Banner design copyright Andy Paciorek and Cobweb Mehers
Welcome to this, the first announcement of our exciting Witch-Cults event taking place July 14th in Newcastle upon Tyne, and we have a veritable smorgasbord of good stuff for your delectation.
Ok let’s begin with the first musical announcement for our evening entertainment. (Please note the film screening will also be part of the evening entertainment, this film programme will run twice during the day, once across the afternoon 12-5 and once in the evening 7-12)
Black Mountain Transmitter
Black Mountain Transmitter is the one-man project of J.R. Moore from Northern Ireland. Since 2008 he has been creating instrumental soundscapes influenced by a diet of horror fiction and film, VHS era ‘Video Nasty’ soundtracks, The Radiophonic Workshop and the abject electronics of the early Industrial music pioneers. Known for albums such as “Black Goat of The Woods”, “Playing With Dead Things” and “Oscillator Ritual”, his work has been released by Auris Apothecary (USA), Aurora Borealis (UK) and his own Lysergic Earwax label at http://www.lysergicearwax.bandcamp.com
“Like an old horror film where the special effects are too cheap to give you a real shock, but the ideas are warped enough to make you stay awake afterwards for far longer than you wanted to” – Wire magazine
“The sounds created by Black Mountain Transmitter gives the impression of having been set in motion long ago by some remote force” – Julian Cope.
Moving onto our daytime programme, this section will be made up of talks, film screenings and one or two other exciting developments still to be announced. Anyway, without further ado here are the details of the first speakers to be announced and the first feature film in our screening programme.
Darren Charles
Photograph courtesy Graeme K. Cunningham
Folk Horror Revivalist, Unearthing Forgotten Horrors DJ, and member of both The Equestrian Vortex and The Mortlake Bookclub. Darren Charles wears a number of different hats at various times but is very much embedded in the Folk Horror scene. Darren recently completed an MA in History at Newcastle University and will be using his expertise to discuss either Historical Accuracy/ Inaccuracy in relation to the Cinema of Witchcraft, or The Newcastle Witch trials.
He has previously spoken on the topic of Folk Horror at Cambridge University, The British Museum, Edinburgh Summerhall, The Hepworth, Wakefield, and most recently at The Scottish Pagan Federation Conference at the Pleasance in April. Darren is a longstanding member of the Folk Horror Revival admin group and is currently hard at work on several book projects.
Bob Beagrie
Photograph Courtesy Kev Howard
Bob Beagrie, award winning poet and performer has published 7 collections of poetry most recently This Game of Strangers (Wyrd Harvest Press 2017) and Leasungspell (Smokestack Books 2016). His work has been translated into Finnish, Estonian, Danish, Urdu, Dutch and Swedish. He is a founder member of the experimental word and music collective Project Lono and a Senior Lecturer at Teesside University.
Bob will perform sections from the epic poem The Seer Sung Husband, a verse novel about Old Mother Shipton and ill fated rebellion against Henry VIII known as The Pilgrimage of Grace.
Simon, King of the Witches
This gloriously campy over the top horror movie from 1971 directed by American racing driver turned director Bruce Kessler is the first title for our film programme. A psychedelic cult classic that so far remains unreleased on these shores in any format. It stars Andrew Prine as Simon Sinestrari, a ceremonial magician, who’s ambition it is, to become a god. Simon lives in a storm drain, selling charm and potions as a means of getting by. The film is a wild psychedelic freak out with drugs, parties, Satanic rituals and all kinds of lysergic madness and mayhem. Over the years Simon has become a beloved cult classic and Folk Horror Revival are excited to be bringing Simon to the big screen at the Star and Shadow, Newcastle.
Don’t forget this is only the first announcement so loads more fascinating content still to come, we’ve barely scratched the witch…err I mean surface. Anyway ticket links are now operational and the pricing structure is as follows:
Tickets still available – purchase soon to avoid disappointment …
John Pilgrim and Folk Horror Revival proudly present ‘Swansongs’, an evening of haunting music at the Black Swan Inn, York featuring Sharron Krauss, Hawthonn and Sarah Dean.
After John Pilgrim’s most insightful interview with Phil and Layla from Hawthonn, he has been in touch with Folk Horror Revival favourite Sharron Kraus to chat about her inspirational new album, her enchanting novella Hares in the Moonlight and Folk Horror’s revival, as well as talking about the upcoming Swansongs event at the Black Swan in York on May 12th. Anyway, I shall leave the floor clear for Sharron and John to guide us through the mist.
