The Open Graves, Open Minds Project began by unearthing depictions of the vampire and the undead in literature, art, and other media, then embraced werewolves (and representations of wolves and wild children), fairies, and other supernatural beings and their worlds. The Project extends to all narratives of the fantastic, the folkloric, and the magical, emphasising that sense of Gothic as enchantment rather than simply horror. Through this, OGOM is articulating an ethical Gothic, cultivating moral agency and creating empathy for the marginalised, monstrous or othered, including the disenchanted natural world.
6. Matthew Wills considers the continuing relevance of vampires by looking at the economic metaphor of vampirism employed by Karl Marx: ‘Marxferatu: Teaching Marx with Vampires‘.
The conference invites proposals addressing diverse approaches to the combination of myth and dream – literary, artistic, scientific or theological – that enjoy attention in the contemporary world.
This two-day conference will explore the appeal, evolutions, and elusiveness of Gothic, Horror, and Weird Short Fiction, and welcomes speakers with new and innovative perspectives at any stage of their academic career.
Inspired by the 200th anniversary of Peterloo, our conference theme—‘Romanticism Now and Then’—invites reconsideration not only of the historical events of 1819 and their implications, but also, more broadly, of the relations among politics, aesthetics, and time in any aspect of Romantic art, literature, and culture. Put simply, we are interested in making space for the most rigorously imaginative and significant work being done now that bears on our understanding of the politics, aesthetics, and/or temporalities of Romanticism.
This poem was meant as a light-hearted celebration of all things Gothic, and of scholars and students in the field. I crammed in as many tropes, archetypes, characters, and clichés as I could, torturously straining the rhymes on the rack. It was originally a short piece commissioned by Ali Younger at the University of Sunderland for her ‘Gorgeous Goth Girls’, so the alliteration of the letter ‘g’ became compulsive. It’s been expanded several times—I can’t seem to let it go—and the current iteration is in response to the University of Sheffield’s Reimagining the Gothic: Aesthetics and Archetypes conference which I was unfortunately unable to attend (there’s a sly reference to the conference theme in there now, and Prof. Angela Wright has a solo spot).
It’s a playful Bacchanalia, but beneath the surface there’s a more serious theme, one of aesthetic transformation and emancipation—a reimagining, if you like—and of the importance of narrative. All the moral ambiguity and subversiveness of the Gothic appears. The reworking of Gothic archetypes appears in an allusion to Angela Carter’s characterisation of her revisioning of fairy tales as ‘new wine in old bottles’. The action is a Walpurgisnacht of witches learning eagerly, conjuring lovers, feasting voraciously, and having a general good time while telling stories that reimagine and enchant the world, then soaring into the skies till dawn arrives.
Night of the Gorgeous Goth Girls: A Paranormal Romance.
(for Sam George, Angela Wright, Alison Younger, and their students of the Gothic at the Universities of Hertfordshire, Sheffield, and Sunderland)
Under a gibbous and gory moon The Gorgeous Goth Girls gyre and gimble, Gliding gaily to gloomy tune With graceful sway and gait that’s nimble.
Their eyes adorned with artful shade, Glad-ragged in black, lips daubed with mauve; Transforming all that moonlit glade Aesthetically, those Goth Girl fauves.
Witches all, with body parts And occult herbs they craft their spell; Imagination and dark arts Create a heaven from savage Hell.
Hence three-faced Hekátē, through hexes Etched in the air with argent fire, Breathes lucid commerce among the sexes, Inspiring a colloquy of desire.
Then, demon lovers from leafy wood, Or leaping from the leaves of books, Are stirred alive with boiling blood, Enchanted by those glamouring looks.
Come icy Ruthven, cool Carmilla, Lurching zombie, Giaour, and ghoul; Spike and Angel, crazed Drusilla— Glittery Edward’s here from school.
Barnabas and Scissorhands, L’Estat, Ligeia, Yog-Sothoth, Goblins, elves from Faerie lands Salute the troupe of Gorgeous Goths.
The Count himself, three sultry brides; Galvanic monster and his wife; Pale warriors, werewolves, Mr Hyde: All celebrate that Blood is Life.
And oh! What music they do make! With gut and reed and rattling bones, Wild revels like some Celtic wake Resound with eerie, plangent tones.
