SPIRITS & SPECTERS
Bonfire Folklore and Paranormal Protection Promised, Though Article Text Proves Elusive
A Higgypop piece bearing an enticing title arrives with its body missing, leaving only the author's credentials and a list of related reading.
THE INTERNET — A news item published on 1 November 2026 by the paranormal website Higgypop carries the title "Bonfires, Folklore & Paranormal Protection." The article's main text, however, did not survive the journey to this office, and readers hoping for details of the bonfire customs in question must consult the original.
What remains is the page's furniture. The site's founder and content creator, Steve Higgins, is described there as having built digital things for more than twenty years, covering ghosts, retro games and urban exploration. The page also calls him a former radio anorak and a hardcore day tripper.
The page further advertises books by Mr. Higgins, among them a paranormal quiz book said to contain 85 themed quizzes and more than 1,500 questions, spanning ghosts, UFOs and paranormal television. Another volume is described as a road trip through Britain's UFO history, in which the author relives his teenage fascination with the weird.
Related headlines listed alongside include "Do Fireworks Increase Paranormal Activity?", an account of turning a simple quiz into a real-world game, and two pieces concerning games for the Amiga computer. Whether bonfires do in fact protect against the paranormal is a matter this correspondent can report only as a question, and a promising one.