John Pilgrim: You are a good friend of Folk Horror Revival, having appeared on stage at the 2016 event at the British Museum and at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield last year. What do you make of the revival of interest in folk horror which is taking place more generally? What do you think accounts for this and do you have thoughts on how this might continue to develop?
Sharron Kraus: The question of why there’s now an upsurge of interest in folk horror is an interesting one but I’m probably not best qualified to answer it, as to me the real question is what’s taken everyone else so long?! If I were to speculate wildly about why folk horror is gaining in popularity now, though, I’d guess that it’s something to do with the fact that the world has recently become a darker, more chaotic place.
John Pilgrim: A deep spiritual connection with the landscape permeates much of your work. What were the formative experiences for you in connecting to the landscape and how has your connection and awareness changed over the years?
Sharron Kraus: I loved insects and trees as a child and forests have always been special places for me. I spent a year in Aberystwyth as a student and the landscape of Mid Wales cast a spell on me. For years after leaving there the kind of landscapes I’d found there appeared in my dreams. The first time I took LSD I was in a copse just outside Oxford with a couple of friends. We spent hours in what felt like an enchanted land and afterwards, though the vividness of the trip wore off, the things I’d discovered never left me. It feels like there are new layers to my experience of landscape being added all the time.
John Pilgrim: Your album Pilgrim Chants and Pastoral Trails has been described as inhabiting “an an eerie and wonderful world, somewhere between eisteddfod and witches’ sabbat” . and as being “suffused with a lovingly melancholic sense of place”. How did this album come about?
Sharron Kraus: I visited Mid Wales, after years of not having been back there and my heart swelled with love for the place. I drove up through the Elan Valley, stopping and walking here and there, and wherever I stopped I had a tantalising sense of there being music just out of earshot. I stayed with friends and told them how I was feeling and they diagnosed a case of ‘hiraeth’, which is a Welsh word meaning something like homesickness or deep longing for somewhere. I decided to move to Mid Wales and try to listen to the land and draw out its music. At the time I thought that what I was doing was only possible because of the ‘magic’ of the place, but the way of working that I developed – that kind of listening and opening up to the place – became something I could then apply to other things, working on different projects. Two collaborations I’ve worked on since then – one with poet Helen Tookey and one with writer Justin Hopper – have involved the same kind of ‘listening’ to the text and responding musically to it.
John Pilgrim: One of your songs is ‘Blodeuwedd’ which I am sure must derive from the Mabinogi – the earliest prose stories in Britain. Can you tell us more about your interest in this mythology?
Sharron Kraus: I read the Mabinogi whilst I was living in Wales and loved the fact that some of the settings in the stories were actual places around me – that made obvious the magic in the land I was living in. I found the stories confusing at first – they’re very condensed and seem to require unlocking – and my way in was through writing songs about the stories or characters I wanted to gain some understanding of. As well as Blodeuwedd, the woman conjured out of flowers, I wrote about Branwen, the Welsh princess who’s married to Matholwch, King of Ireland, and who trains a starling to take a message to her brother Bran in Wales, Efnisien, the troublemaker who starts a war between the Welsh and Irish, kills his own nephew by throwing him in the fire, then redeems himself somewhat by sacrificing his life to save his countrymen. I was writing about the characters in the stories, but also about my own experiences living in Wales, and about eternal themes found in the stories – like the plight of the migrant forced to seek work in a foreign land.
John Pilgrim: You have recently published ‘Hares in the Moonlight’, a tale of magic and adventure for readers aged 8 to 12, in the tradition of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper. What prompted you to follow this tradition in writing for this particular age group?
Sharron Kraus: I wrote ‘Hares’ for children of good friends of mine and wrote a story I thought they would enjoy. I didn’t exactly decide to write in a tradition, but was influenced by the writers and stories I’d enjoyed as a child, including Garner and Cooper. I was keen to write about magic in a way that conveyed something true, which is what I think the best magical children’s writing does. I think this is something children’s fiction shares with folk horror: both of these things try to convey something of the mysteriousness, weirdness or magic of the world we live in. John Pilgrim: You spoke on ‘Art as Alchemy’ at the ‘Psychoanalysis, Art and the Occult’ conference in London in 2016. Recognising that this is complex subject, can you say something about how you see art as a form of alchemy. How does this thinking apply to your artistic practice and day-to-day life?
Sharron Kraus: The basic idea is that through art we can take suffering, pain and darkness and transmute them into something golden. The way the crucible of creativity does this is one of the things I think of as true magic – not supernatural magic, but just our ability to take chaos and form something from it – the way we make something out of nothing. That’s a very short answer; for a fuller one, there’s a podcast of the talk I gave at that conference here: https://soundcloud.com/highbrowlowlife/sharron-kraus-ru-podcast.
