Event Category: Storytelling

Dark Folklore – an illustrated Zoom talk by Mark Norman

How did our ancestors use the concept of demons to explain sleep paralysis? Is that carving in the porch of your local church really what you think it is? And what is that odd tapping noise on the roof of your car…

The fields of folklore have never been more popular – a recent resurgence of interest in traditional beliefs and customs, coupled with morbid curiosities in folk horror, historic witchcraft cases and our superstitious past, have led to an intersection of ideas that is driving people to seek out more information. 

Dark Folklore (The History Press, Oct 2021) is the latest title from Mark (co-authored with Tracey Norman – author of the acclaimed play WITCH). It’s a book which leads us on an exploration of those aspects of our cultural beliefs and social history that are less ‘wicker basket’ and more ‘Wicker Man’. Dark Folklore has been consistently in the top 10 bestsellers chart for its genre on Amazon and ranked in the first few thousand of the over 8 million titles listed by that site for sale.

Mark Norman is a folklore author and researcher, creator of The Folklore Podcast which has enjoyed almost 1.5 million downloads since its launch, council member of the Folklore Society and Recorder of Folklore for the Devonshire Association. He is the author of a range of folklore books and the curator of the Folklore Library and Archive.

Your 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. 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 first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

[Illustration: Tiina Lalje]

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon 

The Krampus & The Old, Dark Christmas with Al Ridenour / Zoom lecture

The Krampus, a folkloric devil associated with St. Nicholas in Alpine Austria and Germany, has lately been embraced outside his homeland as a sort of icon of a countercultural Christmas. While jarringly out of place with the modern English holiday, in the old world from which he comes, the Krampus fit right in. The Alpine Christmas was a season haunted by ghosts, witches, devilish horsemen, and even murderous incarnations of Catholic saints. Central to this folklore are the Perchten, Alpine demons on which the Krampus is based. In Austria, these creatures were connected to Frau Perchta, a witch-like being who threatened naughty children with disemboweling. In Germany, her peer was Frau Holle, ruler of a fabulous realm hidden beneath a mountain deep within the Thuringian Forest.

Al Ridenour, author of The Krampus and the Old Dark Christmas, returns to The Last Tuesday Society for a virtual presentation jam-packed with rarely seen photographs and archival film clips. His book, the only in-depth English-language study of the Krampus and has been praised by LA Times critic Elizabeth Hart as “gleefully erudite,” a work that “deserves to become a classic.” Ridenour also writes and produces the popular folk- horror/history podcast , has crafted Krampus masks and suits for purchase and organized Krampus plays and parades in his hometown of Los Angeles.

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon 

Marina Warner on Fairy Tales & From The Beast to The Blonde

In this landmark study of the history and meaning of fairy tales, the celebrated cultural critic Marina Warner looks at storytelling in art and legend – from the prophesying enchantress who lures men to a false paradise, to jolly Mother Goose with her masqueraders in the real world. Why are storytellers so often women, and how does that affect the status of fairy tales. Are they a source of wisdom or a misleading temptation to indulge romancing.

Warner interprets the history of old wives’ tales from sibyls and the Queen of Sheba to Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Angela Carter. And with fresh new insights she shows us the real-life themes in the famous stories, which, she suggests, are skillful vehicles by which adults have liked to convey advice, warning, and hope – to each other as well as to children.

Marina Warner‘s study of the Arabian Nights, Stranger Magic (2011) won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism and the Sheikh Zayed Book Award in 2013; in 2015 she was awarded the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities and was made DBE. She is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, a Fellow of the British Academy and President of the Royal Society of Literature.

