Archives: Digital Events

England’s oddest fairy encounter: the Wollaton Gnomes – Zoom talk by Dr Simon Young

The Wollaton Gnomes was a classic anomalous encounter. On the 23 September 1979 – 44 years ago today – a half-dozen primary school children went for an evening walk in Wollaton Hall Park in Nottingham (in the English Midlands). A number of these children were then chased by thirty gnomes in small cars!

It’s a fascinating incident not least because it is so well documented. We have an interview transcript of the children recorded less than 48 hours after the sighting and two pictures drawn by witnesses. There were newspaper reports with interviews: a couple of the kids even got on the TV on John Craven’s Newsround. Later a report was written by the Fairy Investigation Society.

On the 44th anniversary of this famous run in with the impossible, British folklore historian Simon Young unpicks the Wollaton encounter, and puts it in a broader context: an overlooked rash of gnome sightings in the area. Had Nottinghamshire’s Generation X read too many Noddy books? Is this a case of Midland social contagion? Or were there really supernatural gnome drivers among the trees in Wollaton Hall Park?

 

Dr Simon Young is a British folklore historian based in Italy. He has written extensively on the nineteenth-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) are both due out in 2022. 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). Over the years he has run courses on the History of Christianity, Italian Food History, Italian Media History, Contemporary Italian History, the Second World War in Italy and Italian Renaissance History.

Your host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward 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

Don’t worry if you can’t make it live on the night – the event will be recorded for ticket-holders and a link sent out valid for the next two weeks for you to watch at your leisure.

[Image generated by Craiyon.com, before being adapted.]

The World of Flemish Folklore – Zoom talk with Signe Maene

Enter the dark and wonderful world that is Flemish folklore!

On the road you’ll meet the alvermannekes who are kind-hearted gnomes, but love to blow out the light in your eyes. In the woods and meadows, we’ll encounter Kludde, one of the most skilful shapeshifters whose transformations into bats, monstrous dogs, birds and even devilish trees ensured that people stayed in their homes when the sky was at its darkest. We’ll enter cottages overgrown with devil’s claw and bramble bushes where witches concocted potions, brews and sinister plans, and often outsmarted those who dared to oppose them. A visit to the water devils and spirits who haunted the canals, rivers and the sea should not be missed either. And just as importantly, the forgotten folklorists who collected these tales and ensured that the rich, but little known about storytelling traditions of Flanders were preserved for future generations.

 

Signe Maene is a Belgian writer and audio dramatist of stories mainly based on Flemish folklore. She’s very passionate about anything relating to folk horror, myths and legends and blogs about Flemish folktales on Substack. Signe is currently working on a short story collection inspired by Flemish folktales and is the co-founder of Salt & Mirrors & Cats, a literary zine publishing stories, poems and art connected to superstitions.

Your curator and host for this event will be the writer Edward Parnell, author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward 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 folklore-strewn first novel The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Don’t worry if you miss the event on the night – the next day we will send you a recording that will be valid for two weeks.

 

[Image adapted from the following Wikimedia Comons artwork: Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946) Boom in de winter. Brafa 2019 31-01-2019 – houtskool en potlood op papier 68,5 x 48,5. Photographed by Paul Hermans.]

Unveiling The Digital Occult: Forty Super-Duper Ancient Years of Arcana – Heather Freeman

Unveiling The Digital Occult: Forty Super-Duper Ancient Years of Arcana

Magical practitioners from across time and cultures have used diverse technologies for spirit communication and interaction, ranging from oracular trances to Ouija boards.

With each technological advancement, magical tools have also evolved, such as with metallurgy or the moveable-type press.

The digital age is no exception, as practitioners explored online rituals on Bulletin Board Systems in the 1990s, digital temples in video games in the 2000s, digital divination apps in the 2010s, and today use AIs as oracular mediums.

Current digital technologies are inherently liminal tools, facilitating instantaneous communication and physical action across both time and space. And as virtual reality, generative AI, and other digital tools become increasingly accessible to non-technologists, more practitioners experiment with these tools in their magical workings.

