Archives: Digital Events

Opium Dreams: Desire, Decay, and the Victorian Imagination – Lena Heide Brennand – Zoom

Opium Dreams: Desire, Decay, and the Victorian Imagination

What does it mean for a society to fall in love with oblivion?

From ancient ritual intoxication to the smoky parlours of 19th-century London, opium has long occupied a strange and seductive place in human history—at once medicine, muse, and menace.

This lecture traces the cultural, social, and psychological impact of opium across the ages, culminating in its profound entanglement with Victorian society.

In the 1800s, opium was everywhere: prescribed by doctors, sold freely in chemists, and consumed across all classes—from exhausted factory workers to poets, painters, and aristocrats seeking transcendence. It soothed pain, inspired visions, and quietly tightened its grip on a nation in the throes of industrialisation and empire.

Through the writings of figures such as Thomas De Quincey and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, we explore how opium shaped literature and the creative imagination—fueling dreamlike beauty, but also paranoia, fragmentation, and despair. We will step inside the opium dens of London’s East End, examine the moral panic they provoked, and uncover how addiction, colonial trade, and class anxieties became deeply intertwined.

This lecture moves between the intimate and the imperial: from private visions to public crises, from the quiet laudanum bottle in the bedside drawer to the vast machinery of the Opium Wars.

Rich in atmosphere and grounded in cultural history, Opium Dreams invites you into a world of velvet shadows and chemical longing—where pleasure and ruin walk hand in hand, and where the boundaries between medicine, vice, and art begin to dissolve.

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

Radio Sorcery: a resonance-based approach to the study of contemporary paranormal practices – Dr Matteo Polato – Zoom

Radio Sorcery: a resonance-based approach to the study of contemporary paranormal practices

The talk introduces a sound and resonance-based approach to the study of contemporary paranormal experiences, focusing on the relational, affective, and performative processes that have shaped occultural practices in recent decades. Radio technology is central to this exploration, considered both materially and discursively. On one side, it traces the use of radio devices among practitioners from the early 1950s – beginning with Friedrich Jürgenson’s experiments on Electronic Voice Phenomena – to the present, including the so-called ‘Estes method’ popularised by the documentary webseries Hellier (2019). On the other, the talk examines radio as a metaphor often used to interpret unexplained experiences, engaging with ideas such as Stone Tape Theory, T.C. Lethbridge’s residual haunting, and John Keel’s superspectrum. These and other frameworks conceptualise the paranormal experience itself as a process akin to radio transmission, made of the tuning-in, decoding, and amplification of otherworldly agencies.

However, the talk does not merely offer a history of paranormal uses of radio. Instead, it proposes an alternative epistemological framework grounded in sound and resonance, capable of foregrounding aspects often overlooked by ocular-centric models. Thinking through sound and resonance – as fundamentally interactive and embodied media – in fact, enables to challenge the often reductionist academic position to the field, redefining the paranormal not as a fixed object of investigation – to be analysed either as an ontological impossibility or as a subjective product of irrationality – but instead as a process emerging from relationalities in-between the embodied and the representational, the experiential and the fictional, the everyday and the exceptional.

Speaker Bio:

Dr Matteo Polato is a researcher, musician and experimental game developer. He is currently Lecturer in Digital Media and Communication at the School of English, Manchester Metropolitan University. In 2025 he completed a PhD on the roles of sound and resonance-based processes in contemporary occulture and paranormal practices. He co-founded D∀RK – Dark Arts Research Kollective at MMU, a research group which explores the creative, communal and boundary-breaking potential of occulture. In the last 20 years he released albums on multiple labels, presented sound art pieces and performed in Europe, UK, USA and Japan. With the collaborative project Yami Kurae he develops experimental videogames inspired by psychogeography and occultural practices.

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

Norwegian Trolls and the Hidden World – Lena Heide Brennand – Zoom

Norwegian Trolls and the Hidden World

In the deep forests and under the shadow of Norway’s mountains, something watches.

Long before trolls became lumbering figures of children’s stories, they were understood as dangerous, intelligent, and deeply other—beings who lived just beyond the edge of human settlement, in caves, cliffs, and hollow hills. They stole livestock, lured travellers off their paths, hoarded ancient treasures, and, in some tales, hunted human flesh. To meet a troll was not whimsical. It was a risk.

This lecture explores the older, darker layers of Norwegian troll traditions, where the boundary between nature and the supernatural begins to dissolve. Trolls are not merely creatures of myth, but expressions of a landscape that is vast, unpredictable, and not entirely human. They are tied to mountains and weather, to darkness and stone, to the slow passage of time itself.

Drawing on folklore, art, and historical belief, we will examine how trolls were understood across Norway: as solitary giants, shape-shifters, multi-headed beings, or even deceptive figures capable of blending into human society. Particular attention will be given to the work of Theodor Kittelsen, whose haunting visual interpretations captured the uneasy presence of these beings at the edge of sight.

Why do trolls turn to stone in sunlight? What do their stories reveal about fear, isolation, and the limits of human control over nature? And why do they continue to haunt the cultural imagination of the North?

This is not a lecture about fairy tales.

