultural traditions across the world for thousands of years – particularly those with strong histories of seafaring. And, unlike many of the aquatic beings on these pages, they haven’t always done so with malign intentions. In Naturalis Historia, Pliny described “tritons and nereids” as creatures in which “the portion of the body that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with scales”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/AKG342658webready-934ba2a-e1767351773509.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A stone relief showing a ship full of men sailing towards three women lined up on the left" title="A fourth-century BC urn shows Odysseus sailing towards the sirens, who, he reported, “sit and sing most beautifully in a field of flowers” (Image by AKG)" /> Sirens had appeared in Homer’s poem the Odyssey nine centuries earlier. But in the case of this ancient Greek epic, they were never physically described. Rather, we’re told that they “sit and sing most beautifully in a field of flowers”. Interestingly, they tempt sailors with knowledge, rather than – as other, later, depictions would have it – luring them to their doom. “When we had got within earshot of the land, and the ship was going at a good rate,” the fictional Odysseus recalls, “the sirens saw that we were getting in shore and began with their singing: ‘No one ever sailed past us without staying to hear the enchanting sweetness of our song – and he who listens will go on his way not only charmed, but wiser’.” In medieval art, Homer’s sirens are interpreted as both aquatic and non-aquatic creatures. In contrast, the nereids of Greek myth were explicitly spirits or embodiments of the sea, albeit often visually depicted as human women. In the Romantic and Victorian imagination, they became synonymous with mermaids, frequently depicted with tails. Gothic writer Ann Radcliffe conjured a fish-tailed ingénue in her 1794 poem The Sea-Nymph, as did Hans Christian Andersen in The Little Mermaid four decades later. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/gr0031911Hwebready-444c4de-e1767352384901.jpg" width="1500" height="1001" alt="A drawing showing a mermaid with a black, orange and yellow tail and long blonde hair, laying on her front on a rock, with a sea plant in the background" title="A 1930s depiction of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, which did so much to popularise the fish-tailed ingénue (Image by TopFoto)" /> Radcliffe’s poem marked a turn to the mermaid as a feminine fantasy: an aspirational symbol for young women who might otherwise feel confined by the gendered expectations of public life. This manifests today in the enduring visibility of the mermaid in popular culture and in the burgeoning pastime of mermaiding – cosplaying by swimming with a decorative monofin. 3. Terror in the deep For millennia, giant, ravenous sea serpents have played on humanity’s primal terrors It didn’t pay to get on the wrong side of the gods in ancient mythology. Just ask Laocoön, a Trojan priest who offended the deity Minerva – and didn’t live to tell the tale. As the Roman poet Virgil relates it in the Aeneid – his epic first-century BC poem telling the story of the foundation of Rome – Laocoön committed the cardinal sin of throwing a spear into the Greeks’ wooden horse to show that it was hollow. It was an act that so enraged Minerva that she unleashed two giant sea serpents to eat him. “Taking swift course; their necks were lifted high,” Virgil writes of the ravenous creatures. “Their gory dragon-crests o’ertopped the waves; all else, half seen, trailed low along the sea; while with loud cleavage of the foaming brine, their monstrous backs wound forward fold on fold.” Poor Laocoön didn’t stand a chance. As the priest’s grisly fate proves, the sea serpent had established itself as a terror of the deep by the time the Greeks and Romans dominated the Mediterranean. But they weren’t the first to live in fear of this creature. In fact, the ancient Greeks’ diverse bestiary of monsters likely derived from earlier prototypes. Sea serpents recur in the folklore traditions of a range of coastal and lake cultures, from the black, hairy Nile-dwelling monster Aman Doger of ancient Nubia to the rainbow snake of Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime myth. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-1288491221webready-92f8e54-e1767351878133.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An engraving showing a naked man with curly hair and a beard, with a large snake wrapped around his body, holding him down, alongside his two sons" title="Laocoön and his two sons are attacked by serpents, as shown in a 16th‑century engraving. Could megalophobia – the fear of large objects – be a factor in humanity’s obsession with sea monsters? (Image by Getty Images)" /> For the Victorian naturalist Henry Lee, tales of colossal sea serpents were a case of mistaken identity, likely originating in sightings of other marine phenomena – perhaps large pods of porpoises or whales. “I believe that… the supposed coils or protuberances of the serpent’s body, were only so many porpoises swimming in line in accordance with their habit before mentioned,” he wrote. Read more | Liquor, loot and death on the high seas: 5 things you (probably) didn't know about the history of pirates The anthropologist David D Gilmore has offered an alternative interpretation of our sea serpent obsession. He has suggested that the recurrence of such creatures in literature down the ages points to three primal human fears: of the sea; of what might lurk in the unknown; and of large objects, otherwise known as megalophobia. 4. The theory of de-evolution Early Christians feared that the Leviathan would propel the human race back to its watery past To some, it has been a benign presence. To others, a terror-inducing harbinger of doom. Ever since the Leviathan emerged from the depths of the oceans and floated into the human consciousness, it has meant different things to different people. Jews and early Christians were certainly fearful. In the Hebrew Bible – where it appears in the Old Testament books of Psalms, Job and Isaiah – the Leviathan is a female sea serpent who will bring about the apocalypse together with her male counterpart, the desert monster Behemoth. Such ancient beasts played on the enduring fear of regression, reminding us of our uncomfortable origins in the oceans. David D Gilmore suggests that the water that so often drips from primal monsters as they emerge from the deep “symbolises not only the amniotic fluids of the womb, but also the primal element from which all life emerged”. These creatures threaten us with the possibilities of de-evolution – a stripping of what modern science has decided makes us human. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/GettyImages-534969411webready-723169d-e1767352029623.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A drawing depicting a large black whale being held under a boat, while several people and other sea creatures surround it in the water" title="An illustration from a 14th-century manuscript shows Alexander the Great being lowered into the sea to explore the ocean bed – a place populated by aquatic humans, dogs and a huge whale (Image by Getty Images)" /> For Renaissance cartographers, the Leviathan meant something different. Medieval maps of the world abound with monstrous-looking whales, depicted in ornate detail. According to historian Chet van Duzer, these illustrations served two purposes: to warn sailors of dangers that awaited them at sea, and as decorative elements designed to show off the artist’s talents. By the time the American writer Celia Thaxter penned her poem Leviathan in 1876, the creature had shape-shifted again. For Thaxter, it was a largely peaceful presence, who triumphed against the rage of nature: “For her worst fury he nor stayed nor turned. ‘Twas joy to think in such tremendous play, Through the sea’s cruelty, all unconcerned. Leviathan pursued his placid way!” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/CPA0030665webready-7c5c3eb-e1767352254831.