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon 

The Mythical Creatures of Scandinavian Folklore – Lena Heide-Brennand by Zoom

The Scandinavian Folklore consists of a large number of different creatures- good and evil. The trolls, the Nisse, Huldra and Nøkken all have fascinated and frightened the Scandinavian people throughout centuries and in tonight’s illustrated lecture, Norwegian born lecturer Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand will tell the stories that all Scandinavian children have grown up with since the beginning of time. Prepare yourself for a captivating journey through the deep Scandinavian forests where you will encounter the monstrous, dim-witted, man-eating Trolls, the sly and cheeky Nisse, the seductive, fairy-like Huldra and the most legendary creature of them all: Nøkken, the water spirit who plays enchanted songs on his violin, luring women and children to drowning in the hidden ponds on those magical Scandinavian summer nights.

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

Main Image “Huldra ved Matbrunnen” (Huldra at Matbrunnen) – Theodor Kittelsen, 1892

a recording will be emailed to ticketholders after the event

The Hero Finn – Professor Ronald Hutton – Zoom Lecture

a recording of this lecture will be available to ticket holders for two weeks after the event

Fionn mac Cumhail (Finn mac Cool in English) is one of the great traditional heroes, the Irish and Scottish Gaelic equivalent to King Arthur. With his picked band of warriors, the Fianna, he defended Ireland against all foes, and as such they continue to feature as role models and inspirations for nationalist politics to this very day, giving their name to current political parties. They have also supplied world legend with some of its best stories and motifs, including the catching of the Salmon of Wisdom, the doomed love of Diarmid and Grainne and the return of Oisin from the Undying Lands. Even more than most heroic epics, the Finn cycle abounds with magic and enchantment, and encounters with other worlds. This talk is designed to ask when it originated, how it developed, and whether there was a real man behind it.

Speaker: Professor Ronald Hutton is a Professor of History at the University of Bristol. He is a leading authority on history of the British Isles in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, on ancient and medieval paganism and magic, and on the global context of witchcraft beliefs

The talk will be followed by:

The Rise of Finn MacCoull- performed by Daniel Allison

Daniel Allison, storyteller and author of Finn & The Fianna, tells the story of how Finn tasted the Salmon of Wisdom and claimed his place as leader of the Fianna. Come along to hear one of the greatest Celtic tales brought to life by a master storyteller.

Brief Bio:

Daniel Allison is a USA Today bestselling author, oral storyteller and podcaster from Scotland. He is the author of Scottish Myths & Legends, Finn & The Fianna and The Shattering Sea. Daniel’s podcast House of Legends features tales told by himself and leading storytellers from around the world, while his Roundhouse Storytelling School provides a unique online training platform for emerging storytellers.

Daniel’s live performances are an intoxicating blend of Celtic legends and indigenous tribal tales. Darkness and beauty, heartbreak and wonder; these are stories with golden feathers and sharp teeth. Daniel has performed throughout the world, from the jungles of Peru to Thai villages, Hebridean hilltops and festivals in Singapore and Dubai, and is currently based in Thailand

The Wicked Stepmother in Early America with Prof. Leslie Lindenauer by zoom

– a recording will be available to ticket holders who miss the event for two weeks

‘I Could Not Call Her Mother’: The Wicked Stepmother in Early America

This is the story of the stepmother. It is a story that intersects with women’s history and the history of motherhood. Intersects, but skews; reflects, but like the mirror in Snow White (particularly the trippy one in Walt Disney’s 1939 version) warps the reflection even as it brings it into sharper focus. She is always there, the stepmother. The “substitute mother.” The other mother. Her stories infused popular culture for centuries before this American story begins, and continue to do so today. She plays a substantial role in our collective imagination, whether we are a part of a step family or not. This Zoom lecture explores the role of the evil stepmother in early American popular culture (with a glance into later pulp fiction and film noir!). With her origins in fairytales and folklore, the evil stepmother was often portrayed as jealous, grasping, and greedy. She was vain, selfish, and cold. Above all else, she hated children (a quality she shared with early popular representations of the witch). What made this image so pervasive in early America that it infused a wide range of popular genres, from poetry and novels to news stories and prescriptive literature?