It is about what lives in the mountain—and what happens when it notices you.

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

Freaks – Johnny Mains – Zoom

Freaks

Fresh off the massive success of Dracula (1931), director Tod Browning was tasked by MGM’s production chief, Irving Thalberg, to create a movie that would out-terrify Universal Studios’ booming monster franchise. He chose to adapt ‘Spurs’, a short story by Tod Robbins that was first published in the February 1923 issue of Munsey’s Magazine. It was a property Browning had convinced MGM to buy the rights for in 1925, but the project stalled. Browning temporarily left MGM to film Dracula for Universal Pictures, and watching Universal print money with their horror output, MGM’s head of production, Irving Thalberg, called upon Browning to make a film that would “out horror Frankenstein”. Browning dusted off the script for ‘Spurs.’ and when Thalberg read the treatment, he lamented: “Well, I asked for something horrible, and I guess I got it.” Despite his reservations, Thalberg greenlit the project, and Browning used real life sideshow performers, sending talent scouts across the US to hire human oddities. The result was Freaks (1932) and the resulting controversy was immediate. Test screenings were a disaster with people reportedly running from the theater. In a state of panic, MGM drastically slashed the film’s runtime from 90 minutes down to a disjointed 64 minutes, permanently destroying the excised footage to appease the censors.

Speaker Bio:

Johnny Mains has been writing a book on Freaks for the past decade, collecting as much information as he can about every aspect of the making of the film. For his talk, he opens up his archive to reveal three different versions of the script, talks through everything that was cut, dives deep into the shady world of Hollywood finances, revealing the film actually made more money than anyone expected, and the lengths he has gone to in trying to track down the ‘missing’ footage.

Johnny Mains is an editor, author and genre researcher. He currently works with the British Library, editing books for their Gilded Nightmare series.

You can find him at @johnnymains.co.uk over on Bluesky.

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

Dreams of Death: Navigating States of Dazzling Darkness – Dr. Nida Chenagtsang – Zoom

Dreams of Death: Navigating States of Dazzling Darkness

Are you ready to face your death? Or does this question alone bring shivers down your spine? If you dare to study the ultimate unknown, join us for this third instalment of Fey’s Shadow Salon, where we move beyond the unconscious, the supernatural and the psychedelic in order to understand how the psyche unravels when suspended in the emptiness of a liminal state.

We’ll investigate the similarities between the state of dreaming, death and darkness retreats. What connects these and can you utilize one to prepare for the other? These mysteries will be illuminated for us with the torch of Tibetan wisdom, as carried by our speaker of the night and a renowned expert on Tibetan Buddhism and traditional medicine: Dr. Nida Chenagtsang.

Come and find out what it takes to face the darkness beyond.

Speaker Bio:

Dr. Nida Chenagtsang is a renowned Tibetan physician, scholar, and lineage master of the Yuthok Nyingthig, the unique spiritual healing tradition within Sowa Rigpa (Traditional Tibetan Medicine). Born in Amdo, northeastern Tibet, he began his medical training at the local Tibetan Medicine hospital before earning his degree from Lhasa Tibetan Medical University in 1996. Alongside his medical studies, Dr. Nida immersed himself in Vajrayana Buddhism, receiving transmissions and training from esteemed masters across all Tibetan Buddhist schools, with a particular focus on the Longchen Nyingthig, Dudjom Tersar, and Yuthok Nyingthig traditions.

A well-known poet in his youth, he has published numerous books and articles on Sowa Rigpa and the Yuthok Nyingthig, as well as groundbreaking research on ancient Tibetan healing practices, earning international recognition in both the East and West.

As the Founder and Academic Director of the Sowa Rigpa Institute, Dr. Nida has been teaching internationally for over 25 years, and continues to share the wisdom of Tibetan Medicine worldwide, preserving and advancing its profound healing traditions for future generations.

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

Amidst the Demons – Ed Simon – Zoom

Amidst the Demons

Fallen angels, devils, demons – the greatest trick Satan ever pulled was convincing us that he and his compatriots didn’t exist. Well, regardless of whether or not demons are “real” or not, from Asmodeus to Ziminiar they’ve had an effect on human imagination (and nightmares). In this presentation Ed Simon talks about the influence that “demonological poetics” has had on culture and the ways in which the Devil has often been a measure of all that we can know (or don’t know).

Speaker Bio:

Ed Simon is Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University, the editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books, and a staff writer for Literary Hub. A widely published writer, he is the author of over a dozen books, including Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain.

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

Rags, Bones, and Other Sacred Objects – Ed Simon – Zoom

Rags, Bones, and Other Sacred Objects

Every culture, every religion, every era has enshrined otherwise regular objects with a significance which stretches beyond their literal importance. Whether the bone of a Catholic martyr, the tooth of a Buddhist lama, or the cloak of a Sufi saint, relics are material conduits to the immaterial world. Yet relics aren’t just a feature of religion. The exact same sense of the transcendent animates objects of political, historical, and cultural significance.

Speaker Bio:

Ed Simon is Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University, the editor of The Pittsburgh Review of Books, and a staff writer for Literary Hub. A widely published writer, he is the author of over a dozen books, including Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology and Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain.