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="An illustration showing a large grey and orange fish with a man laying next to it, covered in flowers" title="A 14th-century depiction of Jonah with the giant fish that spat him out. Huge sea creatures make numerous appearances in biblical texts (Image by TopFoto)" /> 5. Visions of Atlantis Tales of an aquatic city populated by hyper-intelligent Atlanteans enchanted authors from Plato to HG Wells “A strange vertebrated animal.” That’s how Elstead, the narrator of HG Wells’s 1897 short story In the Abyss, describes the lifeform he encounters on a journey into a deep ocean trench. “Two large and protruding eyes projected from sockets in chameleon fashion, and it had a broad reptilian mouth with horny lips beneath its little nostrils,” reported the intrepid submariner. “The vertical pitch of its face gave it a most extraordinary resemblance to a human being.” In introducing Elstead to this strange creature, HG Wells was joining a long list of writers to conjure the inhabitants of a mysterious underwater civilisation into fictional life. In fact, the possibility of an intelligent, almost godlike race of aquatic beings living on the ocean bed has captured the imagination for centuries. Mentions of the submerged island Atlantis date back to Plato’s fourth-century BC dialogues Timaeus and Critias, in which the Greek philosopher described a land sunken by a devastating earthquake. Renaissance scholars such as Francis Bacon linked Atlantis to the Americas, a notion he further explored in his utopian novel The New Atlantis (1624). In 1931, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists Henry Bryant and Columbus Iselin embarked upon a research cruise in search of the lost continent around the Azores. It was unsuccessful. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2026/01/the-shape-of-water9lp0tuwebready-2ed216e-e1767352125833.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A photo of a woman with her hands pressed up against a glass tank, looking into the eyes of a large green sea creature behind the glass" title="2017 dark fantasy film The Shape of Water, which traces the relationship between a mute woman and a captured humanoid amphibian (Image by MovieStills)" /> Tales of Atlantis made a resurgence in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1929 novel The Maracot Deep features a team of scientists who descend into the ocean, become trapped in a deep-sea trench and are saved from disaster by descendants of Atlantis. Other underseas peoples in popular fiction aren’t quite so benign. American horror writer HP Lovecraft described an undersea race of creatures called Deep Ones who worship the deities Dagon and Cthulhu. In The Shadow Over Innsmouth Lovecraft projects his own prejudices about racial purity and miscegenation (sexual relationships between people of different ethnic groups) onto a fictional coastal town. Here the residents interbreed with marine beings and become corrupted in form and character. Read more | Tails from the deep: separating the real folklore of mermaids from Disney stories The denizens of cities under the sea continue to capture our imaginations today. Guillermo del Toro’s Oscar-winning 2017 film The Shape of Water tells how a mute cleaner working in a high-security government laboratory falls in a love with a green-skinned humanoid amphibian. This enduring interest in aquatic beings speaks to a wider fascination with how great civilisations might fall. This is an intriguing and alarming prospect. After all, if a creature is to knock us off our self-appointed perch at the top of the evolutionary ladder, then surely that creature could come from the same primordial soup as we once did? Prema Arasu is an adjunct research fellow at the University of Western Australia, and author of The Book of Sea Monsters: Leviathans of Literature (Adlard Coles, 2025) This article was first published in the Christmas 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Professor Ronald Hutton suggests that we might benefit from seeking out a spot of magic in our modern disenchanted world
We live in a modern disenchanted world. That’s why, in this episode of our Life Lessons from History series, Ronald Hutton suggests that we might benefit from seeking out a spot of magic. Could we all do with a bit more of the thrill of the supernatural? Listen to this conversation to find out.
Why do ‘wicked’ witches wear pointed hats? The real history explained
There have been many examples of pointed hats in history, but it remains unclear how any of them became a must-wear for the witches
We’re off to see… the Wicked Witch of the West, as she returns to the silver screen in Wicked: For Good, the second part of the fantasy epic based on the popular stage musical. But where would Elphaba be without her trademark look, including the iconic black, pointed and wide-brimmed hat? Along with a cat, broomstick and black robes, the pointed hat is a required feature of any depiction of the typical ‘evil witch’, and has been for centuries. How it became the headgear of choice, however, remains the subject of numerous theories – as there is no single hat to point the way to the archetypal witch. The myth of the alewives Before getting to the major theories, there is one that can be debunked. The internet is well-populated with the claim that the image of the witch began with alewives, medieval women who brewed ale in their homes and sold it locally. Dominating the brewing industry for a time, these women could achieve a degree of financial independence. In an era where any woman who baulked social norms was suspicious, this autonomy would have been enough to single them out, putting them at risk of being accused of witchcraft. In addition, the fact that they stood over bubbling cauldrons while brewing and wearing pointed hats to be easily spotted at markets, it is clear why some have argued that alewives were the inspiration for the image of the witch. Except, there is just zero historical evidence to back this up. The highly symbolic history of the pointed witch hat Instead, theories have taken in pointy hats from throughout history, some with highly symbolic meaning. The Phrygian cap of antiquity, for instance, came to represent liberty and freedom in the American and French Revolutions of the 18th century, while the ancient Romans presented freed slaves with a special pointed felt cap, called a pileus. In medieval Europe, the hennin came into fashion: an extremely tall cone with flowing material hanging out of the top. Yet while it certainly has a resemblance to the witch’s hat, it was the preserve of noblewomen rather than the typically poor and disenfranchised targets that most often provoked accusations of witchcraft. Persecution and prejudice Other pointed hats became symbols of persecution, which could be a more promising place to look. The Fourth Lateran Council, a meeting of church leaders convoked by the pope in 1215, decreed that all Jews had to distinguish themselves by wearing distinctive clothing. In some regions, this included a tall, conical hat called the pileum cornutum. That one was usually yellow or white, though. Quiz | Would you have been accused of witchcraft? A more likely origin can be found in the persecution of the Religious Society of Friends, a Christian movement founded in the mid-17th century. Better known as the Quakers, they rejected the established doctrines of the church, refused to conform with many social norms, and they believed in equality for all. Two upshots of this were that the Quakers would not take off their hats in the accepted display of respect and they permitted women to preach, which caused consternation in England and colonial America. Quaker women became a source of ridicule and condemnation, and their hats – which got pointier over time – came to be associated with the evils of society. Watch now | What is a witch? Don't miss episode 1 in our Academy on the history of witchcraft While none of these theories are conclusive, a pattern does emerge of pointy hats being worn by minority groups. So, as the witch hunts took hold in Europe, it is possible to see a rationale to equip the typical image of a witch with a hat that has a history of identifying someone as a troublesome ‘other’. By the 18th century, the witches seen in woodcuts firmly established the pointed hat as part of the uniform. In the 1720 book, The History of Witches and Wizards, for instance, a behatted witch can be seen flying on a broomstick – alongside a demon, no less – enshrining the conical pointed hat in the spooky, fantastical tradition.
