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What Are Liminal Places?

Within folk witchcraft and folklore, a liminal space is a geographical location of liminality, or in the words of one Lancashire witch, places that are “neither hither nor thither”. Niche locations or landmarks where two or more energies meet in one spot. For example, land and water (such as a river), or land and air (a bridge), or even the living and the dead (a cemetery or coffin road).
Some examples of places of liminality are:

• Coffin Lanes (AKA, Bier ways, Coffin roads, Lytch ways).
• Lytch gates.
• Gates in general.
• City walls.
• Bridges.
• Crossroads.
• Graveyards.
• Churches.
• Woodlands and forests.
• Water ways (canals, rivers, brooks, shores etc).
• County or town boundaries (this often links in with the above city walls concept).
• Old neolithic sites and burial mounds.
• Piers and jetties.
• Within the home: Staircases, doorways and windows
• Caves
• Moorlands
• Tall hills or mountains.

Now, today we won’t be exploring a lot of these places of power in any great depth, or giving a complete and thorough walk through of why a folk witch often choses to utilise such areas within their craft. I am currently writing another blog that does just that! But what I did want to do is give a brief overview in order to both introduce to those who may perhaps be unfamiliar to the concept of such magical locations, as well as share some of the experiences I have collected or researched over the years from others about their own experiences of living in liminal locations.

Places of liminality come up time and time again within old British and Celtic folklore, because even if our ancestors were not witches, many of our forefathers knew exactly what sort of paranormal shenanigans could and would often occur in or around such places. As such, bridges especially turn up in old folktales, both here and across the pond in America! Largely when it comes to escaping evil spirits. Two examples of this would be the American story of ‘The legend of Sleepy Hollow’, in which Washington Irving’s protagonist, Ichabod Crane, must cross the bridge before he can reach safety, away from the Headless horseman. The concept of headless horseman and not being able to cross bridges also comes up within some old Irish lore relating to the Dullahan – in fact, the Irish Dullahan may well have been a possible source of inspiration for Irving’s Sleepy Hollow, as although he himself was an American citizen, his parents were Scottish and Cornish. Some Dullahan-like headless horseman tales have been found in both Devon and Cornwall.

In regards to old folklore and the crossing of bridges, here In Lancashire, one regional folk tale, ‘The Skriker’, recorded in ‘Goblin tales of Lancashire’ also makes the point of saying: “That if he could only cross the bridge he would be safe, the greenies, boggarts, and feeorin not having power over any who had passed over the water”.

Note: In some old folk way beliefs, it was believed that such spirits could not cross water because many sources of water were blessed or would cleanse and kill the spirit. In other lore, it was simply that bridges and water marked the end boundary for some particular local spirits. Therefore crossing a bridge would signal to an individual being that it had reached the end of it’s territory. If this is true then, perhaps such beings draw their potency from a particular piece of land and this, in turn, meant particular spirits held no power outside of their boroughs.

However, it’s not just bridges that have a heavy peppering of folklore, there are many a tale relating to devils and ghosts at crossroads, people being pixie led on moors, or seeing will-o-the-whisp like lights dancing around cemeteries or at a forests edge during the dead of night.

But what of the folk witch, where do we come into the equation?

Well, for the witch, we have always known that these such places exist, but far from staying away from them – or being wary, many of us are drawn to them, or choose to actively work with them. Drawing upon their energies and liminality to do workings, ritual, commune with the dead, see the sending of anyone to die over the next year, scry, make pacts with certain spirits of land (with caution), and so on!

Many folk witches also find that whenever they move home, they can’t help but find they have, either intentionally or unintentionally, moved to an area with many liminal inputs. For example, when my husband and I moved two years ago, we snatched up this property because it had a big garden and was close enough to local schools, nurseries etc, while at the same time, being just outside of town, and close to woodlands and moorlands. Therefore, not too built up. It was only once I signed the agreement and began moving in that I realised how liminal this home actually is! It’s close to woodlands and a graveyard, smack bang between three crossroads, and my section of the street was, until the 1940’s (when this street was built), seemingly on the boundary line between two farms. We are a relatively close distance to a coffin way and moorlands. I’m not sure I have ever lived in such a liminal location! And it certainly makes for an interesting abode, I can tell you! We experience phantom knockings on the patio door and front doors, things moved around the garden during the night (though thankfully it never disturbs the chickens and the ducks!), and the spirit of an older man in farming gear stood just beyond our front gate (it was this spirit that led me to do research on the land and discover this section of street was on farm boundary land).

