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Halloween Folklore and Ghost Stories – Brice Stratford – Zoom

Halloween Folklore and Ghost Stories

Halloween. The night when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. When ghosts walk and corpses writhe, and innocent souls had best beware.

Let award winning storyteller Brice Stratford take you on a wild and witchy ride, fascinating and unnerving in equal measure, through the twists and turns of Allhallowstide, and the forgotten history of Halloween and the wider Hallowmas season.  With ghost stories, ancestor worship, bone fires, otherworld pixies, Pagan belief and archaic, Christian mythology along the way, Stratford shares for the first time the deeper tales and stranger lore that lurk beneath the tricks and treats we know so well, and the ancient flame that keeps the Jack O’Lantern lit.  Light the candles, lock the doors, and prepare to be unsettled. Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin.

Bio

Brice Stratford is an actor, storyteller, theatre director, folklorist, historian and former stuntman. Born and raised in the New Forest, he’s a regular fixture at folk, fringe and fright events across the country with his award-winning theatre company, the Owle Schreame. He currently sits on the board of the New Forest National Park Authority, and writes regularly on culture, heritage, architecture and the arts for a range of periodicals. In 2024 he launched the Finding Folklore podcast, an expansive storytelling and research project designed to unearth the hidden lore beneath the humdrum veneer of modern England. This talk accompanies the release of Brice’s third book on mythology and folklore, Halloween Folklore and Ghost Stories.

Curated & Hosted by

Marguerite Johnson is a cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, specialising in sexuality and gender, particularly in the poetry of Sappho, Catullus, and Ovid, as well as magical traditions in Greece, Rome, and the Near East. She also researches Classical Reception Studies, with a regular focus on Australia. In addition to ancient world studies, Marguerite is interested in sexual histories in modernity as well as magic in the west more broadly, especially the practices and art of Australian witch, Rosaleen Norton. She is Honorary Professor of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

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

Der Doppelgänger, the Artist & Creative Will – A Zoom talk by Dr Vanessa Sinclair

Der Doppelgänger, the Artist & Creative Will

In this presentation, Dr. Vanessa Sinclair will discuss concepts developed by Otto Rank, early psychoanalyst and student of Freud, specifically on Der Doppelgänger, the uncanny figure of the double, the role of art and the artist in society, and the essential nature of creative will. Rank viewed the development of the self, and even life itself, as a creative endeavor or work of art. Nowadays, we could say that our lives may be viewed as ongoing works of performance art. Rank felt neurosis stemmed from a stifling of our inherent creative potential, as we are unable to fully express ourselves creatively within the constraints and structures of modern society – another aspect of the discontents of civilization. Rank felt harnessing our creative will to be of the utmost importance for overall mental health and well-being. In fact later on after his break with Freud, Rank developed his own form of psychoanalytic treatment, which he referred to as “will psychology.”

To exemplify and elaborate upon Rank’s ideas, Dr. Sinclair will discuss the work of a series of artists who lived their lives as works of art, working with Der Doppelgänger, the double, mirroring, and the uncanny, providing an illustrated presentation of the works of Danish outsider artist Ovartaci, French surrealist Pierre Molinier, performance artists Breyer P-Orridge, and British multi-media artist Val Denham.

Speaker Bio

Vanessa Sinclair, Psy.D. is a psychoanalyst and artist based in Sweden, who works with people internationally. Dr. Sinclair hosts the award-winning podcast, Rendering Unconscious, and is the author of several books, including Things Happen (2024), Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art: The Cut in Creation (2021), and Switching Mirrors (2016). She edits the book series Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, and is co-editor of The Fenris Wolf vol 11 (2022) with Carl Abrahamsson and The Queerness of Psychoanalysis: From Freud and Lacan to Laplanche and Beyond (2025) with Elisabeth Punzi and Myriam Sauer.