When was the first toilet invented? What did people use before the modern flush? What are the origins of the term 'crapper'? To mark World Toilet Day, Julian Humphrys explores the history of Britain's loos
A... is for Ajax Although Elizabethan writer and courtier John Harrington wasn’t the first person to design a flushing toilet – Londoner Thomas Brightfield had done so in 1449 – he was the first to provide a written specification for one. In 1596, he penned his Metamorphosis of Ajax (a pun on ‘jakes’, a slang word for a privy) in which he described a remarkably modern-sounding device that he’d installed in his house. This incorporated a pan with a seat and a cistern filled with water. When a handle was turned, the water washed the contents of the pan into a cesspool. Although Harrington installed one for Queen Elizabeth I in Richmond Palace, cost, problems of water supply, and lack of sewers meant that the idea wouldn’t catch on for centuries. B... is for Bazalgette By the 1850s, London’s growing population was producing unmanageable amounts of sewage. Cesspools leaked and overflowed, contaminating water supplies, and matters weren’t helped by the outpourings of the increasingly popular water closet. London’s Commission of Sewers had ordered that cesspools and house drains should be connected to sewers, but these fed directly into an increasingly noisome River Thames. Following the ‘Great Stink’ of 1858, when the smell from the river was so bad that MPs even considered abandoning Westminster, the Metropolitan Board of Works was tasked with overhauling London’s sewerage system. Civil engineer Joseph Bazalgette (1819–91) was put in charge of operations. His 16-year project included embanking parts of the Thames, constructing 1,100 miles of street sewers, 82 miles of main interceptor sewers and building four monumental pumping stations, all designed to take the sewage eastwards to be discharged into the river away from heavily-populated areas. Watch | 10 minutes of toilets through time View Green Video on the source website C... is for Crapper In 1866, Yorkshire-born industrialist and plumber Thomas Crapper opened the world’s first bathroom showroom in Chelsea. For the first time, people could actually see sanitary products in place. Some were even plumbed in so that potential customers could try before they bought. In the late 1880s, Crapper was asked by the Prince of Wales to install lavatories at Sandringham, and he went on to supply sanitary ware for both Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. The idea that one of our more robust terms for a bowel movement is derived from his name is a myth – that word was in use well before Crapper became famous. However, it is possible that the American word ‘crapper’, meaning a lavatory, became popular after US soldiers in Britain in 1917 saw his name stamped on the cisterns in some public toilets. Read more | How did knights in armour go to the toilet? D... is for Dung The infamous 1618 Defenestration of Prague, which saw three Catholic officials thrown from a third-floor window in Prague Castle, helped trigger the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War. Remarkably, all three survived the 50-foot fall. Catholic sources claimed they were saved by divine intervention, while Protestants ascribed their survival to the fact that they landed on a huge pile of dung beneath the window. E... is for Espionage It’s hard to believe that the unremarkable public toilets in the small Hampshire town of New Alresford played a part in the Cold War. But they did. Harry Houghton used them as a dead letter box in his dealings with Soviet spy ‘Gordon Lonsdale’. A plaque on the toilet wall recalls how in 1961, Houghton was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for his part in the Portland Spy Ring, which sold secret information from the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment to the Soviet Union. F... is for Fleet Street Inspired by the success of Jennings’ toilets at the Great Exhibition (see ‘J’), the Royal Society of Arts tried to cash in on the act. On 2 February 1852, it opened London’s first modern public toilet (for men) at 95 Fleet Street. Women had to hang on a little longer; the first female public toilet opened at Bedford Street nine days later. Delicately dubbed ‘public waiting rooms’, they featured water closets in wooden surrounds and cost two pence to use. But, despite being extensively promoted by handbills and even an advert in The Times, only 58 men and 24 women used the rooms in the first month. Within six months, they were closed. G... is for Garderobe Originally a term for a storeroom for clothes and valuables, a garderobe is now usually used to describe a medieval privy, particularly in a castle. Actually, the two uses were by no means mutually exclusive, as the ammonia from urine helped deter moths and other parasites. Many garderobes were built into the thickness of an outer wall, and consisted of a stone or wooden seat over a vertical shaft. Others were sited in a projecting turret over an open drop. Depending on the design, the excrement would either hit the ground or land in a pit (which had to be periodically cleared out by an individual known as a ‘gong farmer’), or drop into a moat or river. The garderobes of some coastal castles, like St Andrews, simply projected over the sea and let the tide do the work. Garderobes could be a weak spot in a castle’s defences. During the siege of the mighty Château Gaillard in 1204, the French captured its middle bailey after sneaking up one of its garderobe chutes. When Henry III commissioned a new privy for Guildford Castle, the Clerk of Works was specifically told to fit bars to its outlet to deter intruders. H... is for Hampton Court To cope with the sanitary needs of the vast numbers of Tudor courtiers who assembled there, Hampton Court Palace boasted a huge communal garderobe. Known as the ‘Great House of Easement’, it was two storeys high and could accommodate 28 people simultaneously. Occupants sat side by side on oak planks and their waste was carried into the Thames via brick-lined drains. The building still stands today, although now it has a different function: it’s the office of the Chief Executive. I... is for Ironside It’s always a good idea to check that a vacant toilet really is vacant. The 12th-century writer Henry of Huntingdon gives this account of the death in 1016 of English King, Edmund Ironside: “When Edmund, fearful and most formidable to his enemies, was prospering in his kingdom, he went one night to the lavatory to answer a call of nature. There the son of Ealdorman Eadric, who by his father’s plan was concealed in the pit of the privy, struck the King twice with a sharp knife in the private parts, and leaving the weapon in his bowels, fled away.” Edmund Ironside: Anglo-Saxon warrior king J... is for Jennings When the Great Exhibition opened in 1851 in Hyde Park, one of its landmark attractions was Britain’s first paid-for flushing public