Event Category: Ghost stories/weird fiction

Celtic Myths – The Spanking Goddess and Other Discarded Tales – Clare Murphy

Celtic Myths – The Spanking Goddess and Other Discarded Tales

Stellar storyteller Clare Murphy exhumes the Celtic canon to bring the wild women who never made the cut, back into the light.

A shapeshifter spanks her opponents, a queen balances on the point of a spear, a goddess is caught in a face-off with death, heroes are defeated by mother-daughter warriors, and we witness the first divorce…and the woman won.

These are not your regular myths. Expect wicked tales of badass deities, feral fighters, unorthodox sex, hairy bodies, mastery, and goddess-on-goddess battles – not for the faint-hearted and definitely for grown-ups.

Storyteller Bio:

Clare Muireann Murphy has been telling stories since 2006 on stages all over the world including The Globe Theatre London, Open Eye Theatre Minneapolis, and Fabula Festival Sweden.

Her work ranges from the political folkloric work to playful Science-story pieces that explore where quantum physics, philosophy and mythology meet. She has had the honour of performing for President Mary Robinson of Ireland, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the writers at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has worked outside of the world of performance teaching all kinds of people from scientists to veterans.

Her festivals include Cape Clear Festival Ireland, Beyond the Border Wales, National Storytelling Festival Jonesborough USA, Alden Biesen Storytelling Festival Belgium and many others.

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

Marvelous Births in Old Norse Myth and Saga – Bernt Ø. Thorvaldsen

Marvelous Births in Old Norse Myth and Saga

In Old Norse culture, there is a number of stories about peculiar conceptions and births. The god Heimdall is said to have been born of nine giantess women, possibly without male involvement. The eight-legged and exceptional stallion, Sleipnir, is born of a male god in the guise of a mare. From the world of humans, there is a tale of a man who was conceived when his mother ate a rotten fish! Kinship and gender roles were important in Old Norse culture, not least because they anchored each individual in what was undoubtedly the most important institution of the time, the family. Deviant kinship and marvelous births were important for explaining the resulting offspring, such as the eight-legged stallion Sleipnir and the powerful god Heimdall, but such myths also provide a unique window into a culture that on the one hand is quite alien, but on the other hand, themes something as modern as transgression of gender norms and complex parental constellations.

Bio:

Bernt Ø. Thorvaldsen (b. 1976) is a professor of Norwegian at the University of South-Eastern Norway, where he teaches language and literature. Thorvaldsen is an expert on Old Norse culture, with Old Norse mythology and Edda poetry as his speciality.

Curated and 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

The most terrifying creatures of Slavic Mythology- part 1 of 3 – Lena Heide-Brennand

The most terrifying creatures of Slavic mythology – Part 1 of 3

Have you ever heard the stories about Baba Yaga, Kikimora or the Strzyga? Slavic folktales and mythology are full of creatures and characters that can only be characterized as the most terrifying ones in the world through history. Tonight we will open up that portal to a creepy and chilling world filled with demon-like characters and ghosts and spirits that are neither humans nor animals but still appear and act like both. Expect descriptions and pictures of scary loners of the darkest woods and even to experience close encounters with witch-like creatures lurking in every dark corner of the harrowing tales told to children and adults alike through the ages in and around the Slavic countries. Embrace yourself for an evening with constant goosebumps…and a following sleepless night.

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

Chilling ghost stories of the Scandinavian countries – Lena Heide-Brennand

Chilling ghost stories of the Scandinavian countries

Welcome to an evening where we get to know the different ghost stories from the countries in the north. Ghost stories and legends are important parts of the folklore and mythology, as well as the religious history.

The different ghost creatures We cannot verify whether ghosts exist or not, but we will get those goosebumps going when we encounter the eerie ghosts and undead creatures forever wandering between the world of the living and the world of the dead.

Stories about the ghosts in Scandinavia date to pre-Viking era, and they were even darker and scarier back in pre-Christian time than what they are today. We find them in the old Icelandic sagas, the old Norse literature, and the numerous stories of the spirits of the undead Mylings, the Utburd , the Deildegast the Dokkalfarand and the numerous different Grey ladies have stirred up many a good night’s sleep through the centuries. The ghosts rooming around the far north are said to be spookier and more evil than anywhere else in the world.

In this lecture, you will be introduced to them all. Spine- chilling doesn’t even cover it- you will after this lecture feel a presence of something in the room with you. But is it one of the more evil spirits haunting you, or is it one of the nicer ones?

