Jeremy Harte is inspired by landscape and the otherworldly. His book Explore Fairy Traditions won the Briggs award, followed by Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape. Serving on the Council of the Folklore Society, he organises their Legendary Weekends. He is curator of Bourne Hall Museum in Surrey.
Strange tales from many medieval genres prove that experience, not fiction, underlay fairy beliefs. Supernatural beings took on similar forms whether they were supposed to be ghosts or goblins, saints or demons. First-person oral testimony is backed up by place-names which show how wells, pools and hills were known locally as haunted locations.