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A Guide to Medieval Illustrations – Lena Heide-Brennand

A Guide to Medieval Illustrations

Come and Dive into the vivid world of medieval illustrations in this captivating lecture that will transport you back to the age of chivalry, illuminated manuscripts, and mystical symbolism. Join us as we unravel the secrets behind the vibrant images that adorned religious texts, royal decrees, and poetic sagas. Explore the whimsical depictions of cats and the formidable dragons that breathe life into the pages, alongside rich portrayals of everyday medieval life. Discover the techniques, cultural influences, and hidden meanings embedded within these timeless works of art. Perfect for art enthusiasts, history buffs, and curious minds alike, this journey through medieval imagery promises to enlighten and inspire. Don’t miss this chance to see the Middle Ages through the eyes of its most brilliant illustrators!

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

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Facts Concerning H. P. Lovecraft and His Environs, with Gary Lachman – 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

Facts Concerning H. P. Lovecraft and His Environs – LIVE

Today, HP Lovecraft’s name is a byword for the mysterious, the arcane and the bizarre. His stories of fantasy and horror are revered, and his creations are still vivid. Yet during his short, unhappy life, he was all but unknown. Physically weak and tormented by his own eccentricities, his was a hand-to-mouth existence spent in shabby dwellings in Providence and Brooklyn. From childhood, he fantasised about life in pre-Revolutionary America; as an adult, he undertook long sojourns up and down the eastern seaboard, visiting sites he associated with an age of lost glory. All of this is documented in the map and guide within, along with the real-life locations that formed the basis for his most famous fictional creations – Arkham, Innsmouth, Dunwich and Kingsport. Welcome to the world of HP Lovecraft: you might say it’s an interesting place to visit, but we wouldn’t want to live there.

Bio

Facts Concerning HP Lovecraft And His Environs is written by Gary Lachman, author of books on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness to literary suicides and the history of the occult. He has also written numerous biographies, including those of Aleister Crowley, Rudolf Steiner, C. G. Jung, and Colin Wilson. As Gary Valentine, he was a founding member of the pop group Blondie.

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.

Modern Pagan Witchcraft – Professor Ronald Hutton – 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 6:00pm and lecture starts at 6.30pm

Modern Pagan Witchcraft – LIVE

Modern Pagan witchcraft, commonly known as Wicca, is the first fully-formed religion that England has ever given the world, and the longest-established and best-known of the religions that make up modern Paganism. It has spread across the Western world over the past seventy years and is still rapidly growing. This talk is designed to explore how it appeared, and who were the most influential people in its propagation. It will also suggest answers to the questions of what pagan witchcraft consists, why it possesses such appeal for the modern age, and why it has importance and significance for society in general.

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.

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.

Cunning Folk, Life in The Age of Practical Magic – Dr Tabitha Stanmore – Zoom

Cunning Folk, Life in The Age of Practical Magic – Dr Tabitha Stanmore

In this talk, based on her book, Tabitha Stanmore transports us to a time when magic was used to navigate life’s challenges and solve problems of both trivial and deadly importance.

It’s 1600 and you’ve lost your precious silver spoons, or maybe they’ve been stolen. Perhaps your child has a fever. Or you’re facing trial. Maybe you’re looking for love or escaping a husband. What do you do?

In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might have been cunning folk: practitioners of ‘service magic’. Neither feared (like witches), nor venerated (like saints), these people were essential: a ubiquitous presence at a time when the supernatural was surprisingly mundane and a cherished everyday resource.

We meet lovelorn widows, selfless healers and renegade monks; we listen in on Queen Elizabeth I’s astrology readings and track treasure hunters who try to keep peace with fairies. Much like us, premodern people lived in bewildering times, buffeted by forces beyond their control – and their faith in magic has much to teach us about how we accommodate ourselves to the irrational in our allegedly enlightened lives today.

Charming in every sense of the word, Cunning Folk is an immersive reconstruction of a bygone world and a thought-provoking commentary on the beauty and bafflement of being human.

Speaker bio

Dr. Tabitha Stanmore is a postdoctoral researcher on the Leverhulme-funded Seven County Witch Hunt Project, investigating the people affected by the 1640s witch trials in eastern England. The aim of this project is to return the identities and stories of the accused (and their accusers) to their communities.