The Girls gavotte with gay cadavers, Goat-men, mermen, incubae, Who quicken in the danse macabre And ululate with ghostly cry.
The music dies; the feast begins With tender flesh laid out to bite. The menu sings of luscious sins Enthralling curious appetites.
Such gleeful gusto! The gorgeous gluttons Gulp goblin grapes and baneful berries; Wolf glorious gateaux, goose and mutton, With lusty wine from Naughty Man’s Cherries.
Licking lips, they leave the table To conjure more delicious sin, To reimagine Gothic fable— New archetypes in ancient skin.
The greedy Girls explore grimoires In search of threads that can be woven Into stories spiced with noir To spellbind the uncanny coven.
All gather kindling and ignite A bonfire which soon fiercely rages. The visions in the flames incite Wild tales inscribed on virgin pages.
Ceridwen flings into the brew That simmers in her cauldron bright Wild elements to create anew The chaos of the sable night.
There’s pickled spiders, gall of goat, Scale of dragon and basilisk blood, Syllables torn from infant throat, Distilled with Gothic womanhood.
Benighted ravens, owls, and bats Around the Girls shape-shift and swirl, While grinning glowing-green-eyed cats Torment the air with eldritch skirl.
Familiars help the spells get ready: Faithful Wednesday, furred Pyewacket, Wilful Willow, and torpid Teddy Growl and purr in gleeful racket.
Who has gathered to incant These arcane scripts? What dark divines Will glorify and re-enchant The world and render it sublime?
Matilda plots with Loridani, Alice Nutter, Lilith, Glinda, Bastet, Morrigan, fey Morgana, Mab, Medea, and gypsy Wanda.
While Angela stirs Gothic Romance Into the spell of history, Beguiling Italy and France Evoke Udolphan mystery.
There Ali, Lianan-Sídhe, reveals Bright secrets from the darkest lore. Her students, with delighted squeals, Learn tales of terror, lust, and gore.
Samantha, witch of Circe’s line, Likewise from open graves uncovers Charms, unfit for abject swine, That open minds of bards and lovers.
Kaja, lycanthrope, uncoils Her tale of animality, Reveals her hybrid self embroiled With carnal sociality.
Through Rachey’s stories summoned hence, Beautiful monsters who transgress Morality and common sense Mask vice beneath cosmetic dress.
These narratives grip the Girls with awe And animate a fierce resolve To transcend gravity’s grim law: Besmearing skin with chymick salve
That stings their bodies into flight, And shivering with the fierce uplift, The Gorgeous Girls soar into night Astride a hog or besom swift.
Now howling giddily, drunk with glee, They trace Agnesi’s sensual curves, Describing paths that set them free, Reborn in wild ecstatic swerves . . .
But now the cock crows dreary day And Gorgeous Goth Girls must retire. Spectral visions fade away; Bells clang and banish dark desire.
A bit behind with blogging, so quite a few Frankenstein items have accumulated (it being, as I’m sure you’ll know, the 200th anniversary of the novel’s publication).
SIIBS and Sheffield Gothic are delighted to announce a two day interdisciplinary conference: ‘Buffy and the Bible’ which will take place at the University of Sheffield on 4-5th July 2019. Part of the Gothic Bible Project, and following our inaugural Gothic Bible conference in 2017 (which you can read all about here) ‘Buffy and the Bible’ will take the hit show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) as a case study to interrogate the relationship between religion and popular culture, and we welcome papers and posters that explore this theme in any aspect of the Buffyverse (see the Call For Papers below for more details).
The myths, legends, and folklore of the world are both timeless and timely, giving context to the courses of nations and meaning to personal moments. They are reenacted in formal tableaux and reified in cosplay. They inform our religions and our television. They are us.
Monumenta Mythica, a new, online, peer-reviewed, open access journal from the Fandom and Neomedia Studies (FANS) Association, is pleased to publish this Call for Papers (see below for German and Spanish). We also accept reviews of works relevant to the fields of Monumenta Mythica as well as short documentary films. The field is broadly construed and may include, but is not limited to:
Writers wanted! The Tor.com blog is looking for fantasy experts to contribute in-depth essays, commentary, and analysis of your favorite books, authors, and series.
