What is ‘Folk Horror’? Who bothered to define it and why and how useful is it to see it as a sub-genre?

In this lecture we will travel back in time to the origin of the clown as an entertainment figure and as the icon of the travelling circuses.

Carl Abrahamsson ponders the occasional occurrence of Satan in various guises

A rather more salacious re-telling was filmed by Ken Russell as ‘The Devils’ starring Oliver Reed in 1971

This talk is designed to show how it was created, and dispersed, and to reveal the rich literary tradition that it had inspired by the nineteenth century

This discussion examines how gender has informed traditional life and folklore in the Balkans for generations

This talk discusses the various meanings of hair in both Greek and Roman warfare

I will focus therefore on Folk Horror’s concern with the otherness of the landscape, nature, failed/misguided agency, and rural culture

This richly illustrated talk traces an itinerary from the ruins of Mendes in Egypt via the tophets of Tunisia to the hills of Dublin

In many 17th century houses, they may have been immured to act as guardians for the home but whose prey may have been ‘spiritual’ vermin.

Storyteller Fiona Eadie brings you wisdom and humour in a programme full of fools and sages

In this talk, artist, magician, technologist, and podcaster Heather D. Freeman will survey the history of magical experimentation with digital technologies.

This talk is designed to show why this is, and what forms it takes. Three patterns are very clear.

This illustrated Zoom talk will explore one of the most popular and long-lived of all the mythical creatures that humans have invented.

Professor Gosden will discuss his book 'A History of Magic ' (Viking 2020)

Sacha Coward takes us on an illustrated Zoom talk through the hidden queer history of myths and monsters.

Welcome to an evening where we get to know the different ghost stories from the countries in the north

The phenomenon of old, worn-out leather shoes having been deliberately concealed within ancient buildings is now an attested practice

This lecture aims to demonstrate how folk horror operates as a mode in Thai cinema with a view to finding alternative definitions.

Today the chief source of medieval alicorn, the narwhal, is an endangered species that engages our concern for the environment

In his talk, Dr Stiùbhart will introduce us to Kirk’s life and works, comparing the beliefs presented in the ‘Secret Commonwealth’

In this special six-part series, Professor Marguerite Johnson takes us on an uncanny journey across time and space into the wilds of human imagination.

In this illustrated talk, Professor Marguerite Johnson considers the mindboggling topic of vagina dentata (or toothed vagina).

This illustrated zoom talk will cover a brief survey of the history of the tarot and its influence in art and fashion.

Perhaps the oldest and most enduring of all myths is the Nekyia: the descent to and return from the underworld.

This first session introduces the alchemical nekyia—a narrative journey evoking the archetypal iconography of underworld

Tonight we will open up that portal to a creepy and chilling world filled with demon-like characters and ghosts and spirits

In this talk, I clarify some misconceptions about Hopi cosmology and explain how collaborative research

Believe it or not, some people – including doctors and scientists – believed that a womb possessed a mind of its own

In this lecture series Lena will tell the once so controversial stories from the secret journal known as “Kryptadia” published and distributed in Europe in the 1800’s.

The presentation focuses on the vision of Ibn Umail, illustrated by the spectacular text

In Old Norse culture, there is a number of stories about peculiar conceptions and births

Imagine losing your penis. Imagine someone – a woman, naturally – stealing your penis.

We move to the 16th century Hermetic Renaissance exemplified by the Rosarium philosophorum

Detecting the so-called ‘witch’s mark’ or ‘devil’s mark’ was a means of proving someone was a witch.

The presentation continues with a focus on one of the most famous and splendidly illuminated texts of the Hermetic Renaissance

This lecture unpacks stories around women giving birth to animals, from rabbits to pigs.

This session delves into the mysteries of perhaps the most extraordinary of all alchemical texts, the Atalanta Fugiens of Michael Maier.

This lecture considers hair as a marker of monstrosity, beginning with ancient accounts of the hirsute women

This session focuses on alchemical and hermetic themes in brief selections from poetry of the Elizabethan era and early decades

The cultural transformations of the Enlightenment, or Early-Modern Era, involved the psychologicizing of alchemical mythologies

One of the secret undercurrents of the literature of the American Renaissance in the mid 19th century

At the same time that renewed interest in alchemy and hermeticism was being explored in both Freudian and Jungian circles

The reduction to the fundamental elements of aesthetic composition—geometrical figures like the rectangle, square, circle

Jung’s engagement with alchemy began in the late 1920s and dominated his late work

Leonora Carrington’s traumatic breakdown and incarceration in the Spanish asylum at Santander,