She is a specialist in English magic and witchcraft between the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, and particularly interested in the role that the supernatural played in everyday life, culture and politics. Her doctoral research explored the use of ‘service’ magic – practical spells sold by professional magicians – in premodern England.

Her first monograph, Love Spells and Lost Treasure: Service magic in England from the later Middle Ages to the early modern period, was published by Cambridge University Press in December 2022 and Cunning Folk: Life in the age of practical magicwas published in spring 2024 with The Bodley Head.

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

The Witches of St. Osyth: Persecution, Betrayal and Murder in Elizabethan England – Prof Marion Gibson

The Witches of St. Osyth: Persecution, Betrayal and Murder in Elizabethan England

Prof Marion Gibson will discuss her recent book – an emotive, haunting story of a community torn apart, the Essex witch accusations and trial of 1581-2 are, taken together, one of the pivotal instances of that malign and destructive wave of misogynistic persecution which periodically broke over early modern England. Yet, for all their importance in the overall study of witchcraft, the so-called witches of St Osyth have largely been overlooked by scholars. Marion Gibson now sets right that neglect. Using fresh archival sources – and investigating not just the village itself, but also its neighbouring Elizabethan hamlets and habitations – the speaker offers revelatory new insights into the sixteen women and one man accused of sorcery while asking wider, provocative questions about the way history is recollected and interpreted. Combining landscape detective work, a reconstruction of lost spaces and authoritative readings of crucial documents, Gibson skilfully unlocks the poignant personal histories of those denied the chance to speak for themselves.

An emotive, haunting story of a community torn apart, the Essex witch accusations and trial of 1581-2 are, taken together, one of the pivotal instances of that malign and destructive wave of misogynistic persecution which periodically broke over early modern England. Yet, for all their importance in the overall study of witchcraft, the so-called witches of St Osyth have largely been overlooked by scholars.

Speaker Bio

Marion Gibson now sets right that neglect. Using fresh archival sources – and investigating not just the village itself, but also its neighbouring Elizabethan hamlets and habitations – the author offers revelatory new insights into the sixteen women and one man accused of sorcery while asking wider, provocative questions about the way history is recollected and interpreted. Combining landscape detective work, a reconstruction of lost spaces and authoritative readings of crucial documents, Gibson skilfully unlocks the poignant personal histories of those denied the chance to speak for themselves

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

Witchcraft History in 13 Trials – Professor Marion Gibson – Zoom

Witchcraft History in 13 Trials

Salem, King James VI, Malleus Maleficarum. The world of witch hunts and witch trials sounds antiquated, relics of an unenlightened and brutal age. However, ‘witch hunt’ is heard often in the present-day media, and the misogyny it is rooted in is all too familiar today. A woman was prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act as recently as 1944.

Drawing on her recent book using thirteen significant trials to explore the history of witchcraft and witch hunts. As well as investigating some of the most famous trials from the middle ages to the 18th century, it takes us in new and surprising directions. It shows us how witchcraft was decriminalised in the 18th century, only to be reimagined by the 1780s Romantic radicals. We will learn how it evolved from being seen as a threat to Christianity to perceived as gendered persecution, and how trials against chieftains in Africa stoked anger against colonial rule.

Significantly, the the talk tells the stories of the victims – women, such as Helena Scheuberin and Joan Wright – whose stories have too often been overshadowed by those of the powerful men, such as King James VI and I and “Witchfinder General” Matthew Hopkins, who hounded them.

While this will be a history of witchcraft, the subject cannot be consigned to the history books. Hundreds of people, mostly women, are tried and killed as witches every year in Africa. ‘WITCH HUNT!’ is as common in our language today as ever it was, and witches are still on trial across the world

Speaker Bio

Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of nine books on witches in history and literature: The Witches of St Osyth (2022) and previously Reading Witchcraft; Possession, Puritanism, and Print; Witchcraft Myths in American Culture; Imagining the Pagan Past; Rediscovering Renaissance Witchcraft; Witchcraft: The Basics and, with Jo Esra, Shakespeare’s Demonology. Marion has also edited five books for publishers such as Routledge and Ashgate, and published around twenty chapters and articles. Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials is her most recent work.