In this talk, artist, magician, technologist, and podcaster Heather D. Freeman will survey the history of magical experimentation with digital technologies. She will then present a range of specific examples and approaches, such as digital divination apps, group-based ceremonial magic, micro-controller scrying devices, and generative AIs as spirit familiars. We’ll wrap it up with some online digital magic ourselves by exploring techniques accessible to the novice practitioner, non-programmer, idly curious, and expert techno-mage alike.

Bio

Heather D. Freeman (b. 1974) is Professor of Art in Digital Media in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from Rutgers University (2000) and a BA in Fine Art and German Studies from Oberlin College (1997). She is former Director of D+ARTS, the College of Arts + Architecture’s Digital Arts Center, and acting director of Charlotte Night Owl Interactive, a games and XR cooperative housed within the College.

Freeman works in digital and mixed-media print, 2D and 3D animation, film, mobile and desktop app design, and podcasting. Within these plural forms, Freeman combines traditional and digital technologies, weaving together the symbolic forms of magic, science, mythology, and popular culture. Freeman engages in several magical practices (both solitary and initiatory) that dovetail in her creative works. While some works observe the history and sociology of magical practices, many more are magical actions in themselves, intersecting the Visible and Invisible and actualized by the audience. Her animations, podcasts, and apps have been screened internationally and won numerous awards. Her prints and mixed-media works have also appeared in group and solo exhibitions across North America and internationally. She is currently the creative producer on the forthcoming podcast series “Magic in the United States” created in collaboration with PRX and funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. More about Freeman, her art, and writing may be found at https://linktr.ee/heatherdfreeman

Curated and Hosted by

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.

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

Image:

Heather D. Freeman (b. 1974)

Öccane 00, 2023

Watercolor, ink, graphite, salt, and Florida Water over digital print on watercolor paper.

Visual Aesthetics of Folk Horror – Tanya Krzywinska

Visual Aesthetics of Folk Horror

Character, theme and narrative are often centralised in the literature on Folk Horror; but what of its visual aesthetics? Can we trace Folk Horror aesthetics within older painting traditions and styles? The concern of this talk is to explore relationships between the Folk Horror of film, TV and videogames, and landscape painting. I will focus most intently on Gustav Courbet’s late landscapes and Andrew Wyeth’s work; along the way other forms of painting will provide touchpoints within this investigation of the way that folk horror translates its anti-pastoralism and pessimism into its visual sightlines. I will focus therefore on Folk Horror’s concern with the otherness of the landscape, nature, failed/misguided agency, and rural culture, arguing that an inherent pessimism drives Folk Horror’s ‘jamming’ of normative bucolic representations and therein subverting man’s surety of sovereignty over nature. In seeing Courbet’s anti-human animism and Wyeth’s rural othering backwards through the lens of Folk Horror, I seek to widen the scope of what we now regard as Folk Horror.

Bio

Tanya Krzywinska has written extensively on the Gothic and Horror across multiple platforms, focusing on magic and gender. She is an artist who works in traditional mediums as well as designing and researching augmented and virtual reality apps for art, museum, and heritage contexts. Since 2012, she has been Editor-in-Chief of the peer-reviewed journal Games and Culture (Sage) and is a professor at Falmouth University, Cornwall UK in the Games Academy.

Curated by

Ruth Heholt is Professor of Literature and Culture at Falmouth University in lovely Cornwall.

Hosted by

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.

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

Photo 1: Blood on Satan’s Claw Piers Haggard, 1971.

Photo 2: ‘Stream in the Jura Mountains‘ (The Torrent), 1872–73, Honolulu Museum of Art

Sunny Landscapes, Dark Visions: Folk Horror and the Weird Imagination of E. F. Benson – Ruth Heholt

Sunny Landscapes, Dark Visions: Folk Horror and the Weird Imagination of E. F. Benson

