Event Category: Storytelling

Tales from the Time Between Times – Owen Staton – Zoom

Tales from the Time Between Times

When the veil thins and the night presses close, when the wind moves like a whisper through the trees and the firelight dances with a life of its own… that is when the old stories wake.

Come, draw nearer to the firepit at the heart of the forest, where shadows stretch long and the past is never truly past. Here, storyteller Owen Staton invites you into that liminal hour — the time between times — where myth and memory walk hand in hand.

Hear the hollow laughter of the Mari Lwyd as she rattles her skull at the threshold. Catch a fleeting glimpse of the Tylwyth Teg, fair and terrible, watching from just beyond the circle of light. And listen… closely… for even the Devil himself is said to wander these woods when the darkness is at its deepest.

These are not just stories. They are echoes. Warnings. Invitations.

An evening of Welsh ghost lore, rich with atmosphere, humour, and a creeping sense of something older than the land itself — told as only Owen Staton can tell it.

The fire is waiting.
The night is listening.
All that remains… is for you to step into the dark.

Speaker Bio:

Owen Staton is a Welsh storyteller and performer with over thirty years’ experience bringing the myths and legends of Wales to life for audiences across the world. As host of the acclaimed Time Between Times podcast, he has built a reputation for weaving atmosphere, humour, and a touch of the uncanny into every tale. Now in his fifty-third year, Owen continues to travel the old paths of story… though his hair, by his own admission, remains entirely beyond his control.

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

The Power in the Panel: An Exploration of Tarot and Comic Books – B.Earl – Zoom

The Power in the Panel: An Exploration of Tarot and Comic Books

There is a unique relationship between comic books and Tarot, as they both embody sequential storytelling using symbolic art and natural language.

Referencing several comic book series, including sequences from instructor B. Earl’s Deadly Neighborhood Spider-Man, Daredevil and Echo, and Werewolf by Night, we will explore how the two seemingly disconnected art forms actually flow from the same fountain.

Superhero comics in particular entered the mainstream in the mid-1900s and really found their stride in the 1960s with series such as The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and of course Spider-Man. This was also around the same time that Tarot began to enter into the popular mainstream with counter-culture communities engaging “new age” ideas. Humans have always needed stories,but as science began to more deeply explore the psyche with luminaries such as Carl Jung, science and stories began to emerge with archetypes that helped people better understand themselves. Comic books, especially superhero comics, have always explored these archetypes that are ever-present in Tarot’s Major Arcana.

The obvious difference between the two is that a comic book is a curated series of panels telling a specific story through the lens of the author and artist, while a Tarot spread is a seemingly random series of panels that becomes a mirror for the querent. This modular storytelling system allows for the Self to more deeply intuit meaning through the cards’ random articulation. Unlike comic books, it is up to the reader to interpret the story through the spread of the panels. In this workshop we will take sequences from specific comic books and peel back the layers to better understand the intention of the creative team. By understanding this form of sequential storytelling, we will then apply this same technique to different configurations of Tarot spreads. This unique method of storytelling will allow us to use the symbols and keys provided by Tarot to unlock stories not only in comic books, but also in our everyday lives.

Speaker Bio:

Ben Earl is a comic book writer and editor known for his contributions to Marvel Comics. He has worked on stories that expand the publisher’s superhero mythos, blending action-driven narratives with grounded character development. His work is recognised within the industry for its attention to continuity and its collaboration with major artists across several series.

Key facts

  • Profession: Comic book writer and editor
  • Publisher affiliation: Marvel Comics
  • Primary medium: Superhero comics
  • Notable roles: Writer, editor, and story consultant

Career and contributions

Earl began contributing to Marvel Comics during a period of renewed focus on both legacy characters and diverse storytelling voices. He has been involved in the writing and editorial process for various titles that bridge classic and contemporary Marvel eras. His storytelling often emphasises moral conflict, legacy, and the human cost of heroism, themes that resonate with modern audiences while remaining faithful to the company’s traditional tone.

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

“Come away, O human child!”—a Zoom talk on Changeling Folklore with Simon Young

For the past three years, Dr Simon Young has been part of an international team investigating changeling legends: the widespread belief that supernatural beings (fairies, trolls, witches) substitute humans with magical look-alikes. With the team’s findings now published (The Exeter Companion to Changeling Lore, 2025) and hundreds of records at his disposal, Simon will explore the what, when, and how of changeling folklore.

