Archives: Digital Events

“God and the Devil are brothers…'” ‘The Disconcerting World of Bogomil folklore’ – Dr Andrew Roach – Zoom

“God and the Devil are brothers…'”The Disconcerting World of Bogomil folklore’

We are familiar with biblical creation stories and their pagan predecessors, but from south-eastern Europe come tales with a running theme of God and the Devil as rivals, but collaborators, even brothers, creating a world with an inherent capacity for both Good and Evil. The stories of bargaining, misunderstanding, betrayal, but also hope and survival against the odds clearly illustrate and reflect human existence, particularly in a harsh Balkan landscape, forming a unique and distinctive world view. Some have argued that these stories, still predominantly untranslated into English, are the legacy of the medieval Bogomil heresy, others that they are even older and influenced Bogomil teaching. Whatever their origins they combine ancient wisdom and misconceptions and in their unflinching view of human existence often sound surprisingly modern..

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Andrew Roach is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Glasgow with a particular interest in medieval heresy and popular religion

Hosted & Curated By:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries – Garry Shaw – Zoom

Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries

The Voynich Manuscript – a medieval codex with unusual illustrations and an unreadable script – has resisted every attempt to decipher its secrets for over a century, gaining it the reputation of the world’s most mysterious manuscript. But in recent years, renewed scholarly interest has shed new light on its history, including when and where the manuscript was likely created. Even so, the central mystery still remains: Why was the Voynich Manuscript made and what does it say? Is its unusual writing a complex cipher or an artificial language and script? Or could the manuscript simply be a late-medieval hoax? In this lecture, we’ll see what the latest Voynich research tells us, and explore other cryptic European manuscripts that provide insights into its purpose. Piecing together these various clues, we will reveal why this most mysterious of manuscripts was likely written. This lecture is based on Garry J. Shaw’s book: Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World’s Mysterious Manuscripts (Yale University Press, 2025).

Speaker Bio:

Garry J. Shaw is an author and journalist, covering archaeology, history, world heritage, exhibitions, and travel. He writes on the latest research and breaking news, and has written features on diverse topics, from the world’s most mysterious manuscripts and the Near East after the Bronze Age collapse, to heritage destruction in Yemen and heritage crime in post-revolution Egypt. He has a PhD in Egyptology, and is the author of eight books including Egyptian Mythology: A Traveller’s Guide from Aswan to Alexandria (Thames & Hudson, 2021) and The Story of Tutankhamun: An Intimate Life of the Boy Who Became King (Yale University Press, 2022). His newest book, Cryptic: From Voynich to the Angel Diaries, the Story of the World’s Mysterious Manuscripts (Yale University Press, 2025), is a New Yorker best book of 2025.

Hosted & Curated By:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Cats in Ancient Fable – Debbie Felton – Zoom

Cats in Ancient Fable

What did the ancient Greeks & Romans think about cats? Were the creatures useful only as rodent control, or did they make good domestic pets? Could they be trusted—were they as faithful as dogs? Our best evidence for Greek and Roman attitudes toward these animals comes from the characterization of cats in Aesopian fables.

Only a dozen of the several hundred surviving fables feature cats, and the stories don’t quite seem to know what to make of them. Instead, the fables use cats to characterize others, who learn various lessons from their attempts to interact with the creatures. In this talk, we’ll look at several ancient fables, including “The Cat and the Birds” and “The Fox and the Cat,” that shed light on the cat’s abilities and personality as perceived in classical antiquity.

Image: Cat killing a bird (partridge or quail). Roman mosaic, House of the Faun, Pompeii.

Late second century BCE to first century CE. Marie-Lan Nguyen, 2011. CC-PD-Mark

Speaker Bio:

Debbie Felton is Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches ancient Greek and Latin as well as various courses in translation, such as “Fairy Tales in the Ancient World,” “Magic in the Ancient Mediterranean,” and “Monsters of Classical Myths.” She specializes in folklore in classical literature and has published on various folklore-related topics including ghosts and witches. She is the author of Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity (1999) and Serial Killers in Classical Myth and History (2021). She has also edited several volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth (2024). Her current project is a volume on revenants in the ancient world (with Reaktion Books).

Hosted By:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Ancient Attitudes toward Daimones – Debbie Felton – Zoom

Ancient Attitudes toward Daimones

Interested in ancient demons and exorcisms? Would it surprise you to learn that not all demonic creatures in antiquity were considered ‘evil’? In fact, the modern word “demon” doesn’t even come close to accurately reflecting the conception of ancient creatures such as the Mesopotamian Pazuzu and Lamaštu, the Egyptian Ikenty and Sehaqeq, and the multitude of unnamed daimones in Greek and Roman curse tablets and other texts, such as accounts of exorcisms. This talk provides an overview of nearly a thousand years’ worth of so-called demons from the ancient Mediterranean and West Asia, focusing on various beliefs held by different cultures across the region.

