If there is one artist who can turn a festival mascot into a full-blown paranormal case file, it is Brocarde. The self-styled Duchess of Darkness has done it again, this time hauling a haunted Download Dog bobblehead back to Donington Park and conducting a séance beneath the Apex Stage at Download Festival to figure out exactly what has been rattling around her basement.

According to Brocarde, the snarling, dust-covered bobblehead she unearthed at home has been the source of vivid nightmares, freezing cold spells, and objects moving on their own — with the toy itself allegedly gliding across rooms whenever heavy metal is playing. Naturally, the only sensible response was to return the potentially cursed object to its spiritual homeland, in full funeral regalia.

Dressed in a floor-length black velvet mourning gown, Brocarde escorted the bobblehead across the festival grounds in a slow procession, the dog caged inside a basket adorned with dangling crosses and a stark warning sign reading, “Beware of the haunted dog (it may bite).” Before the ritual, she bathed the toy in holy water and saged its cage — because if you are going to summon something under the Apex Stage, you may as well do it properly.

What she found is arguably the most Brocarde twist imaginable. The bobblehead does carry a spirit attachment, but it is not human. She claims the vessel is possessed by the ghost of a dog named Tommy Tattle, said to have been the beloved companion of Francis Rawdon Hastings, 1st Marquess of Hastings, the aristocrat who built Donington Hall in the 1790s. His son George — an enthusiastic fox hunter with kennels full of hounds at the estate — appears to be the same Georgian-era horseman Brocarde says she encountered during her 2024 Download ghost hunt, when she also crossed paths with his wife Barbara, better known as “The Woman in White.”

“I knew instinctively that there was some kind of connection between my bobblehead toy and the spirits I’d seen at Download Festival. I couldn’t piece it all together, but when I was sitting close to the earth beneath the Apex Stage, the story started to unfold during my paranormal investigation,” Brocarde explains. “There seems to be a fascinating and long standing connection with dogs at Donington Park, which still continues today as the Download Festival mascot is a dog.”

She also floats a theory metalheads will happily co-sign: that the sheer intensity of heavy music at Donington may be prying open a portal between worlds. “It’s amazing to know that the energy of Download captivates both the living and the spirit world alike,” she adds.

For the uninitiated, Brocarde is the artist who once made global headlines for marrying — and later divorcing — the ghost of a Victorian soldier. She writes the weekend “Terrifying Travels” column for the U.K.’s Daily Star, has held a séance for Lemmy at Wacken Open Air, hosted the black carpet at the Metal Hammer Awards in Berlin, and infiltrated a coven of witches in the name of research. It is safe to say her CV is not like everyone else’s.

All of this arrives alongside the release of her long-awaited debut album, Good Attendance At Sunday School, ten years in the making and out now. The record digs into the emotional and haunting experiences that shaped the woman behind the darkness, and her latest single Seven Sins features none other than Ray Luzier of Korn on drums.

Stream Brocarde and dive into Good Attendance At Sunday School here: https://open.spotify.com/search/Brocarde

Whether you are here for the theatrics, the ghost stories, or the genuinely inventive dark-pop songwriting, Brocarde’s world is one worth stepping into — just maybe leave the bobbleheads at the door.