While we unintentionally moved into such a location, other witches intentionally seek such homes out, in the hopes of using it’s energies and working with it’s local spirits for the purpose of witchcraft. And to be honest, who can blame them? I must admit that I do find it useful living near crossroads, woodlands and a graveyard…

The Implications Of Living At Liminal Locations.

The implications of living at locations perceived to be liminal are varied. To some, it means very little, and they experience nothing out of the ordinary at all.
For others, it can be a hot bed of strange, exciting, or sometimes even frightening phenomena. There could be a reason for this… as a practicing folk witch, I have observed that when it comes to liminal spaces, the age of the location, as well as it’s purpose, and what other local geography is in the area does seem to be a factor. For example, as previously mentioned, I live between three crossroads, about 50 paces to either the left or the right would bring me to such a place. And yes, where all of these are technically crossroads, and yes, as a folk witch I can use them for workings and other such things, they have nowhere near the amount of energy as another local crossroads, not ten minutes walk from my home. There, that crossroads is ancient! The pub on the corner is Tudor build, but there was supposedly an Inn on that location mentioned in the Doomsday book. So, not only is the crossroads itself very old, but upon it’s four directions meet an ancient pub, a very old church, a nursery and an undertakers.
Effectively bringing together on it’s four arms:
– Religion (churches are liminal because they connect the living to the divine).
– A children’s nursery (new life).
– An undertakers (end of life).
– An ancient pub (where history and living meet).

You could argue that this particular crossroads represents the entire journey of life…

Religion/Birth (church) – Childhood (nursery) – Living and Lifestyle (pub) – Death (undertakers).

Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that this crossroads has far more activity than the relatively new ones built in the 1940’s where I live. For the one on the Highstreet has quite a bit of local lore around ghosts, phantom carriages, and strange lights leading to the woods behind the pub…

For those who live at liminal locations where it’s energy, history and circumstances are just right, a lot of things can potentially happen.
Some believe it is lucky to live near a church, especially if it still has working bells to toll the hours of the day, or peel a merry tune. But beware, hearing a church bell ring for no reason, or the clock strike more or less than it’s correct hour could be an omen of death.

In regards to luck, it is also believed by some to be lucky to live near a water way such as a river, canal, or stream, but only if the water flows towards your home. Should it flow in the direction away from your home, it is thought by some to wash away your good health, luck and wealth. Although one could argue that simply turning your head changes which direction you perceive the water to be flowing.

Where living by moorlands, caves, wells, or ancient neolithic sites are said to be the places of the fairy folk, and as such, caution should always be practiced around these capricious beings. Those who live near such places often have tales of strange lights in the night, keys going missing, or horses having their tales elf locked.

Perhaps then, now is a good time, to share with you some modern experiences of those who live at such liminal spaces.

Living At The Crossroads.

This next encounter comes from a book by Peter Underwood.
I chose this particular piece to be added to this article because I once met someone who also had an experience at this particular crossroads.
While living in Suffolk, I once chatted with a fellow army wife (I was then married to a soldier), who asked me what it was like to be Pagan, and what did I believe in? It turned out that this lady had found out that I was a Pagan because most bored army wives love to gossip (often unkindly so) about one another. She had heard I was a witch and was intrigued. Surprised, but willing to polite, I briefly explained what Paganism was, why I followed Druidry, and offered an even briefer explanation of what folk witchcraft was.
For a moment there was silence, and then out of nowhere, my companion asked “do you believe in ghosts?”, sensing she needed to talk and had been sounding me out to test my suitability before sharing her story, I replied casually, “of course. I’ve seen them many a time”. A look of relief spread across her face, and she then told me of an experience she had at the the four sisters crossroads. Her story, was much like Irene’s in the exert below- though thankfully she was never hurt. She had been driving home from visiting a friend when her car suddenly became very cold, and her baby in the back seat began crying hysterically, as though completely terrified by something. She went on to explain that she felt like someone else was in the car with her, and that she felt as though her and her child were in imminent danger. Her overhead light began to switch on and off, and her steering wheel felt as though it was ‘sticking’. Panicked, she thought about pulling over, but found that the further from the crossroads she travelled, the more the feeling of an evil presence began to dissipate, and her young child began to calm.
“Do you think it was a ghost”, she timidly asked me.
“I do” I nodded. “what do you think I should do?” she asked.
“Well, there isn’t a lot you can do now. The incident has passed. But if I were you, I would avoid those crossroads again.”