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Following Lilith – tracking a demoness through time – Dr Sarah Clegg

Following Lilith – tracking a demoness through time

The monstrous Lilith has some popularity in the modern day, both as a demoness appearing in literature, TV and film, and as a feminist symbol. In most modern tellings of her story, she is the first wife of Adam, cast out of paradise when she refused to have sex with her husband, and is often represented as a seductive, child-killing creature. But where does Lilith come from? Tracing her back for over 4000 years, this talk will examine her origins in the child- and mother-killing demoness Lamashtu from ancient Mesopotamia, and Lamashtu’s contemporary, a rather sad species of virgin ghost called Lilitu. It will follow her through Aramaic incantation bowls, kabbalist literature, Christian folklore and Victorian art, looking not just at how she’s changed over the millennia, but what drove those changes – how she combined with cultures, movements and interests to become the monster (and feminist figure) that she is today.

Bio

Sarah Clegg has a PhD in ancient history from Cambridge University; she was part of the 2020/21 London Library Emerging Writers Programme. Her first book — Woman’s Lore: 4,000 Years of Sirens, Serpents and Succubi — was published by Head of Zeus and traces a group of seductive, child-snatching demonesses through folklore from ancient Mesopotamian to the present day. It was shortlisted for the HWA Non-Fiction Crown Award 2023.

Curated & Hosted by

Marguerite Johnson is a cultural historian of the ancient Mediterranean, specialising in sexuality and gender, particularly in the poetry of Sappho, Catullus, and Ovid, as well as magical traditions in Greece, Rome, and the Near East. She also researches Classical Reception Studies, with a regular focus on Australia. In addition to ancient world studies, Marguerite is interested in sexual histories in modernity as well as magic in the west more broadly, especially the practices and art of Australian witch, Rosaleen Norton. She is Honorary Professor of Classics and Ancient History at The University of Queensland, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

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

The Strange Case of the Feejee Mermaid – a Zoom talk by Prof Sarah Peverley

Japanese Merfolk and the Strange Case of the Feejee Mermaid

The strangest and most hideous mermaids in the historical record are the fake mummified mermaids that were exhibited across the world in the nineteenth century and which can still be seen in temples, museums and private collections today. Originating in Japan, where they were frequently bound with the origin story of a Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine, the mummies were (and in some cases still are) revered as religious relics. Made from dried fish skins, papier-mâché and simian jaws, they were unsightly creatures made to imitate the unique merfolk of Japanese folklore, known as ningyō (‘human-fish’). Their initial function was to provide tangible evidence of the world’s unseen supernatural forces and generate revenue for the religious sites that cared for them. But when Dutch sailors encountered them in the early nineteenth century, the mummies were thought to be real, dried specimens and were quickly purchased and exhibited across Europe and America.

This talk charts the history of the mummified mermaid from the oldest (alleged) example surviving at the shrine of Tenshō Kyōsha on the slopes of Mount Fuji, to the infamous ‘Feejee Mermaid’ that cost a Boston sea captain his ship, became a Ward of Chancery, and made P. T. Barnum a small fortune. Join Sarah for an illustrated walk through the fascinating history of Japanese merfolk and an exploration of what happened when the cultures of the East and West collided in the body of the mermaid.

 

Professor Sarah Peverley is an academic, writer and broadcaster who divides her time between being immersed in the depths of mermaid history and lost in the medieval world. As professor of medieval literature and culture at the University of Liverpool she teaches across English and History and regularly speaks at festivals and heritage events. She has consulted for organisations like Guinness World Records, and has written, presented or appeared in over eighty TV, radio and press features. She is currently writing a cultural history of the mermaid. For more information see www.sarahpeverley.com.

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. 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 infamous Feejee Mermaid.]