The History of Folk Horror

This talk explores why unsettling tales rooted in place and tradition still grip us so strongly. 

Joan Passey delves into the evolution of British folk horror, showing how belief systems, landscapes, and long-abandoned customs have shaped stories of unease for centuries. From early folklore and classic ghost stories to landmark novels and cult films, the genre’s fears keep adapting. 

Doors open at 6:45pm, talk starts at 7:30pm - come down early to grab a good seat!

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Dr Joan Passey is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Bristol where she specialises in the gothic, horror, and folklore in literature and culture. She has a Masters from the University of Oxford and a PhD from the University of Exeter, both focusing on the gothic and the supernatural. She is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and regularly contributes to and presents for BBC Radio 3, and has spoken at Hay Festival and from the BBC Proms. She edits anthologies for the British Library Tales of the Weird series, with titles including Cornish Horrors: Tales from the Land's End, Our Haunted Shores: Tales from the Coasts of the British Isles, and Phantoms of Kernow: Tales from Haunted Cornwall. Her monograph, Cornish Gothic, 1830-1913 (University of Wales Press, 2023) was the first to define a Cornish Gothic tradition in the nineteenth century, and she co-edited Shirley Jackson's Dark Tales: Reconsidering the Short Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2024) with Robert Lloyd.

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