FOUR SISTERS CROSSROADS.

“Among the haunted roads that have come to my attention is part of the A12 near Ipswich. Here, at a spot known as Four Sisters Crossroads, Stratford St Mary, more than a dozen people have had peculiar experiences, in particular Irene Heath who told me something of the unnerving and unpleasant encounters she had had – with ‘something’. Taking the incidents in chronological order, Irene Heath’s first unexpected experience at the spot had been a few years earlier when a tyre on her car burst when she was travelling along the ‘haunted’ stretch of road. Not long afterwards, travelling alone in her car late at night in the area of the crossroads, she suddenly became aware that ‘something was in the back of the car’; something evil and frightening. She turned on the interior lights of the car and turned round several times, convinced that she would see something awful, but nothing was visible; yet she still had an overwhelming impression that something malevolent and evil was in the car. The impression, vivid and very frightening, lasted for what seemed like a quarter of an hour, in fact until with considerable relief Mrs Heath turned into the gates of her home. One morning, two weeks later, while she was travelling along the same stretch of road, her car suddenly and inexplicably went into a spin and crashed. The vehicle was a complete write-off but Mrs Heath stepped unharmed from the wreckage. The car was in a perfectly sound mechanical condition before the crash, having been serviced only days before. An accident assessor’s inspection suggested that the brakes had suddenly ‘grabbed’, but there was no real explanation. After this experience Mrs Heath made a determined effort to avoid that area, but one night, since it happened to be the most direct and quickest way home, she found that she had automatically taken the road that led to the crossroads. As she approached the area, again alone and late at night, she had the unalterable impression that ‘something evil’ was in the car behind her, and this time she felt a distinct prod in the back, as though something claw-like had prodded her. At the same time Mrs Heath became conscious of a pregnant and clammy coldness inside the car. A few months later she again found herself driving along the same stretch of road. It was after midnight and she was alone. At first she merely noted that there was a clammy coldness inside the heated car, and then again she had the really frightening impression that something incredibly evil was in the car with her. The impression lasted for perhaps five seconds only and then there began an inexplicable and loud banging noise from the direction of the back of the car. This distinct and thunderous noise only intensified the terror Irene felt; now she was absolutely certain that ‘there was something in the back of the car’. Mr Heath told me that he had thoroughly examined the car afterwards and tested it, but he was totally unable to discover any physical reason or cause for the noise. Certainly there were no marks of any kind nor any trace of mud which might be expected had the noise been the result of some mechanical fault. Mrs Heath arrived home on this occasion in a terrible condition and indeed she did not fully recover for several days. She told us she felt the ‘phantom passenger’ might be trying to drive her to destruction or worse… Is it possible that Mrs Heath’s experiences stemmed from deep-rooted fear of attack, misfortune or molestation in this particular area, I wondered, resulting in the unconscious manifestation of the embodiment of evil? It is interesting that the Four Sisters Crossroads, the traditional place for the burial of suicides and murderers, used to be an accident ‘black spot’, several fatalities having occurred in the immediate area. It may owe its name to four trees that once stood at the crossing or perhaps to the local tradition that four sisters met there to part and go their separate ways in life, long, long ago. There was another tradition too that years ago a ghostly group of four people were sometimes seen there and that a gallows stood at the spot. It is also interesting that the stretch of new road on which Mrs Heath had her uncanny experiences follows exactly the line of a very old road. Mrs E. Southgate of Belstead in Essex has related to me an experience that befell her husband at this same place over 50 years ago. Then a young man in his twenties, he was returning home one dark night along this stretch of road when he sensed rather than saw someone walking towards him. As the form seemingly approached him, he thought it odd that he could see nothing, but he heard what sounded like a lady in a long silk gown rushed past him very quickly. A countryman, used to country sounds, he was always certain that this was something not of this world, and he was very frightened and never forgot the experience.”

