Yes! ✨

The October 29, 1950 “Pictorial Review” cover for the Los Angeles Examiner featured a rare, early promotional illustration for Walt Disney’s Alice in Wonderland (1951)

Happy 6th birthday Louie. 🥳

A Fata Morgana is a highly complex, fast-changing form of a superior mirage that drastically distorts distant objects, stacked vertically into unrecognisable shapes or towering structures. The name comes from Italian, referencing King Arthur's shapeshifting half-sister, Morgan le Fay, due to the mythical way these illusions seem to build castles in the sky. The Flying Dutchman, according to folklore, is a ghost ship that can never go home, it is doomed to sail the seven seas forever, usually spotted from afar, and sometimes seen to be glowing with ghostly light. One of the possible explanations of the origin of the Flying Dutchman legend is a Fata Morgana mirage seen at sea.

Kalan Goañv, which translates to the "First Day of Winter" in Breton, is the ancient Celtic festival that marks the beginning of the dark season in Brittany. This tradition shares the same roots as the Irish Samhain and Welsh Calan Gaeaf, making it the authentic precursor to modern Halloween in the region. In Breton mythology, the Ankou is the personification of death and the collector of souls. Depicted as a tall, skeletal figure in a wide-brimmed hat wielding a scythe, travelling the countryside in a creaking cart (karrigell an Ankou) to gather the spirits of the newly deceased. Families would leave the hearth fire burning overnight and set out food, so visiting ancestors would not go hungry, and the children carved spooky faces into beetroots or turnips (beterabez), placing candles inside to scare away travelers or honor the spirits. 🎨 Olivier Ledroit.

“A very fine cat indeed”

Cover illustration for The Graveyard Book Graphic Novel, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by artist P. Craig Russell.

Cover of The New Yorker (1945) created by Edna Eicke.

Cover of The Bohemian Magazine, November 1907.

Beautiful sky this morning 🌅

Less Wars and more This!

“Dream-land” (1844) by Edgar Allan Poe. By a route obscure and lonely,    Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT,    On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly    From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,        Out of SPACE—Out of TIME. Bottomless vales and boundless floods,    And chasms, and caves, and Titan woods,    With forms that no man can discover    For the tears that drip all over;    Mountains toppling evermore    Into seas without a shore;    Seas that restlessly aspire,    Surging, unto skies of fire;    Lakes that endlessly outspread    Their lone waters—lone and dead,—    Their still waters—still and chilly    With the snows of the lolling lily. By the lakes that thus outspread Their lone waters, lone and dead,— Their sad waters, sad and chilly With the snows of the lolling lily,— By the mountains—near the river    Murmuring lowly, murmuring ever,—    By the grey woods,—by the swamp    Where the toad and the newt encamp,—    By the dismal tarns and pools    Where dwell the Ghouls,—    By each spot the most unholy—    In each nook most melancholy,—    There the traveller meets, aghast,    Sheeted Memories of the Past—    Shrouded forms that start and sigh    As they pass the wanderer by—    White-robed forms of friends long given,    In agony, to the Earth—and Heaven. For the heart whose woes are legion    ’T is a peaceful, soothing region—    For the spirit that walks in shadow    ’T is—oh, ’t is an Eldorado! But the traveller, travelling through it,    May not—dare not openly view it;    Never its mysteries are exposed    To the weak human eye unclosed;    So wills its King, who hath forbid    The uplifting of the fring'd lid;    And thus the sad Soul that here passes    Beholds it but through darkened glasses. By a route obscure and lonely,    Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright,    I have wandered home but newly    From this ultimate dim Thule.

"The Traveller in Black" by Bruce Pennington, as a book cover for the 1971 paperback edition of John Brunner's classic fantasy collection.