The History of Folk Horror

Why are we drawn to dark stories, uncanny landscapes and ancient ruins? How do these stories show how the past still shapes our present? 

Folk horror taps into our fascination with fear, superstition and the uncanny, revealing how ancient stories continue to echo in our modern lives. In this talk, Dr Barbara Chamberlin traces the genre from M. R. James’s ghost stories to cult classics like Witchfinder General, Blood on Satan’s Claw, and The Wicker Man, and today’s revivals with new voices and perspectives. Explore how folk horror entertains, unsettles, and holds a dark mirror to the fears that still shape us.

Doors open at 7pm, talk starts at 7:30pm - come down early to grab a good seat!

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Speaker Bio:

Dr Barbara Chamberlin is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Brighton where she teaches comics and graphic novels, landscape and environmental writing, folk horror and the Gothic. Her PhD is from the University of the Arts London which explored an intersection of these interests through a practice-informed study of site specific folkloric witches, comics, walking as creative practice and collaboration. She has published on aspects of this, including a chapter in the Routledge Companion to Folk Horror (2023) on the haunted spaces of folk horror comics and a co-edited collection Horror and Comics (2025). Barbara has spoken at a number of comics, Gothic and folk horror conferences, as well as public talks on folklore, witches and creative practice at The Court and The Catalyst Club. 

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Brighthelm Centre, North Road, Brighton, United Kingdom

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