Myths, legends and strange old tales rooted in the landscapes of Britain.
Some stories belong so strongly to a place that it becomes difficult to imagine one without the other.
A tor becomes a witch's lookout.
A stone circle becomes a king and his court.
A pool becomes the resting place of a legendary sword.
A village remembers two strange children who appeared at harvest time.
Whether these tales began as explanations, warnings, entertainment or fragments of something older, they have survived because somebody kept telling them.
And in many cases, you can still visit the places where the stories are said to have happened.
Dartmoor, Devon
Vixen Tor rises dramatically above the moor between Princetown and Tavistock, and local legend gives it a particularly unsettling resident.
Vixiana — or Vixana — was said to be a witch who watched from the tor for travellers crossing the moor.
In the old tale, she delighted in drawing the unwary into dangerous ground and mist, leaving them lost among the bogs and rocks.
Mist around Vixen Tor can make the old tale feel uncomfortably easy to imagine.
Dartmoor, Devon
Bowerman was said to be a great hunter who roamed the eastern moor with his hounds.
According to legend, his hunt disturbed a gathering of witches.
In revenge, they cursed Bowerman and his hounds, turning them to stone.
The tall granite pillar known as Bowerman's Nose is still said to be the hunter himself, frozen forever in the landscape.
Sometimes the shape of the land seems to write the story for us.
Dartmoor, Devon
Childe the Hunter belongs to one of Dartmoor's darker legends.
Caught in a terrible blizzard while hunting alone, Childe became stranded on the moor.
In desperation, the story says he killed his horse and climbed inside its body in an attempt to survive the cold.
It was not enough.
His body was later found, and the place associated with him is still marked by Childe's Tomb.
The tale carries all the bleakness of Dartmoor in winter.
Between Postbridge and Two Bridges, Dartmoor
Not every Dartmoor legend is ancient.
The tale of the Hairy Hands grew during the age of motor travel.
Drivers, cyclists and motorcyclists travelling along the road between Postbridge and Two Bridges reported mysterious hands appearing on their handlebars or steering wheels, trying to force them from the road.
The story became attached to a stretch already known for accidents and remains one of Dartmoor's strangest modern legends.
Old landscapes do not stop gathering folklore simply because the world becomes modern.
Zennor, Cornwall
A mysterious woman was said to visit the church at Zennor to hear a young chorister sing.
Eventually the two disappeared together, and the story grew that she was a mermaid who had taken him beneath the sea to live with her.
The legend remains closely associated with Zennor and Cornwall's long relationship with the sea.
Some legends frighten us. Others ask whether love might carry somebody into another world.
Bodmin Moor, Cornwall
Dozmary Pool lies dark and still on Bodmin Moor and has long gathered Arthurian associations.
Later tradition linked the pool with the Lady of the Lake and the return of Excalibur after King Arthur's final battle.
Whether or not the tale began here, the landscape makes it easy to understand why people connected the pool with something mysterious and otherworldly.
Still water is very good at keeping secrets.
Oxfordshire
Wayland's Smithy is a Neolithic long barrow, built thousands of years before the legendary smith Wayland became attached to it.
Later folklore said that if a traveller left a horse there with a coin, the unseen smith would shoe it while the owner was away.
Over time, an ancient tomb became a magical forge.
Places do not have to keep the same story forever.
Oxfordshire
The Rollright Stones are a group of prehistoric monuments, including the King's Men stone circle, the Whispering Knights and the solitary King Stone.
Folklore transformed them into a king and his followers who were turned to stone by a witch.
Each part of the monument gained stories of its own.
Where answers are missing, stories are often very willing to step in.
Somerset
Glastonbury Tor has gathered layer upon layer of legend.
It has been linked with Avalon, King Arthur, the Holy Grail and the otherworld.
Stories from different periods have settled on the hill until history, spirituality and folklore have become deeply entangled.
Some places gather so many stories that the landscape and legend become almost impossible to separate.
Suffolk
Sometime in the Middle Ages, villagers near Woolpit were said to have found two children in the fields.
Their skin had a strange green tinge.
They spoke a language nobody recognised and at first refused ordinary food.
The boy eventually died, but the girl survived, learned English and later lived among the local population.
Many explanations have been suggested since — illness, displaced children, misunderstanding or folklore — but none has completely erased the mystery.
Perhaps uncertainty is exactly why the story has survived for so long.
These are only brief tellings.
Most of these legends have been told in many different ways, and some have changed enormously as they travelled from one generation to the next.
If one catches your imagination, look for local histories, folklore collections, museum pages, heritage sites or books written about the place itself.
You may find older versions of the tale, different endings, regional details, or stories that have almost disappeared from wider memory.
And if you ever visit the place connected with the legend, take a little time to notice the landscape around it.
Sometimes understanding where a story belongs is half the story.
Some legends began around ancient monuments.
Some grew from dangerous landscapes.
Some may contain a small piece of real history.
Others perhaps survived simply because somebody told a good story and somebody else remembered it.
Folklore tells us what people feared.
What they wondered about.
What they found beautiful.
What they could not explain.