WYRD FICTIONS 001 – 003

A selection of cuttings, correspondence and research notes designed as hypersigilised world building for my Keelian godform project. Truth or otherwise is subjective, though perhaps when it comes to the Wyrd Fictions banner the clue as to the overall authenticity of the quoted entries below is in the name. Not that such a distinction matters when twisting language space towards real world desire, of course, so it should be an interesting experiment either way. This first selection has an irate university professor, strange cat, and some forgotten local legendry.

Mr. Fox,

I will admit that I was less than pleased to be forwarded your email this morning. My department is busy enough without fielding questions from laymen all day, and to be frank the Barghest Wyrd is not something that should be actively sought out by authors or self styled 'gutter mages' like yourself. 

It is a matter of folklore. And as your work up to this point obviously shows you cannot tell the difference between that and fact. It would be better for all concerned if you just accepted that it is not real and left it there. 

I would hate to have to get the authorities involved. Harassment is a serious crime, remember, and your attitude towards the integrity of this institution has bordered on that more than once in the last six months. Having money and time on your hands to play at being a modern day Crowley is no excuse to waste the faculty's time, nor will it be tolerated by my staff. 

This is real life, Mr. Fox, not Night of the Demon.

And take some advice for a change: you need to stop chasing shadows before they decide they want to chase you back. 

You know what happened to Carnegie. You have read the Cole edition of the Peterborough Chronicle and seen the slashes on the church door at Blythburgh. Lightening they say. You would do better to believe that than to keep up this notion that the Wild Hunt heralds some Fortean 'godform' or another. 

Fort was simply an uneducated charlatan. If you spent more than a few months in serious academia you would know that. Clearly, you still need to learn when to leave things alone, for your mental health if nothing else.

Do not contact me or my fellows regarding this matter again or your access to the university library will be revoked permanently. Enough is enough. 

Dr. C. Loman, PhD. [1]

     'Wings. Big wings. No, seriously mate, I'm telling you it did. Yeah, really, honest to God. I saw it up by the airbase. Y'know, the airbase up near Dunefield? RAF Fairford? Yeah. I was driving down to Castle Eaton but the damn thing jumped on my bloody bonnet, all teeth and black fur. Went straight into the verge, did my tyres in on the left side. Some git had left half a pram in the ditch and took my front wheel almost off at the rim. Lucky it didn't jab right up to the footwell or bugger the suspension, still costing me a few hundred quid to get fixed though. Insurance thinks I'm talking crap. Whole front is scratched up something royal though. Claw marks. Yeah. How would I even fake something like that? So I gets out, all shocked like and as I stand here the thing was still watching me from the long grass over there. And I'm telling you it was a puma or something. Really big cat. Like, Beast of Bodmin Moor type big. But it had wings when it landed on the car. That's why I ended up in the verge. Then it just turned and buggered off, all nonchalant like. No, I wasn't drinking before it happened. Police checked all that by the roadside. Damn well had a double whisky at the Lion after the tow truck arrived though. Well, maybe a few at that.' [2]

     ... disbelief, then there is the case of the Meysy Hampton Masks. 
     St. Mary's Churchyard is a quiet little corner of a quiet little village, divorced from the noise generated by the nearby A417 by tall woodland and Polaroid worthy for the rumoured connection to the Knights Templar alone. Pale stone walls rise up around the boundaries of the land, gravel crunches coldly underfoot in the winter mist. As Colley and Rose-Norton (1963) stated in their treatise on English churches: "a place of rare repose and solemn quietus" indeed, if a little squat and authoritarian in design for this folklorist's taste.
     That few laying there will have a care for the masks found during the alterations to the drainage on the North side of the church and the subsequent disinterment of a number of animal carcasses strung with copper wire (the reasons for whose burial in the first place remain a mystery) is to be expected. The dead tell no tales, even in places such as this.
     William Eder (1793? - 1842) was a local taxidermist and tanner who was said to be in some demand by the local worthies to mount their latest prizes. Supposedly a rugged outdoorsman (though who was not outside of the cities and industrial centres of that era) his own exploits as a poacher in the district were well known but tolerated due to his great skill with hide and bone. 
     Viewed by some as a cunning or faerie man of sorts, it was better to stay on his good side than challenge his doings after dark. The vicar of the period, one Aldus Quern (1767 - 1851), often delivered sermons on the topic of a man he saw as a hulking, heathen brute, but was roundly ignored due to the connections Eder maintained in the area. Or fear of mystical reprisal, perhaps.
     A peaceable man in general, quick to jest and described by one commentator as possessing a razor sharp wit if not the education to utilise it, Eder was found hanging from the great oak to the north of the churchyard on Llamas-eve 1842, just outside of the boundary wall. A wooden mask shaped like a great wolf upon his blue and bloody face. He had been beaten soundly, the coroner noting a puncture wound to the base of the spine and a silver sixpence under his tongue. Neither could be explained, though suicide was still the verdict. 
     One can only assume the pious levity that the vicar felt at this turn of events, or when his long time adversary was finally dumped in unconsecrated ground outside the village bounds without a grave marker, to be soundly forgotten.
      Oh, how wrong he was on that last point.
     Soon tales began to spread of the so-called Meysey Toil, a wolfen spectre which was sighted prowling the churchyard at night, used to scare young scamps to return to the safety of the fireside once the sun dipped beneath the treeline and the shadows pooled between the gravestones. Folklore of course. Legendry.
     But what, then, of the three wooden masks found in what appeared to be some sort of stash during the drainage works in the 1930's, hidden among copper strung animal bones under the north-most wall of the church? 
     The wearable visage of a cat, a fox and an owl, expertly carved and wrapped in fine, tanned leather with a silver cord?
     And more importantly, what happened to them on the way to the ... [3]

[1] Dr. Charles Loman, PhD, Personal Correspondence, Received Monday 10th August 2026.
[2] Will 'Shaker' Quinn, Weird Swindon Interview, BBC Radio Wiltshire, October 1994.
[3] Joshua Carnegie PhD, Folkore and Paganism in Britain, Self Published, 1983, Page 47 - 48.