toilets, which were designed and installed by Hampshire-born plumber George Jennings. For the price of a penny, visitors were provided with a clean toilet seat, a towel, a comb and a shoe shine. Records show that during the exhibition, over 675,000 pennies were spent. K... is for King Elvis Presley wasn’t the only King to die on the toilet. On 25 October 1760, George II’s valet was waiting outside the water closet for his master to finish his morning ablutions when he heard what he described as “a noise louder than the royal wind” followed by a crash “like the falling of a billet of wood from the fire”. He rushed in to find the king dying on the floor. A subsequent post-mortem revealed that he had died from an aortic aneurysm, which had probably been caused by straining. Read more | Showering, teeth brushing and donning underwear: the strange history of our daily routine L... is for Luther Was the Protestant Reformation thought up on the toilet? It’s quite possible. Martin Luther, the German Augustinian friar who was a seminal figure in the Reformation, suffered from constipation. He spent many hours in contemplation on the toilet, and later wrote that he was “in cloaca” – or in the sewer – when the belief that salvation was gained through faith not deeds came to him. M... is for Monasteries Many of Britain’s medieval monasteries still retain the remains of their communal toilets. Dubbed necessaria (for obvious reasons) or reredorters (because they stood behind the dorter or dormitory), they could be quite extensive in size. One of the most impressive can be found at Muchelney Abbey in Somerset. Unique in having a thatched roof, it’s a two-storey affair that the monks entered at first-floor level from their dormitory. N... is for Nightmen In the days before sewers, people in towns had to find a way of disposing of their excrement. This is where the nightmen came in. So-called because by law they could only work at night, it was their job to empty the excreta from people’s cesspits and cart it away. They usually operated in teams of four. One man, the ‘holeman’, went into the cesspit and filled a tub lowered by a colleague called the ‘ropeman’. Once full, it was pulled back up and two ‘tubmen’ carried it to a waiting cart. The night soil was then taken away and mixed with other rubbish before being sold to farmers as manure. O... is for Orford For those with an interest in medieval toilet arrangements, Orford Castle in Suffolk is a must-see. Its 12th-century keep is equipped with garderobes served by a system of chutes, which directed their discharge to a single area at the back of the tower. Like most castles, the majority of Orford’s toilets are of the sit-down variety, but it also boasts a rarity – a stand-up, triangular ‘poke and pee’ urinal in the corridor outside the constable’s chamber. Handily placed to save a night-time walk to one of the main garderobes, it now offers modern visitors an almost irresistible photo opportunity. P... is for Pepys An entry in Samuel Pepys’ diary offers an insight into the rather ramshackle state of 17th-century London’s sanitary arrangements, even for the well-to-do: “20 October 1660: This morning one came to me to advise with me where to make me a window into my cellar… and going down my cellar to look, I put my foot into a heap of turds, by which I find that Mr Turner’s house of office is full and comes into my cellar, which doth trouble me…” Things weren’t any better at court. The antiquary Anthony Wood acidly commented that when Charles II and his court descended on Oxford in 1665, “though they were neat and gay in their apparel, yet they were very nasty and beastly, leaving at their departure their excrements in every corner, in chimneys, studies, coalhouses, cellars”. Q... is for Queen If the 17th-century antiquarian John Aubrey is to be believed, Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, may well have regretted not paying a precautionary visit to the privy before being presented to Queen Elizabeth I. In his Brief Lives, a splendidly scandalous collection of anecdotes about the great figures of Tudor and Stuart England, Aubrey writes: “This Earl of Oxford, making of his low obeisance to Queen Elizabeth, happened to fart, at which he was so abashed that he went to travel for seven years. On his return, the Queen welcomed him home and said ‘My lord, I had forgotten the fart’.” R... is for Rome Toilet walls have always been a temptation for idle scribblers, and things were no different in the days of ancient Rome. One such wall in a house in the Roman town of Herculaneum (which, like Pompeii, was destroyed in AD 79 by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius) bears the words “Apollinaris medici Titi Imperatoris hic cacavit bene” – roughly translated, that’s “Apollinaris, physician of the Emperor Titus, had a good crap here”. S... is for Stool One of the most sought-after jobs in the Tudor court was the position of Groom of the Stool. The Stool in question was a ‘close stool’, a fixed or portable commode, and the Groom’s job was to help the king undress before using it and to supply him with water, towels and a washbowl when he had finished. Whether the Groom was actually required to wipe the Royal Bottom is a matter of debate. Read more about the men who changed Henry VIII’s underpants The reason why this apparently lowly job was so desirable was the fact that it gave the holder an intimate access to the king that no other office holder enjoyed. Because a word in the king’s ear could make or break a courtier, it was important to keep on the right side of the Groom, and people would often petition him to pass on their concerns or requests to the monarch. As time went on, the Groom’s duties expanded until they came to act more as personal secretaries. Sir Anthony Denny, Henry VIII’s last Groom of the Stool, was also given the great responsibility of caring for the ‘dry stamp’, which was used to sign the king’s name on documents. In addition to the influence they enjoyed, Grooms of the Stool enjoyed high pay and a range of perks, including being given the king’s old clothes and furnishings. T... is for Torrens In 1868, William McCullagh Torrens, Liberal MP for Finsbury, introduced the Artizans and Labourers Dwellings Act, enabling local authorities to clear away houses without proper sanitation and erect decent dwellings for the working classes. Despite powerful opposition, the bill was passed. U... is for U-Boat In April 1945, just weeks before the end of World War II, German submarine U-1206 was cruising in the North Sea off Peterhead at a depth of about 60 metres when problems with the pressurised flushing system of its on-board toilet caused a leak, which flooded the hull with seawater. When this came into contact with the ship’s batteries, poisonous chlorine gas was created, leaving the captain with no option but to surface. U-1206 was quickly spotted and attacked by Allied aircraft, forcing the captain to order his crew to scuttle the U-boat and abandon