Lancashire Folk

For many years, Melanie Warren was a paranormal investigator—but never saw a ghost. The co-author of two previous books of ghost stories, she is now turning her extensive folklore collection into a series, one county at a time.

As Mel herself says, I think I can safely say that Lancashire Folk is the most comprehensive collection of Lancashire weirdness ever to be in print. Melanie certainly has gone through her extensive collection and pulled together a comprehensive and engaging book on the area. The book hits the right notes from the start, Mel's contents are alphabetical by town, covering 155 locations and gives the reader a good format to follow and dip in and out of. The introduction is well written [and] it's interesting to see how Mel has pulled the information together from a wide variety of sources and written them up in a nice style that's factual and easy to read. Touching on the Pendle area Melanie covers the well know accounts of the witches but I was also interested to read about Apronful Hill where the devil is supposed to have stood throwing rocks at Clitheroe Castle and also the tale of Fox's Well, a spring found by George Fox, who climbed Pendle Hill while under instruction from God. Readers of my previous book reviews will know that I'm a believer in stating sources as much as possible and giving clear references. Melanie's book doesn't disappoint, at the back she gives her bibliography and a topical index for all the accounts again, before listing OS Map references and postcodes (with a note to watch for private land and not to trespass!). I thought I would miss not having images throughout the book but actually having them at the back in a small gallery makes them less intrusive and I like that format. Ian Topham, MysteriousBritain.co.uk April 2016