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

TV Adaptations of Dracula – a Zoom talk with Jon Dear

ENTER FREELY AND OF YOUR OWN FREE WILL – TV Adaptations of Dracula

There have been over 80 Dracula films made in the last 100 years but there have been relatively few adaptations of Bram Stoker’s most famous novel made for television. It’s not hard to see why: it’s a grand tale told on an epic scale, and few TV companies have the resources to lavish on such a production. But for those that did, what challenges did they face? What did they decide to focus on, and leave out? And why start in 1968?

In this talk Jon Dear will examine the social factors in play that make bringing Dracula to the small screen a viable option; what it means to bring horror out of the cinema, and its self-selecting audience, and into the intimacy of the family living room; and what Dracula really represents to audiences and how that has changed through time. What really happens when you invite the vampire into your home?

 

Jon Dear is a writer and critic on TV and film. He has written for the BFI, including their Flipside range, Horrified Magazine, Curious British Television and the Fortean Times. He also contributed to We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher’s Guide to Folk Horror and Royal Holloway University’s Forgotten Television Drama project. Jon is the co-host of the podcasts BERGCAST: The Nigel Kneale Podcast and Due Signori in Giallo. His recent work includes commentaries for the Blu Ray Releases of Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954), Whistle and I’ll Come to You (1968) and A Warning to the Curious(1972). He is currently writing a book on the BBC’s Ghost Stories for Christmas Series and is producing a live reading of The Quatermass Experiment at Alexandra Palace for its 70th anniversary. Twitter: @AccordingtoJonD

Your curator and host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward Parnell lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. 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. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com. Twitter: @edward_parnell

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: © Gareth/Adobe Stock]

Looking East: From Folk Horror to Horror of the Folk in Thai Cinema – Katarzyna Ancuta

Looking East: From Folk Horror to Horror of the Folk in Thai Cinema

Folk horror is often said to be about the fear of regression, the fear of going back to ‘the old ways’ and the anxiety that ‘the old ways’ may be right. But what if the old ways and the new ways were very much the same? How does folk horror adapt to animist cultures, where old-age rituals and modern beliefs go hand in hand? Where does it find its ‘monstrous tribe’? Thai horror films reflect the animist orientation of Thai culture but do not situate animism in opposition to official religion and modernity, since animistic beliefs and practices are commonplace in today’s Thailand. Prevalent across the country and practised across all social strata, Thai animism and related with it folklore cannot be used as a designator of difference in the Thai context. If Thai folk horror produces its monstrous tribe, their monstrosity is not the result of regression, evidenced in arcane rituals, but rather a commentary on the existing inequality within Thai society. Thai folk horror is thus primarily invested in representing the rural-urban divide and its profound implication in tensions related to ethnicity and class.

Bio:

Katarzyna Ancuta is a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. Her research interests oscillate around the interdisciplinary contexts of contemporary Gothic/Horror, currently with a strong Asian focus. Her recent publications include contributions to The Edinburgh Companion to Globalgothic (2023), Folk Horror: New Global Pathways (2023) and The Transmedia Vampire (2021). She also co-edited two collections – Thai Cinema: The Complete Guide (2016) and South Asian Gothic: Haunted Cultures, Histories and Media (2022). 

Photo 1: Hoon Payon (dir. Phontharis Chotkijsadarsopon), 2023

Curated by

Ruth Heholt is Professor of Literature and Culture at Falmouth University in lovely Cornwall.

Hosted by

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.

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

The World of Flemish Folklore – Zoom talk with Signe Maene

Enter the dark and wonderful world that is Flemish folklore!

On the road you’ll meet the alvermannekes who are kind-hearted gnomes, but love to blow out the light in your eyes. In the woods and meadows, we’ll encounter Kludde, one of the most skilful shapeshifters whose transformations into bats, monstrous dogs, birds and even devilish trees ensured that people stayed in their homes when the sky was at its darkest. We’ll enter cottages overgrown with devil’s claw and bramble bushes where witches concocted potions, brews and sinister plans, and often outsmarted those who dared to oppose them. A visit to the water devils and spirits who haunted the canals, rivers and the sea should not be missed either. And just as importantly, the forgotten folklorists who collected these tales and ensured that the rich, but little known about storytelling traditions of Flanders were preserved for future generations.

 

Signe Maene is a Belgian writer and audio dramatist of stories mainly based on Flemish folklore. She’s very passionate about anything relating to folk horror, myths and legends and blogs about Flemish folktales on Substack. Signe is currently working on a short story collection inspired by Flemish folktales and is the co-founder of Salt & Mirrors & Cats, a literary zine publishing stories, poems and art connected to superstitions.

Your curator and host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. 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 folklore-strewn first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Don’t worry if you miss the event on the night – the next day we will send you a recording that will be valid for two weeks.

