Hey kids! It’s Spooky Season, and there’s no better time than this to bring your attention to The Occultaria of Albion. What is OA, I hear you ask?
Well, simply put, I’d call it a weird, paranormal, home away from home. It’s a website, a printed mini-zine, a podcast, a YT channel, and a Patreon page. It feels like a growing community, and one I’m delighted to have stumbled into.
“Each edition of the Case File series explores a different location where hauntings, time-slips, cryptids, curses and all manner of supernatural events have occurred. It is a mystical collection of the mysterious, a broadcast from a forgotten frequency, another Albion. The OA is a world designed by torch and moonlight dedicated to revealing the truth about the paranormal.“
I gratefully received Volumes XIII and XIV (Thornley Mill Shopping Precinct, and Hoebury Hill, respectively) and was engrossed in both. What you get in each beautifully presented issue is a collection of historical accounts and explorations of strange phenoma concerning the particular area that volume is focused on. You’ll also get pictures of the people and locations in question. The facts/ideas/accounts are presented in interesting, educational, and always entertaining ways, the cadence of the writing itself lending itself to the eerie and strange stories contained within the pages.
The volumes are perfectly-sized to carry out of the house with you, and make for excellent tea-break reading because you can dip in and out, or just go cover to cover without having to invest an enormous amount of time – but you get a lot out of what you read.
I actually think that OA is perfectly suited for a writing audience – particularly those who write horror, sci-fi, supernatural, paranormal, and strange fiction. I was completely drawn into the specific slice of the world in each volume and found that the ever-elusive muse was waving to me in my peripheral vision as I absorbed these strange histories and mysterious settings. I’d not even previously heard of these places but suddenly, I could see and feel them.
I also really enjoyed exploring their website, where you can purchase those lovely, glossy volumes (and other cool merch like shirts and mugs – I bloody love a mug). You can also enjoy their blog here, and get to know the creators of this ongoing work a little – author Richard Daniels and illustrator Melody Phelan-Clark.
I’m moving onto the podcast and YT videos next, and have no doubt that I’ll enjoy them every bit as much as the work I’ve already consumed if they’re up to the same excellent standard.
OA is well worth checking out if you’re interested in exploring what could be lying just beneath the surface of (or parallel to, behind some strange, glistening veil) the normal world.
Check out their website here:
Enjoy, and stay spooked!
Happy Goat Horror 
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