Image: A bronze figurine of Pazuzu, the Assyrian/Babylonian demonic god. 1800-800 BCE. University of Tübingen, Germany. Creative Commons: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

Speaker Bio:

Debbie Felton is Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she teaches ancient Greek and Latin as well as various courses in translation, such as “Fairy Tales in the Ancient World,” “Magic in the Ancient Mediterranean,” and “Monsters of Classical Myths.” She specializes in folklore in classical literature and has published on various folklore-related topics including ghosts and witches. She is the author of Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity (1999) and Serial Killers in Classical Myth and History (2021). She has also edited several volumes, including The Oxford Handbook of Monsters in Classical Myth (2024). Her current project is a volume on revenants in the ancient world (with Reaktion Books).

Hosted By:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Seasons of the Witch – a Zoom lecture with Dr Alex Carabine

In this Zoom talk, Dr Alex Carabine will explore the folklore, history and later depictions of witchcraft, with a focus on Gothic literature and film

Everyone knows the witch. Her green skin and warts give her away. Or perhaps you have seen her in the woods, dancing in a circle after having flown in on her broom? Maybe your signature is next to hers in the Devil’s book? Then again, your witch might be a woman with flowing hair and velvet dress, gathering dried flowers and igniting a candle with a breath. Your witch could even be a man who can sour butter with a glance – or a youth with black eyeliner carrying a grimoire in their school bag…

Everyone knows the witch. Yet throughout history the witch has been a slippery, shapeshifting figure. If they can appear so different – in so many disparate forms – how are we apparently able to identify them so easily? What do all of these depictions of witches have in common? And how was the malevolent hag of the late-medieval era transformed into the supernatural feminist icon we might recognise today? Join Dr Alex Carabine as she explores the folkloric origins of witches, their pacts with the Devil, the feminist reclamation of the figure, and their ongoing transformation through Gothic literature and film.

In this illustrated Zoom talk, Alex will discuss the Malleus Maleficarum and its femicidal origins, as well as its impact on the Pendle and Salem witch trials. From these historic underpinnings we will move into literature to consider the transformation of the witch in narratives like Shakespeare’s Macbeth and various nineteenth century Gothic novels. As the twentieth century progressed, we will note how the witch was domesticated through films like I Married a Witchand Bell, Book and Candle and why, in the wake of the World Wars, this domestication was considered so necessary. As the century waned and the Millenium neared, we will investigate the witch’s feminist reclamation through the soft Gothic sisterhood of Practical Magic and shows like Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Now, in the twenty-first century, the witch is undergoing another metamorphosis: Robert Eggers took her back to her Satanic roots in the The VVitch, while Anna Biller’s The Love Witch acts as a feminist critique of contemporary witchcraft itself.

The witch is a multivalent symbol through which we can examine the boundaries of power and gender. But why is the witch so prevalent across history, and who is safe to be othered? Come to this lecture and find out if you are as familiar with the witch as you think you are.

 

About the Speaker

At the turn of the Millenium Dr Alex Carabine was a teenage witch – she had the pentacle, the tarot deck, and the bad attitude. Now, she has a PhD in Gothic literature, specifically on the influence of medieval culture on Gothic narratives in the nineteenth century. ‘Seasons of the Witch’ is taken a from a book she is writing on the history of the Gothic, which fuses academic rigour with entertaining literary analysis aimed at the general reader. Alex has lectured at the University of Liverpool, supervised dissertations at Oxford University, and runs online lectures, workshops and events through her freelance business, Gothic University.

Your curator and host for this event will be the author Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. His latest book is All the Fear of the Fair (pub. Oct 2025) the second anthology he’s edited for the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Don’t worry if you can’t make the live event on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.

 

[Image: http://zidanio.livejournal.com/22246.html, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]

The Book of Beasts: Reclaiming Animal Wisdom—Zoom with Elizabeth Sulis Kim

This talk considers animals, who we think they are, and who they really are: gods or demons; friends or foe; familiars or pests; ‘were’ creatures and other shapeshifters.