This remarkable tradition spans far beyond western Ireland, reaching Armenia, the Egyptian Delta, and even tribal Papua New Guinea. It stretches not only through the medieval and modern periods but back into antiquity itself. The team has grappled with fascinating questions: Are child changelings more common than adult ones? How do legends of human mothers exchanging children relate to changeling lore? And perhaps most intriguingly: why did this belief system take hold across perhaps a quarter of the globe?

 

About the Speaker

Dr Simon Young is a British folklore historian based in Italy. He is the editor of Exeter New Approaches to Legends, Folklore and Popular Legends and teaches history at University of Virginia’s Siena Campus (CET). He has written extensively on the 19th-century supernatural. His book The Boggart (from Exeter University Press) and The Nail in the Skull and Other Victorian Urban Legends (from Mississippi University Press) came out in 2022, with other recent books on The Wollaton Gnomes (2023) The Deerness Mermaid (2025) and the opening volume of his Fairy Census (2023). Simon also co-presents the supernatural podcast Boggart and Banshee with Chris Woodyard.

Articles listing: https://independent.academia.edu/SimonYoung43
Substack: https://britishmythology.substack.com/

 

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 (Oct 2025) part of the British Library’s Tales of the Weird series, for which he also edited Eerie East Anglia (2024). 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: from The Changeling, attributed to Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), from The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection.]

Madness and Decadence in the 1890s – a Zoom talk with Nick Freeman

‘Then in 1900 everybody got down off his stilts; henceforth nobody drank absinthe with his black coffee; nobody went mad; nobody committed suicide; nobody joined the Catholic Church; or if they did I have forgotten.’

So said W.B. Yeats in 1936, looking back at what he termed ‘the tragic generation’, the writers and artists he had known forty years earlier. His claim is a handy checklist of decadent attributes, but its rhetorical panache disguises the creative achievements and human tragedies of that time.

This talk examines the ways in which madness shaped and haunted English decadence during the 1890s and afterwards, looking at such intriguing characters such as the poets John Barlas and Arthur Symons, and the painter Charles Conder, all of whom experienced incarceration in asylums. It will investigate why madness seems to be so central to the decadent world-view and considers some of the ways in which iit continues to shape our response to creative visionaries.

 

About the Speaker

Nick Freeman teaches English at Loughborough University. He has published widely on decadence, the supernatural and the occult and has also edited a selection of A.M. Burrage’s ghost stories for the British Library’s Gilded Nightmares series.

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) 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: An absinthe addict eyeing three glasses on a table; advertisement for film Absinthe. Colour lithograph, ca. 1913. Source: Wellcome Collection.]

Dark Fairy Tales by Viktor Wynd on Zoom

Dark Fairy Tales 

Let Viktor Wynd share a nightcap with you, tuck you into bed and tell you Fairy Tales to send you into a deep sleep of strange dreams. Be warned these are not the Ladybird or Disney versions and may not be suitable for the tenderist ears.

This evening Mr. Wynd will tells some his favourite tales heard around the world, from nasty Germans chopping up people and eating them to disgusting, macabre and delightful tales from Borneo, learn of the birth of the leeches, the reason mosquitos are always buzzing human ears, why it is best not to suckle caterpillars – or indeed strange babies and something about bedbugs that might give you nightmares. Giant Octopuses, man eating pigs and a buried moon from Papua New Guinea, or possibly shapeshifting magickal creatures from Wales – the world will be your oyster.

Viktor Wynd, proprietor of London’s eponymous (nay infamous) Museum of Curiosities, Fine Art & UnNatural History has spent the last twenty five years telling stories to audiences across the globe. Fascinated by traditional fairy tales his repetoire includes tales from The Brothers Grimm, The Arabian Nights, Scandinavia, Russia, Italy, France, Irieland, Africa, Papua New Guinea & North America – so far.

