In centuries past, where rudimentary medical knowledge and unexpected death were commonplace, it should come as no surprise that mortality featured heavily within the cultural landscape of Wales. With intricate funerary rituals and a propensity for portents of death – where any sign, from the mundane to the fantastical, might be perceived as premonitory – morbid traditions play an integral and often unique role within Welsh belief systems.  

From sin-eating to spectral hell hounds, join Dr Delyth Badder as she takes us on a dark tour through Wales’s folkloric relationship with death.