ship. V... is for Vespasiennes Vespasiennes were metal open-air public urinals that were first erected in Paris in 1834, in a bid to put an end to indiscriminate public peeing (by men). They took their name from the Ancient Roman emperor Vespasian who, according to legend, imposed a tax on the collection of urine (which was used in tanning and laundries) from Roman public toilets. Vespasiennes were once a common sight on the streets of Paris; in the 1930s, there were over 1,200, but now, only one remains – on the Boulevard Arago in the 14th Arondissement. W... is for Westonzoyland After the Duke of Monmouth’s defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor in July 1685, the nearby church of St Mary’s, Westonzoyland was pressed into service as a temporary prison for hundreds of Monmouth’s defeated rebel followers. Two comfortable toilets have recently been installed in the church, but no such facilities existed in Monmouth’s time… the church accounts record the expenditure of 5s 8d on frankincense, pitch and resin to fumigate the soiled building after the prisoners had been removed. X... is for Xylospongium How did Romans wipe their bottoms? They used a sponge on a stick called a xylospongium. In communal toilets, they were kept in tubs of water in front of where you sat. You took one, rinsed it, used it, and then put it back. The well-preserved Roman latrine at Housesteads on Hadrian’s Wall still has the channel which contained the running water used to wash the sponges. Writing in the middle of the first century, the philosopher Seneca described how a Germanic gladiator used a xylospongium to commit suicide: “He withdrew in order to relieve himself – the only thing he was allowed to do in secret and without the presence of a guard. While so engaged, he seized the stick of wood tipped with a sponge, devoted to the vilest uses, and stuffed it down his throat.” Y... is for York Although pay toilets didn’t appear until the 19th century, the towns and cities of medieval Britain appear to have been well-equipped with public privies. The first recorded public convenience in York was sited in an arch of the old Ouse Bridge. In 1380, one William Graa left 40d a year in his will to provide "a light in the common jakes at the end of Use Bridge”. One section of Conwy’s town walls houses a group of 12 projecting stone latrines, while London boasted Whittington’s Longhouse, a huge public toilet over the Walbrook river. Opened in 1421, it had seats for 64 men and 64 women. Z... is for Zagreb If you visit the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, check out Croatia’s most historic toilet. A magnificent blue-and-white porcelain creation, it was installed for the visit of Emperor Franz Joseph I when he opened the neo-baroque theatre in 1895. Use it and you’ll be sitting where a range of historical figures have sat over the years, including Franz Joseph, Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić and Marshal Josip Broz Tito. This article was first published in the June 2018 issue of BBC History Revealed magazine
Let’s think before we flush, with Dr Christopher Harding
We can take lessons from Edo Japan about how we deal with our waste, Dr Christopher Harding tells Dr David Musgrove
There is a campsite at the foot of the South Downs which has tremendous toilets. In a corner of the field, you’ll find a gaggle of handsome timber cubicles, boasting rustic carpentry and impeccable cleanliness. Each cubicle has a raised box inside, with a hole in the middle framed by a comfortable wooden seat. Obviously that’s where you do your business. Then you throw in a handful or two of sawdust from a bucket to the side, and that’s the job done – no flushing involved (obviously you wash your hands, but there are taps outside for that). It’s a relaxingly rural experience that would encourage anyone to dwell on the merits of water-free composting toilets, for that is what they are. You can even educate yourself on what happens to the waste you and your fellow campers are producing because there is an informative handout explaining how it’s turned into a rich compost rather than being washed away to a sewage treatment works. It’s the sort of thing that the residents of Edo period Japan would have been at ease with. I spoke to Dr Christopher Harding, a scholar of Japanese history at the University of Edinburgh, and his Life Lesson from History is that we could learn a thing or two from the way that the Japanese historically dealt with their waste. Peace, prosperity and the problem of poo The Edo period runs from the early 1600s to the middle of the 19th century, an era of peace overseen by the Tokugawa shogunate based in Edo, now Tokyo. With peace came prosperity, and Edo grew to be the largest city in the world at the start of the 18th century. That urban explosion also meant an explosion of excrement, which had to be attended to. You might imagine that the Edo solution was to build sewers and flush it away, particularly as the Japanese at the time were big innovators in municipal water management. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-640505355-2a09790.jpg" width="2654" height="2114" alt="A photograph showing a town square with a well in the middle. All around there are ramshackle buildings and there are many stone steps leading up from behind the square far into the background" title="A water well in a public square in the town of Ikao, Japan, c1890s. The well would have been shared by ordinary townspeople (Image by Getty Images)" /> “They created this huge aqueduct, the Tamagawa Aqueduct, which took water from the Tama river all the way into what’s now Tokyo,” notes Chris. “They used uncut water channels first, and then as the water comes closer into Edo and starts branching out, you have underground water pipes, mostly made of wood, sometimes made of masonry, which if you’re lucky enough to have a big samurai home, brings water straight into your house. Or if you’re one of Edo’s more ordinary townspeople, it’ll take it into row houses where multiple families would live. You’d have a shared well fed by these wooden waterways where you could draw water from. So, I think it’s amazing that they did that and these services were provided not just to the elite of Edo but to everybody.” Read more | Is this toilet the ultimate Anglo-Saxon status symbol? Inside Harold II’s ‘ensuite’ With all the effort to get fresh water into the city, the residents were very mindful of not wasting it. They used it several times over – cleaning rice first, then bathing in it, then watering their plants – before it was channelled away into moats or rivers. What it wasn’t used for was flushing away sewage. The citizens of Edo knew that their poo was a valuable commodity, to be gathered and used, rather than just removed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-2181019793-92fa448.jpg" width="3642" height="3444" alt="A photograph showing three Japanese women washing rice in large wooden barrels. Two of them are pouring