The Haunted Landscape: Ghosts, Magic and Lore

Location: Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL

Organiser: London Fortean Society

Website

Legend trip through the Haunted Landscape at the London Fortean Society’s Day of expert talks on British ghost, magic, and folklore. 

E. Jay Gilbert - Ghost Stories and Their Afterlives

E. Jay Gilbert asks why we are so fascinated by ghost stories and what they reveal about the community and the people who cultivate them.

Mark Norman: The Folklore of Churches and Churchyards

Mark Norman examines the traditions, customs, superstitions, and secular imagery found in Christian churches and churchyards. Discover some of the ways in which magic and witchcraft seep into the hallowed ground of the churchyard from outside. 

Jeremy Harte: The Devil in Church

As lightning ripped through the church building, people saw what chronicle and sermon had primed them to see – a dragon, a fiend, a black pig or dog desecrating the sanctuary. 

Rachel Poulton: Unseen – In search of the Sublime and Spirit of Place in the Haunted Landscape

Rachel Poulton will share her quest for the sublime and spirit of place through intuitive walks in our eternal landscape. Tapping into the ancient atmospheres and recalling the folklore attached to legendary sites like The Wilmington Giant and Chanctonbury Ring.

Roger Luckhurst: The Lost Landscape of London’s inner-city Dead

London is still a patchwork landscape of forgotten or lost grounds. Professor Luckhurst will be exploring zones around the edges of the City of London for their vanished or marginalised places of the dead.

Icy Sedgwick: Northern Ghosts: The Bargest and Gytrash

This talk will explore tales of the barguest and gytrash as they haunt the landscapes of northern England and examine how you might discover whether you've encountered one or not.

Tabitha Stanmore: Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic

It’s 1600 and you’re in trouble. In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might have been cunning folk: practitioners of magic who were a common, even essential part of daily life.

Owen Davies & Ceri Houlbrook: Legend-Tripping in the British Landscape 

Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook draw on research conducted for their new book, Folklore: A Journey Through the Past and Present, to explore the nature, history, and landscapes of legend-tripping in Britain, from cryptids and ghosts to Robin Hood.

All speaker books will be available and signed on the day from The Word Bookshop.