Haunted Waters: River Spirits, Drowned Ghosts & Water-Witches
Where something ancient watches from beneath the surface—hungry, patient, and older than the land itself.
In every culture on earth, water is a threshold—a mirror, a mouth, a silent witness—and often, a predator. This immersive lecture journeys through the world’s most haunting aquatic folklore, from the still pools of rural China where drowned maidens rise for revenge, to the river-goddesses of West and Central Africa who demand offerings, to Japan’s kappa lurking beneath bridges with a child’s laugh and a demon’s appetite.
Meet the Slavic Rusalka whose beauty kills; the Nøkken of Scandinavia who sings travellers to their deaths; the storm-witches of the Baltic who can raise waves with a whisper; and the restless river-ghosts of Eastern Europe and East Asia, forever tied to the waters that claimed them.
Drawing on global folklore, mythic ecology, and the anthropology of water-spirits, we reveal why lakes, rivers, wells, estuaries, and shorelines are universally feared as borders between worlds. Discover the ritual offerings once cast into sacred springs, the ceremonies performed to calm offended rivers, and the bone-deep belief that the drowned do not sleep—they linger.
A night of mythology, terror, beauty, and the uncanny pull of the deep: a lecture on the ancient, living waters that have shaped human imagination for thousands of years
Speaker Bio:
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