Exploring Angela Carter’s Gothic Side – a Zoom talk with Dr. Jacob Huntley

The English author Angela Carter (1940–1992) was known for her richly imaginative and subversive writing, which blended elements of feminism, magic realism, and Gothic. She is particularly celebrated for her postmodern reworkings of traditional folk and fairy tales, most notably in The Bloody Chamber (1979), a collection of dark, sensual stories that reimagine classic stories through a feminist lens. Her later novel Nights at the Circus (1984) gives us the story of Fevvers, a winged aerialist whose ambiguous nature blurs the line between myth and reality.

Carter’s work frequently explores the uncanny by revealing the latent violence and sexuality beneath familiar narratives. Her stories challenge conventional notions of gender and power, transforming archetypal characters into complex, often ambiguous figures. Through her vivid prose and radical reinterpretations, Carter reshaped the boundaries of fantasy and folklore in modern literature. This illustrated Zoom talk will explore these darker aspects of her writing.

 

Your speaker for this event will be Dr Jacob Huntley, a Lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. His research interests include the Gothic tradition, horror fiction, and the evolution of the ghost story. Jacob’s Zoom lecture will be followed by a Q&A session with the audience.

Your curator and host is the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country (2019). Ghostland, 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 Eerie East Anglia (2024), part of 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.

My Dad Made a Monster: Family, Film & Fandom—a Zoom talk with Richard Hand

‘My father, Peter Hand, who passed away in 2024, was Head of Modelling at MGM in Borehamwood during the 1950s and ’60s,’ says Richard Hand. ‘He worked on a number of movies and built the various scale models – and the “man-in-suit” versions – for Gorgo (1961), Britain’s B-movie answer to Godzilla, after which he left the film industry. Before he died, he published his memoirs, A Spear Carrier in Search of a Role (2021), and they offer a fascinating, first-hand glimpse into a neglected corner of film history: the model studio.

‘Remarkably, I didn’t even know about my father’s work on Gorgo until years later. He was never interested in horror or pop culture, so while my older brother and I were obsessively building glow-in-the-dark Aurora monster kits, collecting issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland, and making our own scare attractions and Super-8 horror epics, I had no idea about my father’s dark cinematic secret… One day, my brother turned to me and said, “Did you know our dad actually made a monster?” I didn’t believe him, but it was completely true – and it changed the way I thought about our family and about the culture we grew up loving.

‘This talk reflects on my father’s story and the unexpected intersections of family memory, horror fandom, and lost film craftsmanship.Drawing on his memoirs and my own memories, I’ll explore how model work like his has been largely written out of official film histories, even as the monster he helped design and build – and others like it – have gone on to become cult icons. I’ll also consider how this story connects to wider patterns of horror fandom and culture: from model kit mania and magazines to the music of Frank Zappa, who in songs such as ‘Cheepnis’ famously celebrated low-budget monster movies.’

 

Richard J. Hand is Professor of Media Practice and Head of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He has a particular interest in historical forms of popular culture, especially horror, and is the author of two books on horror radio drama; the co-author (with Michael Wilson) of four books on Grand-Guignol horror theatre; the co-editor (with Jay McRoy) of two volumes on gothic/horror cinema; and the co-editor (with Mark O’Thomas) of a collection of essays on American Horror Story. As well as an academic, he is a theatre director 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 writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country (2019). Ghostland, 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 Eerie East Anglia (pub. Aug 2024), part of 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: an adapted film promo poster for the 1961 British sci-fi movie Gorgo.]

Lucifer’s Firestarter – a Zoom talk with Fraser Grace

Join us to hear the true story of a devilish, nineteenth-century arsonist and national cause célèbre.

1833. After four years, twelve fires and the best efforts of London’s finest detectives, still no one had discovered the identity of the ‘devil’ with the gift of fire who was terrorizing the English countryside. With land reform sweeping through South Cambridgeshire, the unsolved scandal choked the columns of the nation’s newspapers, wrecking the reputation of the ‘ill-fated village’ of Shelford. Something had to give…

Come along – appropriately on the night before Bonfire Night – to find out how tensions were finally extinguished, and to discover the fiery fate of the notorious John Stallon…

‘It will always be like this, John thinks, this new power of mine. Like having a firework in your head.’

Your speaker this evening is the award-winning playwright Fraser Grace. During Covid he found himself without a theatre to write for, so turned to a long-held passion project – a local story from the village of Great Shelford in South Cambridgeshire, where he has lived for the past 28 years. Published by Galileo in May 2025, Firestarter is a form-busting piece of creative non-fiction based on the true story of John Stallon.