~ Taken from Peter Underwoods book, ‘Ghosts and haunted places.

Living By The Bridge.

‘The bridge itself was long gone, but the buttresses remained, it was one of several bridges which used to support train tracks used for the transportation of coal from mine head to canal – the area was littered with mines, and many of the hollow shafts still run under the landscape. I’m uncertain whether or not the experiences we had were from this bridge, which was no longer a bridge, the hollow honeycomb of mine shafts underground, or the fact that this landscape was, barely 150 years ago, mossland. Mossland which would likely have been home to the same neolithic and bronze age tombs and monuments that are found on still existing nearby moorland.

It may have been all these circumstances mashed together that caused the spiritual world to linger more tangibly than in most other areas. Many of the events noted here were repeated and minor, but overall the place was generally spooky.

On Summer evenings there were the angry and hollow sounding stiletto foot steps of a woman (definitely a feminine energy) who wasn’t there. The footsteps echoed around 2am on seemingly sporadic nights and paced back and forth along the front of our house and the adjoining two – they’d stop, dead, when one opened the front door to try and catch the perpetrator.

Under the stairs was a cupboard which bore a full length mirror, this mirror was not visible from the couch as it faced the wall perpendicular to that which the sofa was against. There always seemed to be a sense of movement from that spot and on numerous occasions a small face was seen peeking around the side of the understairs cupboard, as though the rest of the body was within the cupboard/through the mirror. It was always low down and small, as though that of a child and it was spotted by multiple people at various times of day. Upon investigation, the mirror was solid, the cupboard was closed and there were no small faced people in the house.

One day, the face had been seen a handful of times, and there was an unusual energy about the place. Suddenly a vibrant gold green ball of light, about the size of a tennis ball, zoomed out of the mirror, touched the ceiling and then went straight back in to the glass surface. It was seen by both myself and my wife at the same time.

Another frequent visitor was the presence of a man, always dark, silhouette like, who appeared at the foot of the stairs. Four steps up there was a small plateau with a loose board which creaked in a distinct way. It was not uncommon to hear this board creak in the middle of the night, and, when checked from the top of the stairs the man’s silhouette would be visible for a second or two, before fading out. The loose board could be seen and heard relaxing back in to its resting position, as though weight had just been taken off of it.

Although there was no communicating with this spectral visitor, he never crossed the wards placed half way up the stairs, unless it was him who was responsible for throwing a tube of toothpaste off the small shelf at the top of the stairs, again in plain sight of two people. It may also have been the same spirit who violently threw a cup across the room, leaving a lodger very shaken.

There were many other odd little occurrences in that property, but they became the norm after a while.’

~ Steven*, Lancashire.

Living By The Cemetery.

