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The Dark Side of Psychedelics – Reporting on the dark side of the psychedelic renaissance – Mattha Busby – Zoom

The Dark Side of Psychedelics – Reporting on the dark side of the psychedelic renaissance

As a journalist reporting on the psychedelic world at the same time as having his own experiences, for both research and as part of a personal quest for growth, Mattha Busby has seen it all. Ceremonies bathed in love and light, and rituals steeped in darkness. Through all of this, he has witnessed and experienced both the benefits of psychedelics and their serious potential for harm. To tell this story, Mattha embarks on a rip-roaring journey through a brave—and profoundly weird—new world in which psychedelics are more available than ever before in human history. Retreat organizers are paying for targeted ads on Instagram, and giving celebrities free trips in exchange for positive testimonials. Illegal psychedelic dispensaries have popped up on high streets, and vendors are selling psychedelic toad venom on tropical beaches and in hotels, often without adequate safety measures.

For many, these psychedelic experiences have provided welcome relief from a near-constant sense of anxiety, but others have been left dazed and confused, or worse, and with few avenues for support. In rare cases, people have even died at psychedelic retreat centers, and at clinics, though we often do not hear about this until someone investigates. Some of these incidents have highlighted the folly of erasing the reality of the darker aspects of shamanism in popular representations and denying the sometimes radical cultural differences between those who serve psychedelics and those who receive. There has been scant discussion of how many of the traditional uses of ayahuasca were for sorcery and other nefarious purposes.

Ultimately, it can be difficult to deduce good psychedelic facilitators between the less well-intentioned until you’ve spent time with them. But increasing numbers of people around dinner tables now tell of destabilising journeys and touchy shamans. There are no easy answers to all of this — but the first step would be leaders in the psychedelic industry accepting this fact and not dismissing critiques as ill intentioned tellings of isolated incidents.

Speaker Bio

Mattha Busby is a journalist specialising in health policy, drugs/psychedelics and (sub)culture. His work has appeared in The Guardian, VICE, Rolling Stone, WIRED, and elsewhere. In 2024, he was a Ferris-UC Berkeley fellow in psychedelic journalism. He has published two slim book volumes, on drug policy for Thames & Hudson in 2022 and on psychedelics for Hoxton Mini Press in 2025.

Curated and hosted by

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic researcher.

Her background is in psychedelic parapsychology research with Greenwich University, specialising in exceptional human experience and entity encounters on psychedelics, and as an artist. She has studied shamanism for 10 years, working closely with Amerindian indigenous shamanic cultures of Mexico and Peru and western neoshamanic groups, focusing on the introduction and integration of indiginous and animistic knowledge and perspectives to westerners and western ontologies.

She publicly lectures on the subjects of psychedelics and shamanism, and produces art on the subjects informed by her research and experience, including films, performances, writing and immersive worlds. She has performed and exhibited at the Tate Britain and Breaking Convention and is the creator and host of Psychedelicacies, an online lecture series.

Walking between the worlds of art, psychedelic science and shamanism she works to bridge them and uses each as investigatory tools to inform and articulate each other.

Maya
maya

don’t worry if you miss it – 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.]

William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love – a Zoom talk with Philip Hoare

Visionary. Poet. Revolutionary. Mystic.

William Blake, much misunderstood in his own time, has been the inspiration for generations of artists, filmmakers, writers and musicians drawn to his radical vision of absolute freedom. Blake’s work spans the worldly and the spiritual, merging humanity, nature, and the divine in fantastical ways.

Award-winning author Philip Hoare’s powerful new book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love (pub. April 2025), shines the spotlight back onto Blake, reminding us that art still possesses the power to inspire and transform. Philip finds echoes of Blake’s visionary genius in artists including Paul Nash and Derek Jarman, in the weird fiction of Algernon Blackwood, and in the poetry of W. B. Yeats.

So, throw off your “mind-forg’d manacles” and join us to learn about one of England’s most remarkable and revolutionary 18th-/19th-century artists, in this illustrated online Zoom lecture (which will be followed by an audience Q&A session) from one of our finest contemporary writers.

 

Philip Hoare is the author of nine books of non-fiction, including biographies of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde, and England’s Lost Eden (2005), about religious mania in the late-Victorian New Forest. Leviathan or, The Whale (2008) won the 2009 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction and was followed by: The Sea Inside (2013); RisingTideFallingStar (2017), a literary love letter to David Bowie; and Albert and the Whale (2021), about the artist Albrecht Dürer. An experienced broadcaster and curator, Philip wrote and presented the BBC Arena programme The Hunt for Moby-Dick, directed three films for the BBC’s Whale Night, and organised The Moby-Dick and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Big Reads.

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: a fragment of Behemoth and Leviathan from Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job, 1826.]

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.]

WTFpots: putting the anal into artisanal – Sarah Sharp – Zoom

WTFpots: putting the anal into artisanal

Join me, Sarah Sharp AKA “prolapse lady” from WTFpots for a hilariously irreverent and uncensored deep dive into the world of bizarre, grotesque, and uncomfortably funny sculpture.

Known for crafting everything from stomas to custom dick pics, my lecture will take you on a journey from how I started Sculpting, funny & surprising stories and how I ended up being commissioned to work on a popular BBC show. Expect the absurd, crazy stories and a whole lot of clay anatomy.