For millennia, we’ve been combining our image with other animals in our art, stories and spiritual beliefs, and looking to the natural world with awe and reverence, with envy and fear. Since prehistory, animals have pawed and slivered through our material culture, and probably through our stories, from the 40,000-year-old animal figurines found in Swabian Jura to the explosion of cave paintings that followed. In the ancient world, animals gave form to gods, guardians and monsters, from the monumental sphinxes and lamassu to the Potnia Theon (or Mistress of Beasts) and were frequently referenced in myths, sometimes as creatures to protect, at other times as monsters to slay. In many regions, animals still dominate human pantheons. But in dominant cultures our relationships with animals have transfigured. Animals still weave through our foundational myths, place names, nursery rhymes and children’s stories, but are strangely absent in our contemporary adult stories. Writing The Book of Beasts, Elizabeth Sulis Kim set out on a journey around the world, and across time, to find out what happened to our relationships with other animals, and to meditate on what our future relationships could look like if we told different stories.

 

About the Speaker

Elizabeth Sulis Kim is a Scotland-based writer and the editor of Cunning Folk magazine. Her writing has appeared in/on Mslexia, the LA Review of Books, TANK, Ambit, BBC Culture, The Guardian, Hellebore, and Fiddler’s Green, among others. She holds an MA in French & Italian from the University of Edinburgh and is an independent ‘folk’ researcher. She is the author of The Book of Beasts: Reclaiming Animal Wisdom, published by Chatto & Windus, and The Art of Folklore, published by Frances Lincoln.and award-winning radio writer, including as lead dramatist for the National Edgar Allan Poe Theatre on the Air podcast drama which, in 2020, was archived by the Library of Congress for its ‘historical and cultural significance’.

Your curator and host for this event will be the author Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. His latest book is All the Fear of the Fair (pub. Oct 2025) the second anthology he’s edited for the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Don’t worry if you can’t make the live event on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.

[Image: Detail from ‘Two fantastical beasts’. Gouache painting by a Persian artist. Source: Wellcome Collection (ref: 582624i).]

The Unseparated State: the Coast Salish Stories from the Beginning of Time – Paul Chiyokten Wagner – Zoom

6. The Unseparated State: the Coast Salish Stories from the Beginning of Time

The Unseparated State: the Coast Salish Stories from the Beginning of Time

Stand hand-in-hand with the Unseen.

In this grand finale of the first season of Fey’s Shadow Salon, we are joined by Paul Chiyokten Wagner, a Coast Salish Native flutist and storyteller. Through the medium of our virtual salon, the ancient wisdom of the Coast Salish people is going to be invoked through story and song. Join the séance to partake in the knowledge handed down since the beginning of time and enter the Unseparated State, where humans, animals, plants, and forms of life more ethereal co-exist in deep connection with each other and in alignment with the Sacred Mother Earth.

Speaker Bio:

Paul Chiyokten Wagner is the founder of Protectors of the Salish Sea, an indigenous-led organization dedicated to protecting and restoring the Salish Sea region through direct action. Chiyokten is also a cultural educator, bringing forward the words given by his Coast Salish ancestors which have allowed the First Peoples here to co-create paradise for many thousands of years. Chiyokten and Protectors have stood on the front lines of many places of indigenous-led resistance such as Standing Rock, Line 3, Sabal Trail Pipeline, Lelu Island, Mauna Kea, Thacker Pass and Fairy Creek, Olympia State Capitol Climate Change Occupations, Chase Bank divestment campaigns and Salish Sea Prayer Walks. Chiyokten is an award-winning Coast Salish Native flutist and storyteller and has performed with artists such as Kitaro of Japan and Seattle Symphony Orchestra.

Hosted and Curated by:

Fey, a mediator between the otherworldly and the mundane. Outside of the salon (Ada Kałużna), a researcher with interest in philosophy of mind, psychedelic experience and the extraordinary Past scientific officer at the Beckley Foundation. Community-builder and traveler.

LINK: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ada_Kaluzna2

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

Fey’s Shadow Salon – a lecture series where we explore the elusive, chart the intangible, and investigate the invisible. Come around as we initiate the first season of the Salon, the Study of the Unseen, on the eclipse of 3rd March and stay for the ride through labyrinths of the human psyche, from the seven circles of the Jungian unconscious, to the psychedelic fountains of creativity, to the tall peaks of imagination where the ancient Spirits dwell.