What is ‘Folk Horror’? Who bothered to define it and why and how useful is it to see it as a sub-genre? One of the answers to these latter questions is that it is great fun. Ruthlessly ‘using’ folklore and ramping up the horror, Folk Horror makes both seem almost believable. People get in some terrible pickles, very often by going ‘too far’ – venturing where they really shouldn’t. If horror fans scream ‘don’t go into the cellar!’, Folk Horror folk venture ‘too far’ in the pursuit of knowledge, in unearthing that which really should stay buried, in intruding into communities that might be welcoming but for all the wrong reasons. Don’t pull that long-buried artefact out of the ground! Don’t open that old ‘forbidden’ book! Don’t assume these ‘picturesque’ villagers are benign! And really, I wouldn’t stay in that house that is surrounded by standing stones! My favourite ‘spook’ story writer E. F. Benson knew all the tricks. A lesser-known contemporary of M. R. James, Arthur Machen, and Algernon Blackwood (the main writers associated with historical folk horror), Benson gives us ‘sunny’ horrors. Benson’s ghost stories are often set in hot, still summers and he toys with folk horror where dark, old horrors appear in sunny, beautiful landscapes, making the horrors far, far worse. From Cornwall to Suffolk, Benson’s folk horror tales give pause and can make you look over your shoulder even in the most luscious of landscapes.

Bio

Ruth Heholt is Professor of Literature and Culture at Falmouth University in lovely Cornwall.

Curated and Hosted by

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.

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

Photo: The Mowing-Devil; or Strange News out of Hertfordshire, August 22, 1678

UFO Religions and Spirituality – Benjamin E. Zeller

UFO Religions and Spirituality

UFO religion are out of this world. Or are they? In this talk, Ben Zeller discusses the history and context of UFO religions and UFO spirituality, from their origins in mid-twentieth-century flying saucer culture through contemporary ufology, conspiracism, and alternative religious practices. We start with the origins of UFO and flying saucer culture and mythology, including the Roswell incident and the birth of both scientific ufology and the contactee/abductee movements.

We consider the Cold War context of the emergence of the first UFO religions, groups like the Aetherius Society (UK) and the Unarius Academy of Science (USA). We then look to the transformations within UFO spirituality that came with the rise of conspiracy thinking and “conspirituality,” as well as the integration of New Age spiritual practices and beliefs within UFO religions, as seen in such groups as Heaven’s Gate (USA) and the Raelians (France). Finally, we look to contemporary UFO religiosity as found within today’s starseed and channelling movements. Throughout, we consider themes of millennialism, apocalypticism, and utopianism.

Bio

Benjamin E. Zeller is Professor and Chair of Religion at Lake Forest College (Chicago, USA). He researches religious currents that are new or alternative, including new religions, the religious engagement with science, and the quasi-religious relationship people have with food. He is author of Heaven’s Gate: America’s UFO Religion (NYU Press) and Prophets and Protons: New Religious Movements and Science in Late Twentieth-Century America (NYU Press), and has edited or co-edited four other books. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina and a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard University. He is co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. He lives in suburban Chicago, Illinois, and when he has time for it, he makes his own cheese.

Curated and Hosted by

Dr. Amy Hale is an Atlanta based writer, curator and critic, ethnographer and folklorist speaking and writing about esoteric history, art, culture, women and Cornwall. She is the author of Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern Loved Gully (Strange Attractor 2020) and is currently working on several Colquhoun related manuscripts. She is also the editor of Essays on Women in Western Esotericism: Beyond Seeresses and Sea Priestesses (Palgrave 2022). She has contributed gallery texts and essays for a number of institutions including Tate, Camden Arts Centre, Art UK, Arusha Galleries, Heavenly Records and she is a curator and host for the Last Tuesday Society lecture series.

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

Summoning The Spirits – Seance with Medium Patti Negri on Zoom

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A LIVE SEANCE AND WILL NOT BE RECORDED AND TICKETHOLDERS WILL NOT RECEIVE A RECORDING.

IF YOU BUY A TICKET AND ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND PLEASE REQUEST A REFUND.

Spirits are all around us. You do not have to be a psychic, medium or witch to communicate with the other side. But, there are some definite rules and guidelines you need to follow for safe, effective and powerful communication with spirits.

This intimate online seance will be limited to 25 people, giving everyone the opportunity to request summoning a specific spirit. Patti cannot guarantee every spirit will be willing to communicate, but they most always do, due to her gentle and respectful technique and amazing ability to “lift the veil” between the two worlds. Lasting around two hours, Patti will give an explanation and lesson in her proven techniques for safely and respectfully doing seances. Then, she will conduct a full séance, lift the veil and give everyone who wants one an opportunity to speak with their beloved deceased.

