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For about a year, my son had a mild fear of goblins, ever since he saw the kidnapping scene at the beginning of Jim Henson’s Labyrinth – nothing that kept him up at night, but something he mentioned frequently and required reassurance about.

What I find particularly interesting was his belief that goblins reside in and enter from his closet. His belief was so strong that, for a few months, my husband and I had to tie his closet doors shut with ribbons every night to reassure him that the goblins couldn’t come in. The closet seems a natural residence for fearsome things -- it is the darkest place in a room, especially at night, and we fear what we can't see. Yet this belief about spirits in storage places isn't new.

Violet Moore Higgins, "Three days agone - I found a tiny fair-haired infant"

This year has been a year of changes for me, some of which have yet to occur and others that have already occurred. The biggest, of course, was the birth of my second child in August. With her came the upset of routine, family dynamic, sleep, and all those other disorienting but completely natural shifts inherent in bringing a new life – a new spirit (or spirits, depending on your conception of the Self) – into this brilliant, dynamic world of the living. Of course, thanks to modern medicine, childbirth for me was a much less daunting experience than it was for my ancestors (and, sadly, for those today who live without access to adequate medical care).

Household spirits fascinate me. Not too surprising, given the subject of this blog. Modern popular paganism tends to focus so much on the greater deities and the wild spirits of the forests, bodies of water, mountains, etc., that spirits of the home tend to be overlooked or shrugged off. Perhaps house spirits seem less interesting because they occupy the same spaces we live in day after day; perhaps they seem too domestic, too banal. Or perhaps, like many, many other spirits known to our ancestors, we have just forgotten about them. Whatever the reason, I can say that household spirits are just as mysterious, rich with character and personality, and even dangerous as other types of spirits. They offer just as much spiritual value and the potential for material reward. They are just as vital to our lives as they were to those who came before us.

One of these spirits is the kobold, a German spirit of the home as well as mines and ships. It is a helpful trickster, one that can come into a family in a number of ways – including choosing the family itself – and promises a fruitful (if complicated) relationship that can last a lifetime.

Recently, one of my readers asked me an intriguing question. She wanted to know if the internet could be a spirit in its own right, a deity that could be worked with. She had done some work on her own and that work seemed to say yes, but she was curious about my perspective on it, so I figured i'd share it through an article.

The first time I got on the internet, it was 1995. I was in my last year of high school and I got to use a computer for the first time and access the world wide web (as it was known back then). Why do I share that with you? Because I didn't grow up with the internet. I had to adapt to it. I fortunately did so, while I was still a teenager, and to be honest I took to the internet like a fish takes to water.

I have a spirit in my bedroom and I have recorded him once on my voice recorder playing with the voice recorder and then he said "oops" and I feel him in my room and I believe he has been shutting the voice recorder off at night as I have it on a setting that it only records if it hears a voice or noise. I go to bed fine but when I wake up I have bruises all over my legs and I don't know  what to do. I don't want to send him away without knowing who he is but he won't tell me. And I wake up with some really bad bruises. What can I do?

Spooked in Seattle

The character of autumn you experience will depend a lot on where you live. An autumn in New England is sharper, brighter, frostier and more resplendent with tree colours than the UK. In my corner of the world, damp, grey, misty conditions are common – although we do get other weather too. We may get frost, or a lot of rain, warm balmy days, or high winds, or combinations of any and all of these things.

Yesterday I walked over the hills, and found that the flood plain of the River Severn was full of mist. A great torrent of cloud had washed up the river valley, looking like a river in full spate, breaking against the hills in distinctive waves, ocean-like at times. Whole settlements vanished from sight beneath it, the hills across the river were entirely gone. The effect was uncanny, as though everything had been washed away. I do not have any images, and an image alone would not convey the effect, because without knowing what was hidden, the scene would lose much of its power.

I try to remind myself of this as I glide through my day.  A shadow grabs my attention and I try to catch a glimpse of what or who it might be.  Then I catch myself.  If this happens and I’m out in public, I don’t want to look like a fool.  If I am at home or out in my yard, I watch, and talk.  “Who are you?  Can I help you?”  Sometimes I whisper, sometimes I talk in a normal tone. 

They don’t scare me.  They never have.  Only once have I been startled by one and that was only because they came too close.