 

[Image adapted from the following Wikimedia Comons artwork: Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946) Boom in de winter. Brafa 2019 31-01-2019 – houtskool en potlood op papier 68,5 x 48,5. Photographed by Paul Hermans.]

Visual Aesthetics of Folk Horror – Tanya Krzywinska

Visual Aesthetics of Folk Horror

Character, theme and narrative are often centralised in the literature on Folk Horror; but what of its visual aesthetics? Can we trace Folk Horror aesthetics within older painting traditions and styles? The concern of this talk is to explore relationships between the Folk Horror of film, TV and videogames, and landscape painting. I will focus most intently on Gustav Courbet’s late landscapes and Andrew Wyeth’s work; along the way other forms of painting will provide touchpoints within this investigation of the way that folk horror translates its anti-pastoralism and pessimism into its visual sightlines. I will focus therefore on Folk Horror’s concern with the otherness of the landscape, nature, failed/misguided agency, and rural culture, arguing that an inherent pessimism drives Folk Horror’s ‘jamming’ of normative bucolic representations and therein subverting man’s surety of sovereignty over nature. In seeing Courbet’s anti-human animism and Wyeth’s rural othering backwards through the lens of Folk Horror, I seek to widen the scope of what we now regard as Folk Horror.

Bio

Tanya Krzywinska has written extensively on the Gothic and Horror across multiple platforms, focusing on magic and gender. She is an artist who works in traditional mediums as well as designing and researching augmented and virtual reality apps for art, museum, and heritage contexts. Since 2012, she has been Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Games and Culture (Sage) and is a professor at Falmouth University, Cornwall UK in the Games Academy.

Curated by

Ruth Heholt is Professor of Literature and Culture at Falmouth University in lovely Cornwall.

Hosted by

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.

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

Photo 1: Blood on Satan’s Claw Piers Haggard, 1971.

Photo 2: ‘Stream in the Jura Mountains‘ (The Torrent), 1872–73, Honolulu Museum of Art

Sunny Landscapes, Dark Visions: Folk Horror and the Weird Imagination of E. F. Benson – Ruth Heholt

Sunny Landscapes, Dark Visions: Folk Horror and the Weird Imagination of E. F. Benson

What is ‘Folk Horror’? Who bothered to define it and why and how useful is it to see it as a sub-genre? One of the answers to these latter questions is that it is great fun. Ruthlessly ‘using’ folklore and ramping up the horror, Folk Horror makes both seem almost believable. People get in some terrible pickles, very often by going ‘too far’ – venturing where they really shouldn’t. If horror fans scream ‘don’t go into the cellar!’, Folk Horror folk venture ‘too far’ in the pursuit of knowledge, in unearthing that which really should stay buried, in intruding into communities that might be welcoming but for all the wrong reasons. Don’t pull that long-buried artefact out of the ground! Don’t open that old ‘forbidden’ book! Don’t assume these ‘picturesque’ villagers are benign! And really, I wouldn’t stay in that house that is surrounded by standing stones! My favourite ‘spook’ story writer E. F. Benson knew all the tricks. A lesser-known contemporary of M. R. James, Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood (the main writers associated with historical folk horror), Benson gives us ‘sunny’ horrors. Benson’s ghost stories are often set in hot, still summers and he toys with folk horror where dark, old horrors appear in sunny, beautiful landscapes, making the horrors far, far worse. From Cornwall to Suffolk, Benson’s folk horror tales give pause and can make you look over your shoulder even in the most luscious of landscapes.

Bio

Ruth Heholt is Professor of Literature and Culture at Falmouth University in lovely Cornwall.

Curated and Hosted by

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.

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

Photo: The Mowing-Devil; or Strange News out of Hertfordshire, August 22, 1678

It Was Upon a Lammas Night: Summerisle and The Wicker Man – Zoom talk with Edward Parnell

2023 is the 50th Anniversary of the release of Robin Hardy’s folk horror film classic The Wicker Man. In this illustrated Zoom talk, Edward Parnell will explore the real-life locations of Dumfries and Galloway (and also Skye and further up Scotland’s west coast) that were used to such great effect to create the mythical Summerisle in the movie. After Edward’s talk there will be an opportunity for a Q&A with ticketholders.

Come of your own free will to the appointed place…

Edward Parnell is the author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward lives in Norfolk and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. He is the recipient of an Escalator Award from the National Centre for Writing and a Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship. Ghostland (William Collins, 2019), a work of narrative non-fiction, is a moving exploration of what has haunted our writers, artists and filmmakers – 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. His first book, The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

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