1. “Books of Visions”: Jung, Dante, and the Making of the Red Book – 3 Mar 2026

2. Psychedelics as Catalysts of Creativity – 30 April 2026

3. Dreams of Death: Navigating States of Dazzling Darkness – 14 May 2026

4. The I Ching Oracle – 28 May 2026

5. Spirit of Creativity – 28 July 2026

6. The Unseparated State: the Coast Salish Stories from the Beginning of Time – 26 Sep 2026

The Heart of the Castle: Created by Turntale Theatre and performed by Jonathan Lambert – Zoom

Heart of the Castle: Created by Turntale Theatre

The Heart of the Castle is a multimedia one-person show combining storytelling with a range of visual and audio elements. Developed from a traditional tale, it combines oral storytelling with live acoustic looping, masks, props, pop-up constructions, shadow puppetry and green-screen video.

The show explores themes of perseverance, loyalty, and courage, while highlighting the incredible power of kindness and compassion.

Bio:

JOHN O’LEARY is a popular author, illustrator and paper engineer whose books have a particular emphasis on discovery, game play and illusion. He has used his skills as a paper engineer to create giant pop-ups for theatre, art trails and art residencies. He is a regular visitor to schools, museums, libraries and other venues where he delivers talks and runs workshops in pop-up design, illustration and literacy.

John has had twelve children’s books published, all of which have been translated into many languages. https://johnolearyillustration.co.uk/

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

One-Armed Jack: Uncovering the Real Jack the Ripper – Sarah Bax Horton – Zoom

One-Armed Jack: Uncovering the Real Jack the Ripper 

The Jack the Ripper murders of 1888 are the most compelling unsolved crimes of all time. Sarah Bax Horton investigates the killings in honour of her Whitechapel police ancestor Sergeant Harry Garrett, who worked on the case. Using criminal profiling, she discovers a little-known suspect, an East Ender whose distinctive physical attributes match the contemporary eye-witness descriptions.
In 1888, Hyam Hyams was a 36-year-old cigar maker living on Wentworth Street, with a history of physically abusing his wife. By August of that year, with an unhealed broken arm, his epilepsy and alcoholism worsening, his violence against women escalated onto the streets. A seemingly harmless character, he was trusted by the local sex workers who became his victims.
In a gripping analysis, the author of One-Armed Jack proves his guilt, finally identifying the man who was Jack the Ripper. Join Sarah Bax Horton to find out more about the evidence behind her hypothesis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaker Bio:

Sarah Bax Horton is an award-winning true crime writer based in London. Fascinated by genealogy, her discovery of a Whitechapel ‘H Division’ police ancestor inspired her re-examination of the Jack the Ripper case in One-Armed Jack: Uncovering the Real Jack the Ripper (Michael O’Mara Books, 2023). Her second book Arm of Eve: Investigating the Thames Torso Murders (The History Press, 2024) won the ‘Ripperology Books And More’ Book of the Year award in 2024. Sarah is acclaimed for combining meticulous historical research with modern investigative methods.

Photo credit: Photographer: Julian Calder

Curated & Hosted by:

Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day

 

 

Cryptozoology: Hunting the Impossible – a Zoom talk with Richard Freeman

Join leading cryptozoologist Richard Freeman as he gives us an introduction to more than a quarter of a century of leading expeditions in search of unknown animals such as the yeti, the Mongolian death worm, the giant anaconda, the almasty, the orang-pendek, the gul, the naga, the ninki-nanka, as well as known species (and sub-species) that have been classified as extinct including the Caspian tiger and the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger).

About the Speaker

Richard Freeman is a cryptozoologist, author and journalist who serves as the zoological director of the Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) and co-edits its journal Animals & Men. He has written and contributed to numerous publications, including Fortean Times and Paranormal Magazine, and has lectured widely across the UK. Inspired from a young age by Doctor Who, Richard studied zoology at the University of Leeds and began his career as a zookeeper at Twycross Zoo, where he became head reptile keeper working with hundreds of species. He later worked in an exotic pet shop, a reptile rescue centre, and briefly as a gravedigger before discovering the CFZ, rising from contributor to Yorkshire representative and then full-time member, culminating in his current leadership role. Richard is the author of more than ten books, with his most recent being The Highest Strangeness (2024).

Your curator and host for this event will be the author Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers and artists – as well as the author’s own haunted past; it was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley 2020 prize, an award given to a literary autobiography of excellence. Edward’s first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. His latest book is All the Fear of the Fair (pub. Oct 2025) the second antholoigy he’s edited for the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Don’t worry if you can’t make the live event on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.

Image [Left]: Richard Freeman and an orang-pendek witness standing next to a giant titan-arum flower in Sumatra. [Right]: a female thylacine (front) with its juvenile male offspring (rear), in Washington D.C. National Zoo, c. 1904. Attribution: Baker; E.J. Keller., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.