Since March 2020, Patti Negri has been regularly conducting on-line seances. Since spirits exist outside time and place, she has found that the internet turns out to be the perfect medium!

Patti Negri has been communicating with spirits since she could talk. She did her first séance when she was just seven or eight years old. She sat cross legged on the floor and I started asking the spirits to enter the room. She created her first chant – and low and behold – the room filled with orbs of bright light. They started in the corner and quickly began filling the room. It was amazing. She ran screaming out of the house… but had never been so excited. She had actually and consciously contacted the other side – and was able to control it. Her journey had begun. Since then she has studied religion, metaphysics, science, occult sciences and cosmologies and belief systems of all kinds and combined the truths within to create surefire and safe techniques to raise the veil between the worlds.

Patti Negri is a Psychic-Medium and “Good Witch” best known for her recurring role on the Travel Channel’s #1 show GHOST ADVENTURES. She is the international best-selling author of OLD WORLD MAGICK FOR THE MODERN WORLD: TIPS, TRICKS, & TECHNIQUES TO BALANCE, EMPOWER, & CREATE A LIFE YOU LOVE. Patti’s body of work includes appearances on such shows as MASTER CHEF, AMERICA’S GOT TALENT, WIPE OUT! and A LITTLE LATE WITH LILLY SINGH. Patti has a popular weekly podcast called THE WITCHING HOUR and can also be heard on nationally syndicated radio with Adam Corolla, Jason Ellis, Mancow Muller and Coast to Coast with George Noory. Patti was voted number one psychic, medium, trance medium, tarot reader, witch / magical practitioner in the world in an Internationally competition by Times Square Press. She has graced numerous magazine covers, contributed to over 20 books and conducted seances on radio, film, and TV working with such legends as Emma Stone, Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel, Martin Sheen and Gregory Hines.

Summoning the Spirits – Online Seance with Medium Patti Negri

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A LIVE SEANCE AND WILL NOT BE RECORDED AND TICKETHOLDERS WILL NOT RECEIVE A RECORDING.

IF YOU BUY A TICKET AND ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND PLEASE REQUEST A REFUND.

Spirits are all around us. You do not have to be a psychic, medium or witch to communicate with the other side. But, there are some definite rules and guidelines you need to follow for safe, effective and powerful communication with spirits.

This intimate online seance will be limited to 25 people, giving everyone the opportunity to request summoning a specific spirit. Patti cannot guarantee every spirit will be willing to communicate, but they most always do, due to her gentle and respectful technique and amazing ability to “lift the veil” between the two worlds. Lasting around two hours, Patti will give an explanation and lesson in her proven techniques for safely and respectfully doing seances. Then, she will conduct a full séance, lift the veil and give everyone who wants one an opportunity to speak with their beloved deceased.

Since March 2020, Patti Negri has been regularly conducting on-line seances. Since spirits exist outside time and place, she has found that the internet turns out to be the perfect medium!

Patti Negri has been communicating with spirits since she could talk. She did her first séance when she was just seven or eight years old. She sat cross legged on the floor and I started asking the spirits to enter the room. She created her first chant – and low and behold – the room filled with orbs of bright light. They started in the corner and quickly began filling the room. It was amazing. She ran screaming out of the house… but had never been so excited. She had actually and consciously contacted the other side – and was able to control it. Her journey had begun. Since then she has studied religion, metaphysics, science, occult sciences and cosmologies and belief systems of all kinds and combined the truths within to create surefire and safe techniques to raise the veil between the worlds.