‘ but those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before me’ Luke 19.27
Vampire slaying kits, in my opinion, date back to around the time of British vampirologist Montague Summers (1880-1948) and have been in circulation since the 1920s. It is my belief that such kits are tied to a form of entertainment in the theatre but the contents point to darker, more unsettling undead issues. The boxes generally contain a crucifix, Bible, holy water, wooden stakes and a mallet together with the book of common prayer (1851 edition). Inside many there is an unnerving handwritten passage from Luke 19.27 which reads: ‘but those mine enemies, […] I should reign over them, bring hither and slay them before me’.
Over 100 kits are known to exist, and many of them are antique in appearance. I have heard that there are nineteenth century examples (I mention this in the video, but I fear they are put together from antique parts at a much later point in history). It is sometimes stated that vampire kits in general, are late Victorian novelties, sold to tourists in eastern Europe in the wake of the publication of Dracula in 1897. However, there are some ‘Professor Blomberg’ kits in circulation and these are very recent creations, c.1970s. Though constructed from antique boxes and contents, they are most likely produced in the era of Hammer Horror.
We have 2 kits at OGOM and they look surprisingly similar, rather plain and naïve looking (very unlike the more ornate ones that include antique pistols). The first was donated by an antiquarian bookseller in Oxford and the story is that it was left there by a travelling theatre company in the 1930s and the second, which has pliers for defanging the vampire, is a contemporary kit that was made as recently as 2011 from parts. I often get asked whether the kits are genuine. This is a very complex question to answer. Vampire kits are not fakes or reproductions, because there may be no evidence of an original. They are I think invented artefacts, akin to magic sets, but also art objects, that offer themselves up for display and become the preserve of galleries, archives or museums of curiosity.
As curios, they transcend questions of authenticity. They are part of the material culture of the gothic in which our shared anxieties are made manifest. They are also extremely theatrical. It is worth noting that on 18th May 1897 the first and only performance of Stoker’s play Dracula, or The Undead was performed at the Lyceum Theatre (the novel was published on 26th May). The book thus began its life as a theatrical performance. These kits were sold to capitalise on the popularity of vampire theatricals. Surprisingly, Vampires appeared on stage from the 1820s onwards due to the vogue for reading and creating phantasmagoria and Polidori’s Vampire archetype enjoyed an extensive afterlife in the theatre.
The vampire kit’s connection to the taste for Phantasmagoria links them to Diodati and the story writing competition of 1816 involving Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and William John, Polidori. Mary recalls that the party read and discussed a volume translated from the German by a Frenchman entitled Fantasmagoriana, or the history of spectres, revenants and phantoms which had been published in 1812. Amongst its varied material is the story of a sinner who is doomed to return as a vampire to suck the blood of his descendants.
We are just back from our Supernatural St Albans Halloween Tour which went down a real treat. Around 40 people engaged in our wonderfully weird history of witches, tortured martyrs, vampire graves, dragons, succubi and more. We are going to be running similar events regularly and making it a feature of what we do on the project so if you missed this one there will still be more opportunities to experience it and meet us in person in future:-)
You may have encountered some spirits but don’t forget that Hallowe’en is also a time to find (or test) true love. Why not try putting a black cat in a pumpkin shell and carrying a white owl on your shoulder to make sure true love endures…
Or put some spiders in your tea cup
If you still have not found true love send a lock of hair sailing into the air on a breeze. The place where the hair lands is where your true love is lying!
If you have already found true love but fear that your lover’s heart may grow cold you can do the following test to ensure your lover stays true….
Finally, make sure you invite some lucky black cats to share the evening with you…if they can sing or conduct a choir of Jack ‘O’ Lanterns all the better!
The story of Count Dracula as many of us know it was created by Bram Stoker, an Irishman, in 1897. But most of the action takes place in England, from the moment the Transylvanian vampire arrives on a shipwrecked vessel in Whitby, North Yorkshire, with plans to make his lair in the spookily named Carfax estate, west of the river in London.
But Dracula wasn’t the first vampire in English literature, let alone the first to stalk England. The vampire first made its way into English literature in John Polidori’s 1819 short story “The Vampyre”. Polidori’s vampire, Lord Ruthven, is inspired by a thinly disguised portrait of the predatory English poet, Lord Byron, in Lady Caroline Lamb’s novel Glenarvon (1816). So the first fictional vampire was actually a satanic English Lord.
It is nearly 200 years since this Romantic/Byronic archetype for a vampire emerged – but what do we know about English belief in vampires outside of fiction? New research at the University of Hertfordshire has uncovered and reappraised a number of vampire myths – and they are not all confined to the realms of fiction.
The Croglin Vampire reputedly first appeared in Cumberland to a Miss Fisher in the 1750s. Its story is retold by Dr Augustus Hare, a clergyman, in his Memorials of a Quiet Life in 1871. According to this legend, the vampire scratches at the window before disappearing into an ancient vault. The vault is later discovered to be full of coffins that have been broken open and their contents, horribly mangled and distorted, are scattered over the floor. One coffin only remains intact, but the lid has been loosened. There, shrivelled and mummified – but quite intact – lies the Croglin Vampire.
Elsewhere in Cumbria, the natives of Renwick, were once known as “bats” due to the monstrous creature that is said to have flown out of the foundations of a rebuilt church there in 1733. The existence of vampire bats, which sucked blood wouldn’t be confirmed until 1832, when Charles Darwin sketched one feeding off a horse on his voyage to South America in The Beagle. The creature in Renwick has been referred to as a “cockatrice” – a mythical creature with a serpent’s head and tail and the feet and wings of a cockerel – by Cumbrian County History. But it’s the myth of the vampire bat that has prevailed in the surrounding villages and is recorded in conversations in local archives and journals
What picture emerges then in this history of the English vampire? The Croglin Vampire has never been verified – but it has an afterlife in the 20th century, appearing as The British Vampire in 1977 in an anthology of horror by Daniel Farson, who turns out to be Stoker’s great-grandnephew.
The Nightmare. John Henry Fuseli (1781)
Nightmare in Buckinghamshire
But there is one case that has no connection to fiction, the little-known Buckinghamshire Vampire, recorded by William of Newburgh in the 12th century. Historical records show that St Hugh, the Bishop of Lincoln, was called upon to deal with the terrifying revenant and learned to his astonishment, after contacting other theologians, that similar attacks had happened elsewhere in England.
St Hugh was told that no peace would be had until the corpse was dug up and burned, but it was decided that an absolution – a declaration of forgiveness, by the church, absolving one from sin – would be a more seemly way to disable the vampire. When the tomb was opened the body was found to have not decomposed. The absolution was laid inside on the corpse’s chest by the Archdeacon and the vampire was never again seen wandering from his grave.
The Buckinghamshire revenant did not have a “vampire” burial – but such practices are evidence of a longstanding belief in vampires in Britain. Astonishingly, the medieval remains of the what are thought to be the first English vampires have been found in the Yorkshire village of Wharram Percy. The bones of over 100 “vampire” corpses have now been uncovered buried deep in village pits. The bones were excavated more than half a century ago and date back to before the 14th century. They were at first thought to be the result of cannibalism during a famine or a massacre in the village but on further inspection in 2017 the burned and broken skeletons were linked instead to deliberate mutilations perpetrated to prevent the dead returning to harm the living – beliefs common in folklore at the time.
‘Vampire graves’ have been found at the abandoned village of Wharram Percy in Yorkshire. Paul Allison via Alchemipedia, CC BY
Vile bodies
The inhabitants of Wharram Percy showed widespread belief in the undead returning as revenants or reanimated corpses and so fought back against the risk of vampire attacks by deliberately mutilating their own dead, burning bones and dismembering corpses, including those of women, children and teenagers, in an attempt to stave off what they believed could be a plague of vampires. This once flourishing village was completely deserted in the aftermath.
Just recently at an ancient Roman site in Italy the severed skull of a ten-year-old child was discovered with a large rock inserted in the mouth to prevent biting and bloodsucking. Then skull belongs to a suspected 15th-century revenant which they are calling locally the “Vampire of Lugano”.
There has been a wealth of other stories from the UK and other parts of Western Europe – but, despite this, thanks to the Dracula legend, most people still assume such practises and beliefs belong to remote parts of Eastern Europe. But our research is continuing to examine “vampire burials” in the UK and is making connections to local myths and their legacy in English literature, many years before the Byronic fiend Count Dracula arrived in Yorkshire carrying his own supply of Transylvanian soil.
We’re excited to announce that we have submitted our special issue of Gothic Studies on ‘Werewolves, Wild Children and Wilderness‘ to Edinburgh University Press for publication in May, 2019. This is the first of two publications that have developed from our now legendary Company of Wolves conference and programme of events. You can see the line up of this special issue, including the abstracts below. Big thanks to our wonderful contributors…..woo hoo… definitely something to howl about!!
Gothic Studies: Werewolves, Wild children and Wilderness
Sam George and Bill Hughes, Intro: ‘Werewolves and Wildness’.
Sue Chaplin, ‘‘Daddy, I’m falling for a Monster’: Women, Sex and Sacrifice in Contemporary Paranormal Romances Featuring Vampires and Werewolves’
Abstract. This article examines a key trope within much contemporary paranormal romance: the absence, or ineffectiveness, of the father. The first part of the essay develops an analysis of this aspect of the genre (in the Twilight Saga especially) through the work of René Girard, Luce Irigaray and Juliet MacCannell. Of particular importance here is the extent to which Twilight and similar narratives stage female self-sacrifice as a pre-condition for the redemption of the hero and the restoration of patriarchal bonds initially compromised by some crisis in the effective functioning of paternal authority. The second section extends this analysis to consider ways in which paranormal romances featuring werewolves and vampires shift away from this conservative and reductivist romance paradigm so as to affirm and contest heteronormative, paternalistic models of masculinity and sexual desire.
Tania Evans, ‘Full Moon Masculinities: Werewolves, Emotional Repression and Violence in Young Adult Fiction’
Abstract. Gothic monsters have recently experienced a period of focused scholarly analysis, although few studies have engaged with the werewolf in terms of its overt alignment with masculinity. Yet the werewolves of young adult fantasy fiction both support and subvert dominant masculine discourses through their complex negotiation with emotional repression and violence. These performative masculine practices are the focus of this article, which analyses how hegemonic masculine ideals are reinforced or rejected in a corpus of young adult fantasy texts, including Cassandra Clare’s young adult series The Mortal Instruments (2007-2014) and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga (2005-2010). Both texts feature masculine characters whose lycanthropic experiences implicitly comment upon gender norms, which may shape young adult audiences’ understanding of their own and others’ gender identities.
Simon Marsden, ‘One look and you recognize evil’: Lycan Terrorism, Monstrous Otherness and the Banality of Evil in Benjamin Percy’s Red Moon’
Abstract. Benjamin Percy’s novel Red Moon (2013) navigates the problem of the ‘monster’ in the context of post-9/11 representations of Islamist terrorism. Structured around a series of terrorist atrocities carried out by lycan extremists, Percy’s novel employs the werewolf as a figure of monstrous otherness in order to deconstruct the very processes of othering by which the monster is produced culturally and politically. Focusing on the distorted ethical justifications of the terrorists and on the roles of political opportunism and media manipulation in shaping US responses, the narrative allows both lycan terrorists and their political antagonists to emerge as more clown than monster. This article draws upon Hannah Arendt’s account of the banality of evil, and its development by more recent privation theorists, to situate Red Moon within contemporary popular and theoretical discourses of evil and to read the novel as an interrogation of the processes by which our modern political ‘monsters’ are created.
Curtis Runstedler, ‘The Benevolent Medieval Werewolf in William of Palerne’
Abstract. This article argues that the werewolf of the medieval romance displays behaviour comparable with modern studies of the wolf. In the dualistic medieval world of nature versus society, however, this seems inconsistent. How does the medieval werewolf exhibit realistic traits of the wolf? I examine the realistic lupine qualities of the werewolf Alphouns in the Middle English poem William of Palerne to justify my argument. Citing examples from his actions in the wilderness, I argue that Alphouns’s lupine behaviour is comparable to traits such as cognitive mind-mapping and surrogate parental roles, which are found in contemporary studies of wolves in the wild. Recognising the ecology of the (were)wolf of the medieval romance helps us to understand better the werewolf’s role as metaphor and its relationship to humans and society.
Sam George, ‘Wolves in the Wolds: Late Capitalism, the English Eerie, and the Weird Case of ‘Old Stinker’ the Hull Werewolf’
Abstract. British folklore reveals a history of werewolf sightings in places where there were once wolves. This article draws on theories of the weird and the eerie and on the turbulence of England in the era of late capitalism in its analysis of the representation of werewolves in contemporary urban myths. Werewolves are deliberately excluded from Mark Fisher’s notion of the ‘weird’, because they behave in a manner that is entirely expected of them. I contradict this by interrogating the werewolf as spectre wolf, bringing it within the realms of the weird. In examining the Hull Werewolf, I put forward the suggestion that he represents not only our belief in him as a wolf phantom, but our collective guilt at the extinction of an entire indigenous species of wolf. Viewed in this way, he can reawaken the memory of what humans did to wolves, and redeem the Big Bad Wolf of our childhood nightmares
Lisa Nevárez, ‘Playgrounds in the Zombie Apocalypse: The Feral Child’
Abstract. In the episode `The Grove’ (4.14) from AMC’s The Walking Dead, Lizzie and Mika Samuels, sisters and two of the child survivors of the zombie apocalypse, brutally meet their ends. Lizzie, no longer able to distinguish between life and death, kills Mika, and Carol in turn shoots Lizzie, claiming that Lizzie ‘can’t be around people’. These characters call into question the dividing line – if one remains, as established society crumbles – between human and animal, feral and civilised. The texts analysed in this article, AMC’s The Walking Dead and Max Brooks’s novel World War Z, include themes of re-socialising children and forming communities, or packs, in which the children can perhaps become rehabilitated into productive contributors. Viewing children in this light summons up viewer and reader responses to ‘horror’ that are more in keeping with reactions to real-life cases of abused and neglected ‘feral’ children than with the ‘horror’ produced by a zombie-themed text.
Michael Brodski, ‘The Cinematic Representation of the Wild Child: Considering Trouffaut’s L’enfant sauvage (1970)’
Abstract. This article, in examining François Truffaut’s L’enfant sauvage (1970), will consider the feral child Victor (Jean-Pierre Cargol) with regard to the film’s cinematic portrayal as typifying the cultural construction of a child. Following James R. Kincaid, the figure of the child can be seen as a ‘hollow category’, seemingly featureless in its alleged innocence. As a result, it functions as an adult ‘repository of cultural needs or fears’. For this reason, the child, and especially the feral child, can serve as a projection screen for a variety of different and even opposed questions and symbolic constructions. The film effects this subliminally through the portrayal of Victor. This is mainly achieved by constantly shifting between a Romantic discourse of the noble savage and child of nature and the Lockean empiricist view, with the infant’s mind as a tabula rasa condition and the doctor’s, Jean Itard (played by Truffaut himself), consequent need to educate Victor.
I am mapping ‘deviant’ burials for a piece I am writing on Wharram Percy, the medieval English village that mutilated its own dead, including many women and children. Whatever these people believed eventually took hold completely and led to them deserting the village. It is a famous case within archaeology but I will be bringing it within the realms of literature and supernatural beliefs regarding vampires and revenants in my new research article. An earlier short piece, How Long have We Believed in Vampires? was written last year, and again I draw connections between deviant burials, the folklore of the undead, and its legacy in literature.
Yesterday, I was made aware of a new article in Science Daily which reports on a similar ‘deviant’ burial, this time involving a ten year old child, a suspected revenant in fifteenth-century Italy. The severed skull has a large rock inserted in the mouth to prevent biting and the child’s corpse from returning, thus spreading the plague which may have killed her: Vampire Burial Reveals Efforts to Prevent Child’s Return from the Grave
What is most striking about this for me is that despite Wharram Percy and the Southwell Vampire, a skeleton found with metal spikes through its shoulders, heart and ankles, dating from 550-700AD and buried in the ancient minster town of Southwell, Nottinghamshire, most still believe these practises only took place in Eastern Europe, in Slavic regions. This new discovery takes us outside of that realm and on to Italy, paving the way for my forthcoming article on the English Vampire and deviant burials a little closer to home in Yorkshire in the UK.
Marina Warner
Marina Warner is a writer of fiction, criticism and history; her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols and fairytales.
Centre for Myth Studies, University of Essex
The Centre It promotes the study of myth, from ancient to modern, and raises awareness of the importance of myth within the contemporary world.
Mythopoeic Society
The Mythopoeic Society is a non-profit organization devoted to the study of mythopoeic literature, particularly the works of members of the informal Oxford literary circle known as the “Inklings.”
Sheffield Gothic
Sheffield Gothic is a collective group of Postgraduate Students in the School of English at The University of Sheffield with a shared interest in all things Gothic.
American Gothic Studies
American Gothic Studies is the official journal of the Society for the Study of the American Gothic (SSAG), which promotes and advances the study of the American Gothic
Echinox Journal
Caietele Echinox is a biannual academic journal in world and comparative literature, dedicated to the study of the social, historical, cultural, religious, literary and arts imaginaries
Folklore
Journal of The Folklore Society. A fully peer-reviewed international journal of folklore and folkloristics, in printed and digital format
Gothic Nature
Gothic Nature: New Directions in Ecohorror and the Ecogothic
Gothic Studies
The official journal of the International Gothic Association considers the field of Gothic studies from the eighteenth century to the present day.
International Journal of Young Adult Literature
an academic peer-reviewed journal dedicated to publishing original and serious scholarship on young adult literature from all parts of the world.
Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies
The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies (ISSN 2009-0374) is a peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary, electronic publication dedicated to the study of Gothic and horror literature, film, new media and television.
Journal of Popular Romance Studies
The Journal of Popular Romance Studies is a double-blind peer reviewed interdisciplinary journal exploring popular romance fiction and the logics, institutions, and social practices of romantic love in global popular culture.
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts
An interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of the fantastic in Literature, Art, Drama, Film, and Popular Media
Monsters and the Monstrous
Monsters and the Monstrous is a biannual peer reviewed global journal that serves to explore the broad concept of “The Monster” and “The Monstrous” from a multifaceted inter-disciplinary perspective.
Studies in the Fantastic
Studies in the Fantastic is a journal devoted to the Speculative, Fantastic, and Weird in literature and other arts
Supernatural Studies
Supernatural Studies is a peer-reviewed journal that promotes rigorous yet accessible scholarship in the growing field of representations of the supernatural, the speculative, the uncanny, and the weird.
The Lion and the Unicorn
The Lion and the Unicorn, an international theme- and genre-centered journal, is committed to a serious, ongoing discussion of literature for children.
Victorian Popular Fictions Journal
Victorian Popular Fictions is the journal of the Victorian Popular Fiction Association. The VPFA is a forum for the dissemination and discussion of new research into nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century popular narrativeo
Related Links
Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index
The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index is a classification numeric system created to group similar folktales from different cultures
ACADEmy
LSAD centre for research into Art, Curatorial Studies, Applied Design and Art and Design Education
African Religions
With the Yoruba Religion Reader and similar resources
Angela Carter Society
Promoting the study and appreciation of the life and work of Angela Carter
Art Passions
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Asian Gothic
Asian Gothic appears as an attempt to make sense of the vast and diverse body of Asian literature, film, television, games, comics and other forms of cultural production by reading these texts from a Gothic perspective
British Association for Romantic Studies (BARS)
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British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS)
The British Association for Victorian Studies (BAVS) is a multidisciplinary organisation dedicated to the advancement and dissemination of knowledge about the Victorian period.
Byron Society
The Byron Society celebrates the life and works of Lord George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), a poet, traveller and revolutionary
Cambridge Research Network for Fairy-Tale Studies
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Carterhaugh School
We give lectures and teach courses on fairy tales, folklore, witches, writing, and more. Basically, your ultimate fantasy college courses
Centre for Myth Studies, University of Essex
The Centre It promotes the study of myth, from ancient to modern, and raises awareness of the importance of myth within the contemporary world.
Deborah Hyde
Deborah Hyde wants to know why people believe in weird stuff. She attributes her fascination with the supernatural to having spent her childhood with mad aunties. She approaches the subject using the perspectives of psychology and history.
Fairyist: The Fairy Investigation Society
A website that will gather together sources, links, bibliographical references and discussions on fairies and related supernatural creatures
Folklore Society
The Folklore Society (FLS) is a learned society, based in London, devoted to the study of all aspects of folklore and tradition, including: ballads, folktales, fairy tales, myths, legends, traditional song and dance, folk plays, games, seasonal events, ca
Ghoul Guides
Home to the Ghoul Guides – a digital multimedia project devoted to exploring, understanding, and enjoying the wonders and weirdness of the Gothic
Gothic Feminism
Gothic Feminism is a research project based at the University of Kent which seeks to re-engage with theories of the Gothic and reflect specifically upon the depiction of the Gothic heroine in film
Gothic Herts Reading Group
This site is our one-stop platform for discussing our latest Gothic texts, from journal articles and press pieces, to full length books both old and new
Gothic Women Project
2023: The Year of Gothic Women. An interdisciplinary project devoted to spotlighting undervalued and understudied women writers
Haunted Shores
Haunted Shores Research Network, dedicated to investigating coasts and littoral space in Gothic, horror, and fantastic multimedia
Hellebore magazine
HELLEBORE is a UK-based small press devoted to British folk horror and the occult. Maria J. Pérez Cuervo publishes the magazine twice a year, on Beltane and Samhain
MEARCSTAPA
monsters: the experimental association for the research of cryptozoology through scholarly theory and practical application
Mermaids of the British Isles
a history of mermaids in the arts and cultural imagination of our early islands, which will map the place of these beguiling, and often deadly, figures in the national maritime imaginary, and explore our ancestors’ persistent reimagining of the mermaid
Open Folklore
Open Folklore is devoted to increasing the number of useful resources, published and unpublished, available in open access form for folklore studies and the communities with which folklorists partner
PCA Vampire Studies
A site dedicated to the Vampire Studies Area of the Pop Culture Association
Pook Press
Publisher of Vintage Illustrated Fairy Tales, Folk Tales and Children’s Classics
Romance Scholarship DB
This Romance Scholarship Database is therefore intended as a tool to assist popular romance scholars in their research into modern popular romance novels
RomanceWiki
A wiki resource for romance fiction authors, texts, and publishers
Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database is a freely available online resource designed to help students and researchers locate secondary sources for the study of the science fiction and fantasy and associated genres.
Sophie Lancaster Foundation
The charity, known as The Sophie Lancaster Foundation, will focus on creating respect for and understanding of subcultures in our communities.
Supernatural Cities
Supernatural Cities is an interdisciplinary network of humanities and social science scholars of urban environments and the supernatural.
Supernatural Studies Association
The Supernatural Studies Association is an organization dedicated to the academic study of representations of the supernatural, the speculative, the uncanny, and the weird across periods and disciplines.
The Association for the Study of Buffy+
The mission of the Association is to promote the scholarship of Buffy+ Studies, focusing on inclusivity, intersectionality, and excellence. We define Buffy+ Studies as the scholarly exploration of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its related texts.
The Society for the Study of the American Gothic (SSAG)
The Society for the Study of the American Gothic (SSAG) was established in 2023 to promote and advance the study of the American Gothic through research, teaching, and publication
The Thinker's Garden
we also love Plotinus and the Renaissance Platonists, as well as the Transcendentalists and Romantics. We are also drawn to the peculiarities of the Theosophists and hermeticists of the nineteenth century
Vamped
Vamped is a general interest non-fiction vampire site. We publish interviews, investigations, lists, opinions, reviews and articles on various topics.
Vampire Studies Association
TThe Vampire Studies Association (VSA) was founded by Anthony Hogg . . .“to establish vampire studies as a multidisciplinary field by promoting, disseminating and publishing contributions to vampire scholarship
Victorian Popular Fiction Association
The Association is committed to the revival of interest in understudied popular writers, literary genres and other cultural forms.
Wells at the World's End
I am reading through the complete works of H G Wells, in chronological order. This blog is for my jottings, as I go along.
YA Literature, Media, and Culture
YALMC is a resource for those of us researching, writing, writing about, interested in Young Adult Literature, Media, and Culture.
YA Studies Association (YASA)
The YA Studies Association (YASA) is an international organisation existing to increase the knowledge of, and research on, YA literature, media, and related fields