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

Curating the True Crime Corpse: Murderabillia, Fandom and Identity – Tia Price – Zoom

Curating the True Crime Corpse: Murderabillia, Fandom and Identity

From public lynchings to gallows audiences, history has shown us that humans love to watch the body break down on a public stage. Not uncommon to take souvenirs, cuttings and items from the scene of death, it was believed that the blood of the hanged man, skull of the murderer or dirt from the gallows floor, held a potent magic to cure ills and protect the holder. In a contemporary sphere, we continue these practices by consuming the true crime corpse from the civilised comfort of our homes.

Placed within the frames of victim, or killer, and streamed through various platforms, the remediated true crime corpse has become a sought-after item; the booming industry of murderabillia has grown in conjunction with our need.

This talk will discuss the corpse as a remediated commodity, and the dark fandom who seek out engagement and possession of it. With detailed examples of murderabilia, items that can be considered of corpse, by association or proximity, this talk will discuss how the true crime corpse becomes to key to identity building for those who collect and curate it.

Speaker Bio:

Tia Price is a PhD candidate at the University of Portsmouth. Her research examines the corpse in popular culture, specifically in dark fandom. She has presented her work at various conferences including ‘Death in Visual Culture III’ 2020, BAFTSS 2023 and the ‘Inked Up & Marked Out’ symposium 2023. Tia has been published in The Routledge Handbook of Death, Heritage & Museums (2023), The Journal of Popular Communication (2025) and #TrueCrime:Digital Culture, Ethics and True Crime Audiences (2025). She works as a Study Skills Tutor in Higher Education and gives regular talks at The College of Psychic Studies.

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, Lena’s New Book – Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon

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

What Does it All Mean: Carl Jung and finding meaning in a living world – Rob Faure Walker – Zoom

What Does it All Mean: Carl Jung and finding meaning in a living world

Modernity tells us to ignore the signs and symbols that appear to us in the world, in psychedelic trips, psychotic visions, and even in our dreams. But when we do, and when we know how to interpret them, we find invaluable guidance for how to live our fullest lives. Join Rob Faure Walker at the Last Tuesday Society as he takes us on a guided journey into the animate world that we all inhabit. We’ll embark on a guided meditation to explore the symbols emergent in our minds. But please also be on the lookout for symbols that appear to you and bring them along for the group to explore and find meaning in.

Speaker Bio:

Rob is an ecotherapist and author who lives between the great neolithic monument of Avebury and Stonehenge. When not writing, he can be found bothering the remaining stones and structures of this great ceremonial landscape or helping his clients to find meaning in the few remnants of ancient forest across the area. His last book explored how to find loving transcendence while being forced to live in a transactional market economy. His forthcoming book, Radical Jung, is out in late May and explores healing through Gnostic introspection so that we can act better in the world.

Pre-order Rob’s forthcoming book on Carl Jung here – https://www.revolpress.com/radical-jung

Find out more about Rob’s ecotherapy here – https://www.integratedmindscapes.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, Lena’s New Book – Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon

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

Riders on the Storm: The Nordic Legends of the Wild Ride – Terry Gunnell – Zoom

Riders at the Door: The Nordic Legends of the Wild Ride

This lecture will introduce the main types of Nordic folk legend associated with the Wild Ride, noting the differences between the more southerly types (mainly Swedish and Danish) telling of a single Óðinic rider hunting a supernatural woman, and those more north-westerly legends in which the ride, made up of a mixture of troll-like beings and the dead, is commonly led by a female figure who seems to be associated with the mid winter period. As the article will note, these differences seem to have a background in pre-Christian beliefs that once again underline a difference between western Norway and then Sweden and Denmark. If there is space, the article will note how the western Norwegian beliefs are closely connected to, and reinforced by, ancient active beliefs about groups of supernatural riders who would take over farms at Yuletide, killing or stealing anyone who go in their way. These beliefs in turn seem to have been closely connected to the widespread Nordic traditions of groups of disguised young men who went round farms in the same dark period demanding food and drink. The legend gave character to the tradition, and the tradition gave credence to the legend.

Speaker Bio:

Terry Gunnell is Professor emeritus in Folkloristics at the University of Iceland. Author of The Origins of Drama in Scandinavia (1995), he is editor of Masks and Mumming in the Nordic Area (2007), Legends and Landscape (2008), and Grimm Ripples: The Legacy of the Grimms’ Deutsche Sagenin Northern Europe (2022), and co-editor of The Nordic Apocalypse: Approaches to Völuspá and Nordic Days of Judgement (2013); Málarinn og menningarsköpun: Sigurður Guðmundsson og Kvöldfélagið 1858–1874which was nominated for the Icelandic Literature Award in 2017; and The Old Norse God Freyr

New Perspectives in Mythology and Religion. He has also written numerous articles and chapters on Old Nordic religions, folk legends and belief, festivals, folk drama and performance, and is behind the creation of the Icelandic folk legend database Sagnagrunnur, and two other digital databases on the creation of national identity and the early collection of folklore in Iceland in the late nineteenth century.

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, Lena’s New Book – Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon

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