Patti Negri is a Psychic-Medium and “Good Witch” best known for her recurring role on the Travel Channel’s #1 show GHOST ADVENTURES. She is the international best-selling author of OLD WORLD MAGICK FOR THE MODERN WORLD: TIPS, TRICKS, & TECHNIQUES TO BALANCE, EMPOWER, & CREATE A LIFE YOU LOVE. Patti’s body of work includes appearances on such shows as MASTER CHEF, AMERICA’S GOT TALENT, WIPE OUT! and A LITTLE LATE WITH LILLY SINGH. Patti has a popular weekly podcast called THE WITCHING HOUR and can also be heard on nationally syndicated radio with Adam Corolla, Jason Ellis, Mancow Muller and Coast to Coast with George Noory. Patti was voted number one psychic, medium, trance medium, tarot reader, witch / magical practitioner in the world in an Internationally competition by Times Square Press. She has graced numerous magazine covers, contributed to over 20 books and conducted seances on radio, film, and TV working with such legends as Emma Stone, Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel, Martin Sheen and Gregory Hines.

Summoning the Spirits – Online Seance with Medium Patti Negri

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS IS A LIVE SEANCE AND WILL NOT BE RECORDED AND TICKETHOLDERS WILL NOT RECEIVE A RECORDING.

IF YOU BUY A TICKET AND ARE UNABLE TO ATTEND PLEASE REQUEST A REFUND.

Spirits are all around us. You do not have to be a psychic, medium or witch to communicate with the other side. But, there are some definite rules and guidelines you need to follow for safe, effective and powerful communication with spirits.

This intimate online seance will be limited to 25 people, giving everyone the opportunity to request summoning a specific spirit. Patti cannot guarantee every spirit will be willing to communicate, but they most always do, due to her gentle and respectful technique and amazing ability to “lift the veil” between the two worlds. Lasting around two hours, Patti will give an explanation and lesson in her proven techniques for safely and respectfully doing seances. Then, she will conduct a full séance, lift the veil and give everyone who wants one an opportunity to speak with their beloved deceased.

Since March 2020, Patti Negri has been regularly conducting on-line seances. Since spirits exist outside time and place, she has found that the internet turns out to be the perfect medium!

Patti Negri has been communicating with spirits since she could talk. She did her first séance when she was just seven or eight years old. She sat cross legged on the floor and I started asking the spirits to enter the room. She created her first chant – and low and behold – the room filled with orbs of bright light. They started in the corner and quickly began filling the room. It was amazing. She ran screaming out of the house… but had never been so excited. She had actually and consciously contacted the other side – and was able to control it. Her journey had begun. Since then she has studied religion, metaphysics, science, occult sciences and cosmologies and belief systems of all kinds and combined the truths within to create surefire and safe techniques to raise the veil between the worlds.

Patti Negri is a Psychic-Medium and “Good Witch” best known for her recurring role on the Travel Channel’s #1 show GHOST ADVENTURES. She is the international best-selling author of OLD WORLD MAGICK FOR THE MODERN WORLD: TIPS, TRICKS, & TECHNIQUES TO BALANCE, EMPOWER, & CREATE A LIFE YOU LOVE. Patti’s body of work includes appearances on such shows as MASTER CHEF, AMERICA’S GOT TALENT, WIPE OUT! and A LITTLE LATE WITH LILLY SINGH. Patti has a popular weekly podcast called THE WITCHING HOUR and can also be heard on nationally syndicated radio with Adam Corolla, Jason Ellis, Mancow Muller and Coast to Coast with George Noory. Patti was voted number one psychic, medium, trance medium, tarot reader, witch / magical practitioner in the world in an Internationally competition by Times Square Press. She has graced numerous magazine covers, contributed to over 20 books and conducted seances on radio, film, and TV working with such legends as Emma Stone, Jon Voight, Josh Duhamel, Martin Sheen and Gregory Hines.

It Was Upon a Lammas Night: Summerisle and The Wicker Man – Zoom talk with Edward Parnell

2023 is the 50th Anniversary of the release of Robin Hardy’s folk horror film classic The Wicker Man. In this illustrated Zoom talk, Edward Parnell will explore the real-life locations of Dumfries and Galloway (and also Skye and further up Scotland’s west coast) that were used to such great effect to create the mythical Summerisle in the movie. After Edward’s talk there will be an opportunity for a Q&A with ticketholders.

Come of your own free will to the appointed place…

Edward Parnell is the author of Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country. Edward 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, artists and filmmakers – 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. His first book, The Listeners (2014), won the Rethink New Novels Prize. For further info see: https://edwardparnell.com

Don’t worry if you miss it or can’t make it on the night – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day.