Previously, Fraser’s debut play Perpetua, won the Verity Bathgate Award and his Breakfast with Mugabe was the recipient of the Arts Council’s John Whiting Award for Best Play; it was produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and directed by Antony Sher, and later broadcast by BBC Radio 3 and The World Service. Fraser is the author of a further eight plays, and currently also teaches creative writing at the University of Cambridge.

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 Eerie East Anglia (pub. Aug 2024) 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 taken from the cover of Firestarter.]

Decadent London – a Zoom talk with Antony Clayton

As the nineteenth century came to its end and the dawn of the twentieth century loomed, London was undergoing tremendous changes, establishing itself as the heart of one of the most powerful empires the world has ever seen. However, in the same decade that witnessed the celebrations of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, a diverse group of writers, artists and poets sought to subvert the oppressive cultural and moral atmosphere of the period. This was the city of Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons, Aubrey Beardsley, Frank Harris and Ernest Dowson, together with their less well-known compatriots Lionel Johnson, John Gray, John Davidson and the mysterious Count Stenbock.

Antony Clayton’s talk will investigate the artistic milieu of this turbulent time, when, despite their often louche lifestyles, many of the key players produced their finest work and helped contribute to the decade’s most innovative periodicals, The Yellow Book and The Savoy.

Join us as we stagger, metaphorically, down the streets and alleyways of Decadent London – from the Cheshire Cheese and Crown pubs, to the Cafe Royal and beyond…

 

About the Speaker

Antony Clayton is the author of Subterranean City: Beneath the Streets of London (2000), London’s Coffee Houses, a Stimulating Story (2003), Decadent London (2005), The Folklore of London (2008) and Secret Tunnels of England, Folklore & Fact (2015). He also co-edited (with Phil Baker) and contributed to Lord of Strange Deaths: the Fiendish World of Sax Rohmer (2015) and wrote Netherwood: Last Resort of Aleister Crowley (2012), which also featured contributions from David Tibet, Gary Lachman and Andy Sharp. His latest book is Mansion of Gloom: the Unsettling Legacy of Poe’s ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ (Accumulator Press, 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 Eerie East Anglia (pub. Aug 2024) 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: ’The Cafe Royal’ by Adrian Allinson.]

Terror in the Dark: The Chilling Story of Live Horror Radio – Zoom talk with Richard Hand

Everyone has heard of The War of the Worlds, the (in)famous 1938 broadcast that supposedly sent America into a panic. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. This talk will lure you into the weird, wild world of horror radio from the 1920s to the 1950s, the golden age of live broadcasting. Long before podcasts and streaming, radio ruled the airwaves, bringing thrilling, terrifying stories directly into the intimacy of people’s homes. Live, unfiltered, and often shockingly and gruesomely extreme (even to our modern ears), horror radio shows like The Witch’s Tale, The Hermit’s Cave, Lights Out, Suspense, and Quiet, Please pushed the boundaries of storytelling with superb scriptwriting, ingenious sound effects, spine-chilling performances, and unforgettable hosts. These weren’t just spooky tales, they were immersive experiences that haunted the imaginations of millions.

This vivid talk will explore how horror found a perfect home in the invisible world of sound, how brilliant personalities were drawn to the genre, how stations competed to outdo each other in shock value and artistry, and how this era shaped modern audio storytelling. Expect moments of gore, ghostly sounds, and grisly secrets behind the microphone – plus a few surprises that may still give you goosebumps.

This talk is a love letter to a lost era of live horror radio – and a celebration of its enduring power to scare us senseless.

Are you brave enough to listen?

 

Richard J. Hand is Professor of Media Practice and Head of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. He has a particular interest in historical forms of popular culture, especially horror, and is the author of two books on horror radio drama; the co-author (with Michael Wilson) of four books on Grand-Guignol horror theatre; the co-editor (with Jay McRoy) of two volumes on gothic/horror cinema; and the co-editor (with Mark O’Thomas) of a collection of essays on American Horror Story. As well as an academic, he is a theatre director 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 writer 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 Eerie East Anglia (pub. Aug 2024) 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: Boris Karloff performing in a radio play.]