Leslie Lindenauer is a Professor in the Department of History and Non-Western Cultures at Western Connecticut State University, where she teaches courses in early American history, gender studies, public history, and American Studies. Her book I Could Not Call Her Mother: The Stepmother in American Popular Culture, 1750-1960 was published by Lexington Books in 2014. Before her career in academe, Leslie worked for a couple of decades as an educator and administrator at a number of history museums in the Northeast.

Matthew Holness and Edward Parnell’s Darkplaces – Zoom lecture

They’ll cover writers including M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Robert Aickman, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare, E. F. Benson and more, as well as hopefully finding time to discuss their own work.*

Matthew Holness is a writer, actor and director who wrote and starred alongside Richard Ayoade, Alice Lowe and Matt Berry in the 2004 haunted hospital-set Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. The six-part Channel 4 series remains a cult classic and probably the greatest – perhaps the only? – eighties spoof comedy-horror series ever made for TV. More recently Matthew has acted in a number of television comedies and films, as well as writing, directing and starring in A Gun for George, a short feature about a delusional fan of British 1970s pulp crime novels. In 2016, he wrote and directed Smutch, a Halloween Comedy Short for Sky Arts, in which he played an embittered author haunted by a ghost writer. His debut feature-length film as a director came in 2019 with Possum, a hugely atmospheric and disturbing psychological horror film set in Norfolk, the county where he now lives. Matthew also writes stories of the weird and eerie, including most recently for the anthology Beyond the Veil (published October 2021). He also contributed the introduction to Swan River Press’s 2019 edition of Le Fanu’s Green Tea.

Edward Parnell also lives beneath the brooding skies of Norfolk. He is the author of two books. The Listeners (2014), is an unsettling novel of family secrets set in the wilds of East Anglia at the start of WWII, and was the winner of the Rethink New Novels Prize. Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country (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. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

* Please be warned that in this evening’s discussion there will (probably) be blood. Crimson copper-smelling blood… And bits of sick.

Welsh Fairy Tales by Viktor Wynd on Zoom

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.

Wales has some of the richest, most marvellous and most wonderful fairy tales – Viktor Wynd will tell you some more of his favourites, replete with supernatural beings and strange happenings.

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.

Irish Fairy Tales – The Further Adventures of Paddy O’Dwire – Viktor Wynd

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 verisons and may not be suitable for the tenderist ears.

Ireland has some of the richest, most marvellous and most wonderful fairy tales – Viktor Wynd will tell you some more of his favourites, replete with supernatural beings and strange happenings.

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.

Watch a recording of This Lecture, & 100s of others, for free when you join our Patreon www.patreon.com/theviktorwyndmuseum

The Krampus & The Old, Dark Christmas with Al Ridenour / Zoom lecture

The Krampus, a folkloric devil associated with St. Nicholas in Alpine Austria and Germany, has lately been embraced outside his homeland as a sort of icon of a countercultural Christmas. While jarringly out of place with the modern English holiday, in the old world from which he comes, the Krampus fit right in. The Alpine Christmas was a season haunted by ghosts, witches, devilish horsemen, and even murderous incarnations of Catholic saints. Central to this folklore are the Perchten, Alpine demons on which the Krampus is based. In Austria, these creatures were connected to Frau Perchta, a witch-like being who threatened naughty children with disemboweling. In Germany, her peer was Frau Holle, ruler of a fabulous realm hidden beneath a mountain deep within the Thuringian Forest.

 

Al Ridenour, author of The Krampus and the Old Dark Christmas, returns to The Last Tuesday Society for a virtual presentation jam-packed with rarely seen photographs and archival film clips. His book, the only in-depth English-language study of the Krampus and has been praised by LA Times critic Elizabeth Hart as “gleefully erudite,” a work that “deserves to become a classic.” Ridenour also writes and produces the popular folk- horror/history podcast Bone and Sickle, has crafted Krampus masks and suits for purchase and organized Krampus plays and parades in his hometown of Los Angeles.