Traditions

The ghost story is not a simple thing to pin down, like its subject it can seem insubstantial and marginal:…

Does the curiosity of an archaeologist lead to encounters with forbidden things, inviting retribution?

There seem to be plenty of reasons for cannibalism: nutrition and the taste of human flesh, religious motives, warfare, burial…

In this study, I will set out to provide a robustly theorised and thoroughly historicised account of the “beginnings” of…

Gothicism to transcendentalism, tinged with purity, abnegation and a kind of ingenuousness, suits perfectly to the transposition of the Gothic…

Madame Blavatsky provided the inspiration behind the Theosophical Society, probably the leading occult society of the twentieth-century and one of…

An overview and open debate about spiritualism played an essential role in the shaping of sceptical perspectives in nineteenth-century America.

Apart from the historical and artistic meanings of the term, Gothic suggests the new and the different in popular culture.

The well tower at Lancaster Castle where the witches were imprisoned waiting for trial, centuries-old even then, looms over the…

Exploring the grotesque in more recent fiction, which has therefore been treated in a less comprehensive way than was planned…

Myths are understood as ways in which cultures interpret mysteries of the cosmos and of life, and then impart these…

The field of memory and history of torture and cruel punishment is not free from the epistemic divisions that characterize…