“I moved into my current place in the early 2000’s after the breakdown of my marriage. I was looking to start again, but that’s not always easy financially when you have just gone through a divorce. So, eventually I settled on a house share here (North London). I live right by Highgate cemetery. Obviously, it has a lot of hoo-ha and urban myths around it, but I never held much truck with it. A cemetery is just a cemetery. Or so I thought…
Since moving, my dog will not walk anywhere near the cemetery after dusk. He drags on the lead until I take him home.
Both me and my house mate have seen weird green lights through the gates of the cemetery in the early evening. It was so weird! They moved likes moths, but were bright green. One minute they were there, then they were gone, then they were somewhere else. I didn’t like it. It was really unsettling. During the day, walking through Highgate was not so bad, until one day I was walking through the West side of the cemetery and I could hear this “clink-click” behind me. Like someone’s walking cane. I turned, but no-one was there. At first, I thought I had just misheard and carried on walking, but after a few moments, I heard it again, and I just turned cold and couldn’t bring myself to turn around. I wanted to, but just couldn’t! I got out of there as quickly as I could. The weird thing is, every now and then, I hear that “clink-click” of some kind of walking cane outside of the house on some nights; walking past the house and up the street. At first, I kept telling myself I was being silly, or it was another local who uses a walking aid. But one night, my house mate heard it too, and we both looked at each other. It was weird, because although their could have been a logical reason for the sound, we both just froze. My housemate asked “you heard that too?”. “Yes”, I replied, and on a sudden impulse, I went to the window, which until then I had always avoided doing, flung the curtains open and looked outside. There was no-one there and the noise stopped. We still hear it sometimes, and I’ve hung a pentagram on the back of our door for protection. But yea, a lot of weird stuff happens around Highgate. You get people break into the cemetery occasionally too, apparently performing black magic or stealing bones and stuff. If you ask me, if any witch or satanist is brave enough to go in there at night alone, or with a couple of coven members, they are either very powerful and not worried about the risk, or are very- VERY stupid

~ Edith* North London.

Living By The Woods.

As a child, I grew up on an industrial estate called New Addington. Construction of this estate started in the 1930’s, but was largely built just after WWII in order to house the many people who had been bombed out during the Blitz, as well as some of the overflow of families whose homes had been cleared in the East End slum clearances of the 1950’s.
New Addington lies just outside of the old market town of Croydon, and is built on a small portion of the North Downs. The estate itself is quite liminal as it boarders two counties! In fact, part of the secondary school, Addington High, has two buildings known respectively as the Surrey and Kent buildings, due to half of the school being in Surrey (now Greater London), and the other half technically being in Kent.
Through the centre of this estate is long patch of land that was never built on, and it runs from the top of an area called Fieldway, all the way up to the top of an area called Milne Park. Since the estate was built, this long patch of land has been left as parkland because apparently during the construction of the estate, dozens and dozens of old skeletal remains were found, and it was presumed to be an old plague pit. If this is true, it would potentially make sense, as the location is far enough outside of both Croydon and London to have been considered a safe and hygienic distance from built up areas for burial, and it would explain why no houses were built on this stretch of land.

However, I can find no documented evidence of any plague pits ever being found in New Addington, and therefore can only pass on the old local lore offered to me by older members of the community. One of them, a man named Sidney, claimed to have been one of the construction team to have found skeletal remains in the 1940’s. However, this was supposedly hushed up by both the local council and construction management for fear people would not want to move to the estate. The skeletons that were supposedly unearthed were quickly assessed, roughly dated, and re-buried again.

Along one stretch of this un-used land and possible mass grave site, is a woodlands known as Rowdown woods, and can be seen clearly from Goldcrest way. From the houses on Goldcrest, you can see over the empty green space all the way over to the woods (where the remains of an old hunting lodge, supposedly that of Henry VIII’s used to be until the 1970’s, when it finally crumbled. Hence the name of the next street, King Henry’s Drive). Residents of both Goldcrest, and some sections of King Henry’s Drive have reported seeing blue floating lights over the green and leading into the woods, and as well as this, it is common knowledge that over the years many local children out playing were spooked out of Rowdown woods by hearing either sudden screams or hysterical laughing. As a child, I often played in these woods (though never without adult supervision), and where I cannot say that I ever heard screaming or hysterical laughing, I did once encounter the feeling of some unseen entity heavy breathing by my ear and cheek, and it sent me running back to my mother, nan and siblings!
One drawback of these experiences in New Addington is that is crosses the border lands from actual encounters into the realm of urban myths. However, given the areas relation to liminality, it was certainly worth sharing here, even if some of the stories need taking with a good pinch of salt. But this is the way with any local folklore.

~ Collected folklore retold by Zanna. Some stories coming from Sheila, Sidney
and Kenny (Former/current residents of New Addington)

I hope that you enjoyed this weeks blog? Perhaps you have some stories and encounters of your own involving liminal places of power? If so, don’t be afraid to share them over on the private Facebook group!
Our next instalment will be on the tree and plant lore series.

From the time, mists, and distance between us, blessings from me to you.

Zanna