rice from smaller barrels, while the other stands astride one of the large barrels" title="Water was used several times over in Edo Japan, beginning with washing rice, as shown in this image from c1873-83 (Image by Getty Images)" /> People did their business in shared cesspits, and then on a regular basis, collectors would come and empty them and take the waste away in buckets, oxcarts or sometimes on canal-boats. It would be stored in huge pits outside the city, mixed with rice straw, and allowed to decompose, before local farmers took it to manure their fields. Vegetables were returned from the fields to the city in return for the human fertiliser coming the other way. This was valuable stuff, and the waste from the samurai was particularly prized because of the perceived better quality of the poo they produced, given their richer diets. In Osaka, Chris explained, “fights used to break out between different groups of farmers because they wanted access to the fertiliser – or the night soil – from samurai”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2BDYG4P-14aee0b.jpg" width="3053" height="4500" alt="An illustration showing a group of samurai soldiers: one is in the toilet, while the other three squat outside it, reacting to the bad smell" title="This 1834 example of toilet humour depicts squatting samurai in Japan. Their ‘night soil’ was particularly prized as fertiliser for farms (Image by Alamy)" /> The economics of excrement According to Leicester University’s Dr Richard Jones, talking to me recently about the history of manure on the HistoryExtra podcast, this was not unique to Japan. “It has been traditional, in Asia in particular, to make more use of human excrement than has been the case in Europe. There are a number of reasons why that should be the case. The great global historian Alfred Crosby argued that Europe came to economic dominance in the medieval period because the continent had a lot of large domestic animals, and they provided power and protein, but above all, they provided manure. So we have animal manure in large quantities in western Europe. By contrast, in Asia, where there is an absence of these large ungulates, capturing human excrement and using that in the fields is an economic imperative.” Read more | A brief history of the toilet: wiping, washing – plus, who invented the flush? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/W2749E-61737c0-e1763454353863.jpg" width="1190" height="1295" alt="A Japanese farmer, c1880s, wearing a mino (straw raincoat) carries buckets of (probably) night soil, collected from private homes for use as fertiliser (Image by Alamy)" title="A Japanese farmer, c1880s, wearing a mino (straw raincoat) carries buckets of (probably) night soil, collected from private homes for use as fertiliser (Image by Alamy)" /> In Edo Japan, the value of human waste as fertiliser was definitely recognised, and according to Chris Harding, there wasn’t a strong sense of disgust or taboo associated with handling it. When European visitors arrived in Japan towards the end of the Edo period, they often remarked that the streets of Japanese cities did not have the unpleasant smells found in cities such as Paris or London. This was attributed to the efficient and systematic collection and removal of waste. Part of the reason that the streets were clean was that in Edo Japan, there was strong social pressure from the local community to stick to the rules and use shared facilities like toilets in the proper way. Embarrassment would come not from being in close proximity to excrement, but rather from not acting in a socially approved way. Edo citizens knew where their poo was going, and they were happy to have a close relationship with their waste, because everyone knew that it would be removed quickly and then perform a valuable service as fertiliser. The sewage question In the end, it was western influence in the Meiji period, which followed the Edo, that brought to an end this sustainable circle of human manure farming. Sewers were built that were in part modelled on the infrastructure projects that were being developed in the likes of London and Paris. In Europe, there was much more impetus for the swift removal of sewage from urban centres, through waterborne systems, and much less interest in using human waste as manure. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-2673360-6ce8c9d.jpg" width="3692" height="2560" alt="The foundations being built for a London sewer. What to do about the ‘sewage question’ was much debated in UK newspapers (Image by Getty Images)" title="The foundations being built for a London sewer. What to do about the ‘sewage question’ was much debated in UK newspapers (Image by Getty Images)" /> Incidentally, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Britain would adopt waterborne sewage networks. The ‘sewage question’ was much reported on in the newspapers, as commentators considered what could be done to rid Britain’s growing urban cities of the stuff that was causing a great stink and polluting the rivers. Even though Joseph Bazalgette’s magnificent waterborne sewers were demonstrably cleaning up mid-19th century London, at the same time Reverend Henry Moule of Fordington was advocating use of his patented mechanical earth closet. This was essentially the Victorian equivalent of the composting toilet enjoyed on glamping sites today. Sewage farms were also developed, with raw excrement pumped onto fields, but it was basically the volume of poo that caused the waterborne system to win out over these other ideas because that was the only way to shift the material out of town quickly enough. Read more | What did Victorians do with their poo? The battle over the 19th-century excrement explosion Here in the UK, we’re still tied to that Victorian sewer network, with most of our waste going to chemical treatment plants. As Richard Jones explained, “People might be surprised to know that sewage is still being used in modern day agriculture: it just happens not to be in a liquid form. But the solid materials that are precipitated out at wastewater treatment plants, the so-called sewage sludge, when treated and dried and turned into what is euphemistically now called bio-solid, is still spread in significant tonnages across large areas of agricultural land today”. Nowadays, as we once more struggle to manage the increasing volumes of waste flowing into our sewers, it’s a moment to reflect on whether we might benefit from a closer relationship to our waste today. Edo Japan offers an interesting comparison to our current situation, and a different way of doing things. Rather than flushing and forgetting, it’s a good time to think about whether there are more sustainable ways to deal with our waste. Sewage today comes complete with micro-particles and other hidden nasties, so I’m not suggesting we should all have composting toilets fitted in our houses, but maybe we should at least have the conversation about it. This article is part of HistoryExtra's Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
