'Giant's Rib' and embalmed wives in 'A-Z of Curious Wales'

Other’s believe that it came from from a whale or even a mammoth, although how it came to this remote location on the edge of the Berwyn Mountains, is one of the mysteries contained in a new History Press book “The A-Z of Curious Wales”.

Journalist and author Mark Rees has assembled this new collection of popular and little known stories from all corners of Wales arranged alphabetically.

There’s the well-known tales of Montgomeryshire sheriff Sir John Pryce who kept the bodies of his embalmed wives in bed with him at Newtown Hall in the 18th century, because he could not bear to the parted from them even in death; and the lake monster known as Gorsey in Llangorse Lake, to compete with Bala Lake’s Tessie.

Llangorse Lake is also the setting for a curious tale of ghostly vengeance from beyond the grave reported in September 1836.

There is also the strange sighting by children in a wood near Llandegley, close to the fabled resting place of the last dragon in Wales, in Radnor Forest.

Pistyll Rheaedr waterfall's place among the 'Seven Wonders of Wales' is considered.

Stories of Beddgelert, the Black Monk of Tredegar, Castell Coch, the Corpse Candles, the Dancing Marquess of Anglesey, the Dog of Darkness, the 12 Knights of Glamorgan, the rebel Twm Sion Cati, the secret church of Howell’'s department store in Cardiff, King Arthur and the Holy Grail, the Mari Lwyd, Dic Penderyn’s Martyr’s grave; the most haunted pub in Britain, at Bridgend; the Pirate King Sir Henry Morgan, the Red Bandits of Mallwyd, the Swansea Devil, the Welsh Sin eater, and Aberystwyth’s own version of Spring-Heeled Jack and Aberystwyth Old College’s claim as the Welsh Hogwarts, right up to the amazing story of the replica Millennium Falcon from “Star Wars” created in a hangar at Pembroke Dock, as well as witches and UFOs are all here along with many more in this rich treasury of odd stories ideal for this time of the year.