WTFpots: putting the anal into artisanal: is a different talk that definitely will put a smile on your face.

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, 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

Aleister Crowley And The Cinema Of Magick, with Gary Parsons – LIVE

Please note this is NOT a ZOOM Lecture but an in person lecture at our museum – tickets include a complimentary glass of Devil’s Botany Absinthe

Doors open at 6:30pm and lecture starts at 7.00pm

Aleister Crowley And The Cinema Of Magick, with Gary Parsons – LIVE

The talk follows in chronological order a look at films where Crowley was used as a character to avant-garde films showing various aspects of Thelema. It looks at the work of film makers such as Kenneth Anger and Crowley’s influence on him as well as more mainstream depictions such as Hammer’s ‘The Devil Rides Out’, also including some lesser known European art house films. It will show just how important Crowley’s legacy has been on cinema over the years.

Gary Parsons is a film maker and a graduate in film from Goldsmiths College London whose pervious talks include ‘Witchcraft Documentaries Of The 1970’s’ and has been interviewed for both Dazed and Hero magazines about the subject.

We are unable to give refunds for in person events with less than seven days notice in any circumstances

Devil’s Botany is London’s first absinthe distillery, founded by Directors of The Last Tuesday Society’s Absinthe Parlour & Cocktail Bar.

Drugs and Intelligence – Dr Maria Balaet – Zoom

Drugs and Intelligence: Associations between recreational drug use and cognitive ability in the general population

The Great British Intelligence Test recruited over 500,000 individuals between late 2019 and 2020, then longitudinally monitored 135,000 participants. The study involved comprehensive cognitive assessments alongside detailed surveys of lifestyle choices, including recreational drug use. Previous population studies indicated associations between prolonged or heavy use of certain illicit drugs, such as stimulants and cannabis, and impaired cognitive performance. In contrast, emerging evidence suggests that specific substances, like psychedelics, may be associated with enhanced performance in particular cognitive domains, including creativity, cognitive flexibility, and emotional processing. The current presentation focuses on the results from the large-scale analysis from the Great British Intelligence Test designed to address a decades-long debate about the associations between recreational drug use and cognitive function. It describes a distinctive cognitive profile—or “fingerprint”—that characterise recreational drug users, remaining consistent despite potential influences from alcohol or tobacco consumption, psychiatric, or neurological conditions. Particular attention is given to discussing nuanced associations between distinct drug classes, notably psychedelics, and specific cognitive abilities.

Speaker Bio

Dr Maria Balaet holds a PhD in Clinical Medicine and Computational Neuroscience from Imperial College London, which was funded by a prestigious award she received from the UK Medical Research Council. She is currently a Research Associate at the Centre for Neuroimaging Sciences, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London. With over a decade of research experience, her work focuses on human intelligence and altered states of consciousness. Most notably, she has developed precision cognitive testing technology as part of the Cognitron Team and has led one of the largest longitudinal study arms in the world studying how naturalistic drug use including use of psychedelics associates with cognitive ability and mental health as part of the Great British Intelligence Test (which recruited over 500,000 participants). Outside of academic work, Maria has a passion for science communication and is a regular public speaker, podcast guest and panelist at a wide range of events. https://mariabalaet.com/

Curated and hosted by

Maya Bracknell Watson is an interdisciplinary artist, performer, retired cult leader and psychedelic researcher.

Her background is in psychedelic parapsychology research with Greenwich University, specialising in exceptional human experience and entity encounters on psychedelics, and as an artist. She has studied shamanism for 10 years, working closely with Amerindian indigenous shamanic cultures of Mexico and Peru and western neoshamanic groups, focusing on the introduction and integration of indiginous and animistic knowledge and perspectives to westerners and western ontologies.

She publicly lectures on the subjects of psychedelics and shamanism, and produces art on the subjects informed by her research and experience, including films, performances, writing and immersive worlds. She has performed and exhibited at the Tate Britain and Breaking Convention and is the creator and host of Psychedelicacies, an online lecture series.

Walking between the worlds of art, psychedelic science and shamanism she works to bridge them and uses each as investigatory tools to inform and articulate each other.

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

Maya

 

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.]

Vampires: from Monster to Mister, with Tina Rath – LIVE

Please note this is NOT a ZOOM Lecture but an in person lecture at our museum – tickets include a complimentary glass of Devil’s Botany Absinthe

Doors open at 6:30pm and lecture starts at 7.00pm

Vampires: from Monster to Mister, with Tina Rath – LIVE

Some people seem to think that a good vampire novel is a story in which the vampire marries the heroine at the end. Vampires have always had a connection with sex, as either Demon Lover or Rapist Monster, but it’s difficult to find anything in folklore or literature which characterises them as likely to make good husbands – until, of course, the arrival of Twilight. How did it happen? Why did it happen? Was it inevitable? Will it go away – should it go away?

Bio:

The lure of the vampire has been summed up as being Sex, Death and Fancy Costumes. Must we now add: faithful, patient, kind, hard-working and good with the children? Vampire specialist Dr Tina Rath answers these and many other questions about the dark seducer.

We are unable to give refunds for in person events with less than seven days notice in any circumstances

Devil’s Botany is London’s first absinthe distillery, founded by Directors of The Last Tuesday Society’s Absinthe Parlour & Cocktail Bar.