Spectral beasts and hounds of hell: a spooky history of Britain's ghost dogs
From infernal black dogs attacking churches to ravening, red-eyed brutes on remote roads, Britain has long been haunted by fearsome canine phantoms. Karen R Jones explores what these stories can tell us about societies past
On the morning of 4 August 1577, the good Christian folk of Bungay assembled in St Mary’s Church for their regular Sunday service. But more sinister forces were also gathering in the Suffolk town. Dark clouds massed above, then “there fell from heaven an exceeding great and terrible tempest… not simply of raine but also of lightening and thunder”. This storm was only the prelude to a “straunge and terrible Wunder” described by Abraham Fleming in a pamphlet published soon after the event. For the church was plunged into darkness and a “black dog, or the divel in such a likenesse” burst in. It wrung the necks of two worshippers then “passing by an other man of the congregation… gave him such a gripe on the back, that therewith all he was presently drawen togither and shrunk up, as it were a peece of lether scorched in a hot fire”. The story of the Black Dog of Bungay is extraordinary, but far from unique in the region – East Anglia is the primary hunting ground of the spectral beast named Black Shuck – and, indeed, across the country. Britain is, famously, a nation of animal lovers, with 36 per cent of households having at least one dog. The UK canine consumer market is worth around £10bn a year, while millions of us tune in to watch dog-centric television programmes. These animals have become our trusted aides and loyal companions since domesticated dogs arrived on this island with the first human migrants during the Stone Age. It’s not surprising, then, that Britain’s population of paranormal pups is more diverse and widespread than anywhere else in the world, according to Mark Norman, a folklorist specialising in black dog apparitions. Such creatures reputedly stalk villages and lonely roads from Aberdeen to Penzance, and the British landscape echoes with their chilling howls. Hellhound is round the corner Dogs and humans have lived and travelled together in Britain since the Mesolithic age. Archaeological surveys place dogs at the UK’s oldest excavated house – at Star Carr, Yorkshire, dating from around 9000 BC – and at the oldest site of journeying, a camp at Blick Mead near Stonehenge. Dogs accompanied pastoralists rounding up sheep in grasslands and joined hunters tracking deer in forests, before settling down to snooze in front of the communal fire. No wonder they also populated ghostly tales. In story and song, from whispered yarn to local gazetteer, ghost dogs bound across the folkloric and literary record, with perhaps the most famous fictional example being the Hound of the Baskervilles investigated by Sherlock Holmes. In many reported cases, a factual explanation remains deliciously elusive. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1137155402-CMYKWeb-Ready-56e37c4.jpg" width="2501" height="1667" alt="A black poster showing a large wolf with his mouth open. In front of his face, the words "The Hound of the Baskervilles" are written in red" title="A poster for the 1959 Sherlock Holmes film The Hound of the Baskervilles. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired by tales of ghostly dogs on Dartmoor (Image by Getty Images)" /> All manner of spirit dogs have been reported. Some are devoted pets pining for lost masters and mistresses, padding eternally along the walks they took in life, carrying with them the textured reportage of hearsay, tradition and family fortunes. Some are seen as portents of doom, some relate particular cultural coordinates of injustice, wrongdoing or violent ends, and others just are. Some people who are convinced by such tales claim that these are beasts appearing to us from ancient days – messengers demonstrating the existence of a time-slip or a ‘thin place’. The unconvinced retort airily that we like to tell tales – Booker Prize-winning author Graham Swift called humans “storytelling animals” – and that of course those yarns frequently invoke our long-standing companions of homestead and hearthside. Most of Britain’s ghost dogs are connected to specific sites of historical significance where long-standing relationships between humans and canines have been written repeatedly into the material and imagined environment. They haunt village streets, ancient camps, burial mounds and graveyards, historic houses and castles. Read more | From the headless 'Blemmae' to a flesh-eating wolf: a 500-year history of monsters Road ragers Ancient trackways, roads and paths seem to attract a special breed of spectral beast – black dogs that leap out at unsuspecting travellers on dark, lonely nights. These are the most prolific canine apparitions, accounting for about a third of British sightings. Most of them are large and sport flaming eyes; some clank chains, while others can talk. All are fearsome. One of the most striking highway hauntings was reported on the road between Tavistock and Okehampton on Dartmoor. Here, on dark nights, the ghost of Lady Howard rode out from her home at Fitzford House in a grisly coach made from the bones of her dead husbands, heading to Okehampton Castle. Running ahead was a hellhound with blazing eyes and a demonic disposition. Sometimes she offered a lift to lost travellers: accept at your peril. Also on Dartmoor, you might encounter the Wisht Hounds kennelled by the devil in Wistman’s Wood. And at the East Dart Hotel, a former coaching inn near Postbridge, a ghostly bloodhound appears each night at 3am to snuffle eagerly at the road outside, hoping to lap up the remnants of discarded booze poured into the gutter by the guilt-ridden landlord, John Webb, over a century ago. The dipsomaniac dog follows the road down the hill to a clapper bridge, eternally searching for the long-discarded grog in the early hours. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-1911350831-CMYKWeb-Ready-23adf67.jpg" width="2967" height="1978" alt="A black and white illustration of a large, naked man, standing and holding onto a chain that is around the neck of a three headed dogs" title="A 16th-century engraving shows Hercules dragging the three-headed dog Cerberus from the gates of Hades (Image by Getty Images)" /> Dartmoor epitomises the kind of place where ghost dogs congregate: bleak, lonesome spots where the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Dark copses. Craggy peaks. Desolate moors. These are environments that inspire awe and even fear. No wonder they host such beastly apparitions as the Gytrash – a massive dog-spirit frequenting the remote highways of the West Riding of Yorkshire – and the Barghest, a demonic hound with huge teeth and claws roving the darker stretches of the Yorkshire Dales. One Barghest near Whitby sometimes dragged chains behind it, and could vanish into thin air by walking backwards. All were best avoided, auguring bad fortune or death – though they reputedly could not cross rivers. In Wales, the Cŵn Annwn, or ‘hounds of the underworld’, were often seen or heard before a funeral, baying mournfully. Typically, they sported glowing red eyes but their appearance otherwise varied depending on where they were seen: they might be huge and white, small and liver-coloured, or even red-coated, dripping with blood. They might rove lonely roads in a pack but sometimes travelled singly, often accompanied by Arawn, Lord of the Underworld and leader of the ‘wild hunt’. They were particularly associated with crossroads, enjoyed haunting graves, and often frequented mountains. Read more | The child-eating Christmas Yule Cat: what are the origins of this Icelandic folklore? These examples reveal much about our complex relationship with wild spaces. Sure, today we seek out these places for forest bathing, wild camping and an escape from modernity. And yet the vestigial unease they inspire in some people is a psychological throwback to our ancient past, when wolves and bears dwelt in uncharted spaces, and when wilderness connoted chaos, a descent into feral madness and devilry. They are places where Canis familiaris might revert to its lupine ancestor, Canis lupus, transforming from strong and trusty aide into a savage, malevolent assailant. Not all ghost hounds are out for blood, though. Though most tales about Black Shuck portray his appearance as an omen auguring imminent death or ill fortune, on occasion he struck fenland folk as friendly, and even had a penchant for helping women travellers. And the Gurt Dog of Somerset’s Quantock Hills was an entirely affable apparition: a shaggy Samaritan that appeared from the fog to guide lost children safely to their homes. Good or bad omens? Inhabited places, too, harbour their share of spectral hounds. Not one but two black dogs are said to wander the grounds of Leeds Castle, Kent (coincidentally home to the world’s largest collection of dog collars). One, a portent of doom, first appeared in the 1440s, after Eleanor Cobham, Henry VI’s aunt, was tried for witchcraft and incarcerated in the castle. The second, a more benign spectre, is said to bring good luck, and once reputedly saved a visitor from falling out of a window, having attracted their attention by barking. Both are curly coated retriever types, so anyone encountering such a spectre here might struggle to determine whether it is a good or bad omen. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/J4X3AR-CMYKWeb-Ready-826fb01.jpg" width="2952" height="1968" alt="An illustration showing a large black dog standing on its hind legs, with snakes on its head. To the right, there is a man in jacket and tall hat is holding the dog's muzzle" title="A woodcut of the phantom Black Dog of Newgate. The canine apparition reportedly haunted the precincts of the notorious London prison, attacking inmates who’d killed and eaten a new arrival (Image by Alamy)" /> The story of the Black Dog of Newgate was popularised in a sensational 1596 pamphlet describing a canine phantom that stalked the notorious prison. During the reign of Henry III, the yarn goes, inmates of the prison were so hungry that they killed a new arrival, a scholar, and devoured his body. His ghost then wandered the confines of the prison – as did the spectre of a huge black dog. Some prisoners died of fright upon seeing the beast. Others were ripped to pieces by its fearsome jaws in retribution. Even those who escaped the prison were pursued by the avenging animal. Friend or foe? Why are dogs the creatures most commonly cited in accounts of animal apparitions? Partly, it’s because of their long relationship with and proximity to humans. The dog’s alter ego, the wolf, also adds that sense of the fearsome wild into the psychological scare-scape. There is also a biological factor at play: an awareness that dogs are gifted with extraordinary sensory powers. A dog’s nose is equipped with about 300 million olfactory receptors – far more than a human’s paltry 5–6 million. Their hearing, too, is vastly superior to our own. These endow them with almost ‘supernatural’ abilities, reflected in their roles in the beliefs and legends of various cultures worldwide. The Aztecs believed that their Xoloitzcuintli dogs could ‘smell’ ghosts, and thus protect their owners from spirits. In Norse mythology, Freya, a god linked with death, rode a chariot pulled by huge cats – thus a household dog might alert the residents to her approach by howling and barking, potentially averting a fatal incident. And in ancient Greek legend, the three-headed hound Cerberus guarded the entrance to Hades, suggesting that dogs were equipped to patrol the boundary between the living and the dead. Such beliefs in the extrasensory abilities of animals persist: in a 2019 survey for the Blue Cross animal charity, 63 per cent of owners said they believed that their pet had seen (or had the capacity to see) a ghost or other supernatural presence. Indeed, perhaps the most intriguing part of spectral dog stories is the fact that in many places they are still thriving today. Ghost dogs are seen through the windscreens of cars, stalking major roads just as happily as they did ancient trackways. Take that infernal assailant in Bungay in 1577. Black Shuck became – and still is – a widespread legend across East Anglia, written into regional folklore by Reverend ES Taylor in a 1850 issue of Notes and Queries, describing “Shuck the Dog-fiend… this phantom I have heard many persons in east Norfolk, and even Cambridgeshire, describe as having seen as a black shaggy dog, with fiery eyes and of immense size, and who visits churchyards at midnight”. Read more | When a Victorian ghost hunter investigated Britain’s most haunted house, this is what he found Paranormal investigators documenting reports of Shuck sightings found that the majority of alleged encounters occurred after 1900 – so, in fact, his presence in the regional psyche appears to have burgeoned rather than receded in the modern age. Reflecting the continuing salience of this legend, and a broader revival of interest in all matters folkloric, in 2022 a Black Shuck Festival was launched in Bungay to celebrate the town’s famous fiendish beast. Perhaps these tales of Shuck and his phantom canine kin have even more relevance in our polarised and fractured society today. They speak of the importance of roots, of the storied pasts that bind humans to other species. And in a time when anthropogenic change threatens us in far-reaching and fundamental ways, they speak of the importance of acknowledging the limits of what we, as humans, can know and control in the natural (or supernatural) world. Karen R Jones is professor of environmental and cultural history at the University of Kent. Her latest book, Beastly Britain: An Animal History, was published in May by Yale University Press This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine