OGOM: Spectral St Albans Hallowe’en Tour – booking now

Posted on 7th October 2018 by Sam George

OGOM is proud to announce a special Supernatural St Albans Hallowe’en Tour. We will be exploring the magical and spectral history of Hertfordshire’s finest gothic city. The event is informed by the research we carried out for our ‘Urban Weird‘ project in collaboration with Supernatural Cities.   We have explored the weird and the eerie, and those uncanny or submerged histories that give play to the imagination and rise up to frame spacial narratives.

St Albans is home to tortured martyrs, ghostly monks, pagan Gods, grotesque carvings, an ancient dragon or wyrm’s lair, succubi, winged skulls, witches, Wicca communities, folklore rituals and more. Join us on 31st October. Your tour guides are OGOM’s very own Dr Sam George and Dr Kaja Franck. Meet at the Clock Tower, St Albans, 4.00. The tour lasts 90 minutes with optional drinks to follow at the most haunted Inn. Price 8.00.

To book please email: K.A.Franck@gmail.com

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CFP: Reading Group on Animals and Mythical Creatures

Posted on 23rd September 2018 by Sam George

The Myth Reading Group at the University of Essex Centre for Myth Studies have announced a CFP on Animals and Mythical Creatures for the Autumn Term 2018. They invite proposals from anyone who is interested in any aspect of mythological animals and creatures and addresses the theme from a mythological perspective across cultures, periods, and media. Please contact them with suggestions for works or topics to read and discuss. They are also accepting proposals for video conferencing (by Skype) for those who cannot travel to Colchester.

The Myth Reading Group meets on alternate Wednesdays in term time, between 5.00 and 6.30 p.m. (North Teaching Centre: Room NTC.2.05) at the University of Essex Colchester Campus. The sessions include a short presentation of up to 30 minutes, followed by discussion or a reading session. The first session will take place on 17 October. Email: mythic@essex.ac.uk

ca. 1602 — The Maiden and the Unicorn by Domenichino — Image by © Alinari Archives/CORBIS

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Vampire Myths and Vampire Lore

Posted on 23rd September 2018 by Sam George

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Why Are Witches So Popular?

Posted on 17th September 2018 by Sam George

The Guardian Newspaper has just featured an article entitled Coven Ready: from Instagram to TV:Why are Witches so Popular? It appears that there is a spate of new occult dramas about witches. A Discovery of Witches, an adaptation of Deborah Harkness’s novel about a young witch who finds an ancient manuscript that brings her to the attention of vampires and demons,  began on Sky One last week. Other upcoming witchy dramas, include Netflix’s Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and CBS All Access’s Strange Angel. Serendipity has also dictated that Spellbound, an exhibition featuring witchcraft, opened last month at Oxford’s Ashmolean museum. Among the exhibits is The Discovery of Witches, a 1647 work by the notorious Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins, which inspired the title of Harkness’s novel. If you are researching witches yourself it’s a very sexy topic just now.

OGOM has always celebrated the figure of the witch. Witches feature heavily in our Gothic Hertfordshire Tour described here in relation to our celebration of The Urban Weird.  There you will encounter Mother Haggy, who crossed the River Ver in eggshells and a kettle drum, Rosina Massey, who was seen conducting her cups and saucers in a dance around the table, and sending her 3 legged stool on errands, together with Sally Deards, the Witch of Rabley Heath. Most terrifying of all is the story of Ruth Osbourne, the Gubblecote Witch. Ruth was swum for a witch in 1751, even though the death penalty for witches had seemingly been abolished in 1735. St Albans, which houses the OGOM headquarters, was also home to Gerald Gardner, the founder of contemporary modern day witchcraft, later termed ‘Wicca’. There are some useful resources on witches on the blog including 100 Must Read Books About Witches and a review of Witches, Magic and Demons at the John Rylands. My early engagement with stories of witches is laid bare in How Did I Choose Me My Witchcraft Kin: My Past and Future in Witches.

 

 

 

 

 

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Frankenstein Vs Dracula: Battle of the Books

Posted on 10th September 2018 by Sam George

Thanks to all those who attended the Monsters We Deserve: Dracula Vs Frankenstein events with myself and Marcus Sedgwick at Edinburgh International Book Festival  and at Conway Hall in London.

Frankenstein won both rounds but Marcus and I drew 1-1 in the battle. Both books are wonderful of course but only one of them was life-changing for me – Dracula

There was a lively interview beforehand in The Skinny and coverage in The Edinburgh News and The Edinburgh Reporter.

If you missed the debates you can see all the images and comments in these two Twitter ‘Moments’:

Dracula V Frankenstein Round 1 Edinburgh International Book Festival, 26th August

Dracula V Frankenstein Round 2 Conway Hall, London, 4th September 

A large wolf was spotted on the loose in Cardiff later on Tuesday evening. It  must have been Dracula in wolf form out for revenge….and who can blame him. OGOM will have news of a very special vampire event in April – all will be revealed shortly.

Thanks to the publishing team at Head of Zeus, Kaja for her live tweeting and of course Marcus and everyone who contributed.  The book is out now!

Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born? Are they content to live out their lives on paper, and never step foot into the real world?

Published in 1818, Shelley’s Frankenstein is one of the most influential tales of all time. Two hundred years later, in a remote mountain house, high in the French Alps, an author broods on that creation. Reality and perception merge, fuelled by poisoned thoughts.

People make monsters, but who really creates who in the end?

 

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Yōkai & Me: Introducing #YōkaiFriday

Posted on 1st September 2018 by Sam George

The world of yōkai has been fascinating me of late. These creatures are currently popular in anime, manga, film and computer games, but they originated in local legends in Japan, folktales and regional ghost stories. I was excited to attend the Japanese Gothic panel at the recent IGA (pictured below). This featured research by Alex Watson on the films of Kurosawa, Jenevieve Van-Veda on Japanese gothic art, and Catherine Spooner on hybridising Shōjo manga and British Gothic in Yana.

I had begun my own journey to the East some months earlier when, in relation to my book on the shadow, I’d been browsing Tales of Old Japan by A. B. Mitford.  Mitford, a British traveller to Japan in 1866-70, had witnessed the hara-kiri ceremony first hand and collected gripping tales of vampires and samurai, Buddhist sermons, and the plots of 4 Nō plays. His work was the first collection of Japanese tales to be published in English in 1871. From this I discovered the work of  Toriyama Sekien, 1712-1788, 鳥山 石燕, an eighteenth-century scholar, poet, and artist. Sekien, his pen name, is best known for the illustrated books of yōkai that appeared in Hyakki Yagyō monster parade scrolls. The last of which features yōkai mainly out of Sekien’s own imagination. I have since found Michael Dylan Foster’s Pandemonium and Parade: Japanese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai (2009) and discovered the work of the artist and scholar, Shinonome Kijin, but I’m only at the very beginning of my journey to the East and the wonderfully weird world of yōkai.

Do comment below with any suggestions re: useful books on Japanese folklore. Here is my first contribution to yōkaiology which I’ve entitled ‘Yokai & Me’. If you are interested you can use the hashtag #YōkaiFriday and join me in celebrating these wonders in the forthcoming weeks.  They’re incredible, terrifying and amusing in equal proportions. I can’t wait to lean more.

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My Favourite Werewolf Film: Hasting LitFest

Posted on 23rd August 2018 by firekrank

Next weekend (30th August – 2nd September), I will be a guest speaker at Hastings LitFest. On Saturday 1st September, I’ll be introducing my favourite werewolf film in the world Ginger Snaps (2000) and then fielding a Q and A session afterwards.

It should be a wonderful event where I can explore my love for this film, the first time I watched it and a quick foray into some academic ways of looking at the female werewolf.

Tickets are available from the venue, the Electric Palace Cinema.

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CFP: Dolls, Robots, Automatons – The Artificial Body in Global Culture

Posted on 22nd August 2018 by firekrank

At the IGA, the following CFP was brought to my attention. It looks to be incredibly interesting:

‘Dolls, Robots, Automatons – The Artificial Body in Global Culture

International conference celebrating the 200th anniversary of Frankenstein.

3rd to 5th December, 2018, Institute of World Literature (Russian Academy of Sciences) and National Research Institute “The Higher School of Economics”

Working languages: Russian, English, German, French.

The aim of the conference is to explore the status of artificial body in global culture, both artistic and scientific, from antiquity to the present time.

Abstracts are accepted up to 25th October, from foreign contributors who need a visa – up to 25th September. You should send them to artbody2018@mail.ru.

The organizing committee will decide which abstracts to accept no later than 1.11.2018.

Travel expenses and accommodation fee are paid by the participants. We will help them with visas.

The abstract can be in any of the working languages. You should also give the following information: your full name, affiliation, e-mail, the title of your paper. The abstract should be 250-300 words long. All of this should also be translated into English (if not originally written in this language)’.

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Marionettes: The Monsters We Need?

Posted on 18th August 2018 by Sam George

It is no secret that I am obsessed with marionettes. This dates back to a magical Czech production of ‘Peter and the Wolf’ I saw aged about 8. I can still visualise all the puppets and it helped shape my gothic sensibility. I was also keen on Pinocchio. This came in handy in a pub quiz recently when the prize winning question was the name of the evil puppet master in Pinocchio. Tch..who does not know that?  Mangiafuoco, of course! He is the fictional director and puppet master of the Great Marionette Theatre (Gran Teatro dei Burattini), who appears in Carlo Collodi’s book The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le avventure di Pinocchio, 1883).  As a result of too much Pinocchio I used to want to be adopted by Mister Geppetto and The Blue Fairy (a heart breaking, gothic version of her appears in the 2001 film AI). As a child I had my own Pelham Puppets which I kept in their boxes in my room for years until they were confined to the cupboard under the stairs and eventually given away by an errant parent. I always liked the villains best, the mother dragon and the evil witch. I don’t know why these puppets had such an effect on me growing up (best not to psychoanalyse this – it is something Angela Carter understood well, she was fascinated by Kabuki theatre too). As an adult I take delight in the Marionette Theatres in Amsterdam and Prague. The puppets are wonderfully gothic and Faust influenced. Take a look at a few I have shared on Twitter below:

 

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Angela Carter: BBC Documentary and The Angela Carter Society

Posted on 15th August 2018 by William the Bloody

Angela Carter’s work has been one of the centres OGOM’s research has revolved around, particularly since our very successful 2015 Company of Wolves conference. My own writing on paranormal romance has covered both werewolf narratives (for example, my chapter on the YA novel Shiver) and Carter herself; Sam George has been exploring the borders between humanity and animality through wild children narratives (as did Carter herself); and Kaja Franck’s recently completed PhD thesis was an innovative  analysis of the werewolf in literature. Much of this research, along with that of delegates from the conference and including my Carter chapter, will be appearing soon in two publications: In the Company of Wolves: Werewolves, Wolves, and Wild Children – Narratives of Sociality and Animality, ed. by Sam George and Bill Hughes (Manchester University Press, 2019) and a special Werewolves and Wildness issue of Gothic Studies.

There is a superb BBC2 documentary showing on iPlayer for a limited period, Of Wolves & Women, and an article on Carter on the BBC website, ‘Radical writing: Was Angela Carter ahead of her time?‘.

There are also details here on how to join the Angela Carter Society (though subscriptions don’t open till 1 September).

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