John Pilgrim: Joy’s Reflection is Sorrow, your new album, will be released on Sunstone Records in June. What themes have you been exploring in this recording and what are the points of continuity and discontinuity with your previous work?
Sharron Kraus: Most of the songs on the new album were written in the year my Dad died, and the wider world started to edge its way towards darkness, so death and darkness are pretty central. The chorus of one song asks the question “What can we do when darkness falls; what can we do when evil calls?” and I think the album is my attempt to answer that question. I guess it’s a question that’s been there implicitly in my work for a long time but that came up to the surface on this one. Sonically this is probably the most poppy album I’ve recorded – kind of baroque-folk-pop. I think that’s partly due to my decision to try to write in standard tuning and using verse-chorus song structures more than I’d normally do. Maybe it’s also partly because the world got darker and I wanted to add some light.
John Pilgrim: You will be playing at the Swansongs event at the Black Swan – a haunted medieval public house in York – on 12 May. What might people expect and do you think the venue might influence your performance?
Sharron Kraus: Playing in an atmospheric venue always adds something and the darker and spookier the better! I’ll be playing a mix of songs and semi-improvised instrumental pieces with Guy Whittaker joining me on drums and percussion. We may have a special guest with us and whip up some Rusalnaia magic too!
Sharron will playing at our Swansongs event at the Black Swan in York on May 12th alongside Hawthonn and Sarah Dean. To buy tickets for this intimate evening visit the link below, but remember tickets are very limited and we would advise pre-booking to ensure admission.
This weekend sees the 25th annual Scottish Pagan Federation Conference taking place in the beautiful city of Edinburgh. Andy Paciorek and I are immensely proud to be representing Folk Horror Revival on this most auspicious occasion. We will be presenting a brand new talk on ‘The History and Folklore of Witchcraft, Faeries, Angels, Daemons, Ghosts & Other Worlds in Folk Horror cinema and television’. The following should give you an idea of what to expect if you are coming along.
The amazing Inkubus Sukkubus will be our evening entertainment. We expect loads of old favourites from their extensive discography, plus one or two from their new album!
We will delve into the world of Folk Horror Revival with Andy Paciorek and Darren Charles, our keynote speakers. They will present a never-been-heard-before talk on the history and folklore of witchcraft, faeries, angels, daemons, an ghosts in relation to folk horror revival cinema and television. It’s absolutely fantastic we can bring them to Scotland and we are sure everyone will want to hear what they have to say on this amazing topic.
Rich Blackett – Chair of Asatru UK and part of Folk Horror Revival – will give an amazing insight into werewolves, wolf cults and Heathen warriors. A feast of magic and folklore.
The magnificently open Cat Treadwell will talk about being a modern Druid as well as being a Pagan and living with depression. A really insightful discussion to be had!
We’ll also explore Aleister Crowley and the Elixir of Life as Jean Fowler, Pagan Celebrant and Edinburgh University Honorary Chaplain, presents her research on the topic.
Spin some magick with Dr Jennifer Lauxman McCorkell, expert in wool and metalwork, with two unique workshops – hand spinning and weaving – both limited numbers!
An exploration of everyday Enochian magic is the focus of a much anticipated workshop by Paul Sykes. Paul will reveal the work of John Dee and Edward Kelly as they unveiled the angelic language and made contact with the Angelic realm.
Having explored Voodoo, western mysticism and traditional witchcraft, to name but a few, Avi Lago will take us through a workshop on Espiritismo: working with the ancestors.
Hear about the King of the Scots, King Arthur, with an thrilling talk by Glaswegian historian Hugh MacArthur, who has spent many years studying the roots of the legendary king.
If you’ve ever wanted to talk with two experienced Wiccans, here is your chance. Fee and Jon will facilitate this fascinating open discussion group.
Members of Midlothian AVoD Lodge will lead everyone in a Thelemic ritual for this year’s closing ritual; a first for the SPF conference and one we hope everyone enjoys experiencing.
From inspring talks, interactive workshops, open discussions and spectacular evening entertainment, we’ve got a brilliant day out in the heart of Edinburgh.
Avanced tickets will close on Wednesday 18 April 2018 at 11:59pm.
Advanced adult all-day (evening included) tickets: £15 per SPF or affiliate PF member or £20 per person (non-member).
*NEW* Advanced teen tickets: £8 per teen (must be aged 12 to 17 years-old and accompanied by parent/guardian/carer with valid all-day conference ticket).
Advanced evening (gig only) tickets: £8 per person.
Phil and Layla from Hawthonn have just released a critically acclaimed album ‘Red Goddess: Of this Men Shall Know Nothing’ on Ba Da Bing records. They will also be appearing at our Folk Horror Revival event, Swansongs which takes place in York on May 12th at the Black Swan. John Pilgrim caught up with Phil and Layla for a chat about the new album, their influences and what we can expect from the upcoming gig.
Your new album is Red Goddess: Of this Men Shall Know Nothing. Who is the Red Goddess and what is it that men shall know nothing of? What clues does the album provide in these respects?
Phil: For a long time the new album didn’t really have a title. We had a lot of themes that we touched on: mugwort (‘In Mighty Revelation’), menstruation (‘Lady of the Flood’), hysteria (‘Eden’), the post-mortem exploitation of women’s bodies (‘Misandrist’), and dream… all things which I suppose could be considered as relating to the feminine experience. Originally I’d given the album the working title Flood, but I don’t think either of us were 100% happy with that…
Layla: We had been reading several books around the time we were working on the album, particularly Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove’s The Wise Wound, which had a lot of invaluable knowledge on the sacred feminine and many jumping off points for inspiration, and also Peter Grey’s The Red Goddess, which explores his vision of Babalon: the Scarlet Woman, or Mother of Abominations – a goddess found in Thelemic mysticism. The idea that she represents earth and sexual impulse made her a fitting matron deity for this set of recordings.
Phil had also found a painting by Max Ernst called Of This Men Shall Know Nothing, which in the early stages of designing the album cover he had wanted to recreate in tableaux. The final cover photo by Narikka contained some coincidental resonances to the Ernst image, and the title of the painting seemed to echo concepts within the album of feminine wildness, and the perceived unknowableness of the female nature.
Phil: The Ernst picture has also been interpreted as depicting sexual alchemy, which also ties in with much of Peter Grey’s writing on Babalon and the goddess’ connection to sexual magic and the three ‘Fs’: f(e)asting, flagellation and fucking!
Red Goddess has already been critically acclaimed. Ben Chasny, of Six Organs of Admittance, had this to say:
“Hawthonn is the real deal. Equally adept at transcribing crow calls into musical scales as they are at creating horizon melting atmospheres, Red Goddess raises the bar for musicians interested in composing straight from the creative imagination. For fans of Jocelyn Godwin, John Dee and Folk Horror as much as the darker spectrum of British music, this is a record of staggering breadth.”
Following on from this, here, can you say something on how you went about composing Red Goddess and the role of the creative imagination in this project? How did the experience develop your theory and practise of the creative process more generally?
Phil: I think imagination and creativity are inextricably linked. Many of our favourite artists and poets place great emphasis on imagination, reverie and sudden illumination. Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of hard work to do in bringing these visions to fruition, but it is the imaginative aspects that dominate their experience and make the whole enterprise worthwhile. There are often equal amounts of technique and imaginative work going on in a piece – and, as in poetry, we often try to bring disparate symbols together into a whole. Layla’s work on ‘In Mighty Revelation’ really worked well in this respect: she brought together sounds recorded at an abandoned cooling tower with a recording of Rin’dzin Pamo’s thighbone trumpet blasts (- using an instrument anointed with her menstrual blood -), which evokes a very interesting sonic atmosphere and attendant mental imagery: a decaying post-industrial temple, open to the stars (- as we recently discovered were the ancient Indian temples of the cult of the Yoginis, female tantric deities -), and the sort of space where edgeland herbs blossom: in particular mugwort, which rather became our ‘vegetable ally’ for this album (our previous collaborations having explored hawthorn and yew!). Conjuring mental spaces to accompany the sound – and continuing to explore them through the ongoing process of producing the music – is a very important part of our practice, but only one amongst a whole other lot of imaginative and creative techniques we use!
Layla: Dreams, for example, have been integral to the creative process for Hawthonn from the start and continue to be so. The latest track we’ve been working on is conceived around a dream I had recently that I was reading a grimoire of Andrew Chumbley’s, whilst a portrait of him next to me began to shapeshift into a demon. The dream sound/landscape was incredibly vivid and evoking those sounds, feelings and thoughts again has made it a compelling project on both a creative and imaginative level.
The cover image for the album is powerfully striking. How did this come about? What was the location and what was its significance to you?
Layla: The cover image came about due to a set of lucky coincidences/syncronicities, I had followed a photographer, Aki Pitkänen, alias Narikka, on Tumblr after a friend of mine posted a pagan/magic themed set of his. I thought his work was exceptional, so showed it to Phil.
Phil looked him up on Facebook and that same day Aki had posted to say he was looking for collaborators/models to work with in our home town of Leeds the following month. We got in touch and found we had a lot of shared interests, and agreed to take him up on Ilkley moor as apparently they have no moors in his home country of Finland and he’d always wanted to shoot on one!
A friend very kindly drove us all up to Whetstone Gate, and as I still didn’t really know what Aki wanted as a backdrop I had planned a walking route to take him to various antiquities that held personal significance to us… but ultimately Aki just wanted “bleak” as the backdrop so most of the photos he took of us are from a particularly desolate spot near the Badger stone, overlooking a huge barrow that most people don’t even know is there.
We had a few hours of larking around with skulls before the proper Yorkshire weather hit us, and then I was extremely glad to be wearing a thick wool cloak! He sent us that shot almost immediately when we got home and we knew right away that one of them was the cover, which we had been stuck on for a couple of months.
Both of us have a long love and personal connection with Ilkley moor so it seems doubly fitting that the cover was shot there – Phil recorded some of his earlier music as Xenis Emputae Travelling Band on the moor and we have spent many hours wandering there together. It’s especially wonderful in the mist, when the edges of the real world are completely erased and all you can see are the soft curves of land in front of you. It’s a beautiful, liminal landscape that can become quite frightening after dark!
As a duo of ‘Mugwort-smoking surburban witches’ in what ways do you seek to connect with the ‘old ways’ and the hidden currents of Old Albion ?
Layla: I think we both have quite vivid, mystic connections with landscape. Our relationship with the world we inhabit both on a physical and imaginal level is essential to both our personal practices and our music. We don’t try and claim any tradition. Although Traditional Witchcraft has been a source of inspiration at times, we are more interested in the poetic relevance of the landscape and it’s past inhabitants: a palimpsest of activity and meaning, which we unearth and interpret in our own way. The place where we live is rich in Romano-Celtic history so we have made dedication to, and drawn inspiration from, an Iron age shrine in the woods and a sacred river that flows nearby. The two deities associated with them – Cocidius and Verbeia – have formed a god/goddess duality in our personal mythos, which has become a particular backdrop to our more recent music.
Phil: Cocidius and Verbeia are very much deities embedded in our northern landscape, and they derive their names from the meetings of two cultures: Roman and Celtic. In some ways, thinking deeply about this – and the political climate of our time – has forced us to revise our thoughts on religious syncretism and the bugbear of cultural appropriation. We want to distance ourselves from the idea of pantheons being nationalistic and tied up with rigid ideas of cultural identity, which have become increasingly toxic. We emphasise the highly syncretic nature of religion in the ancient world as a potential alternative, and one that does not dilute the power and individuality of deities by reducing them simply to interchangeable masks of pop-Jungian archetypes. On our track ‘Lady of the Flood’, we borrowed from the Graeco-Egyptian magical papyri, which are masterpieces of heady magical lore and symbolism, incorporating fragments of ancient Egyptian ceremonialism, Greek mythology and Gnostic cosmology into something that more visceral and powerful than its component parts. In some ways, it is the Roman presence in England that also connects us to Egypt, and I find it fascinating that the English witch Andrew Chumbley incorporated so much Egyptian lore into his ‘Sabbatic Craft’, which at first glance seems very much rooted in the British landscape, but again yields work that is highly eclectic, but utterly spellbinding and aesthetically ravishing in its execution.
You are clearly fascinated by occult thinkers and writers from previous centuries such as Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa and Dr John Dee. Do you see a contemporary relevance to such figures?
Phil: I think Dee is most relevant to my solo work, such as Hesperian Garden, which features compositions drawn from his Hieroglyphic Monad: a glyph which he believed had profound implications for all arts and sciences. I do find it quite funny how such an establishment figure – a courtier and member of England’s elite – has become such a countercultural hero, although there is no denying that he was a deep and eccentric genius. Agrippa, similarly, is a rather profound inspiration personally, but in Hawthonn we often concentrate on the works of more contemporary occultists and artists: John Balance, Andrew Chumbley, Peter Grey & Alkistis Dimech, Penelope Shuttle & Peter Redgrove, and so on. I think my own work can be quite cerebral and uncompromising sometimes, often with quite dense swathes of sleeve-notes or accompanying texts, but with Hawthonn we strive toward something more direct and relevant to the present.
You will be playing at ‘Swansongs’ at the Black Swan in York on 12 May. What can people expect from your performance?
Phil: The three Fs! Haha, only joking…
Layla: I was so nervous but dead-set that we’d play live this year, the first gig was an absolute joy to do, so I’m hoping the York gig will be equally transcendentally fun! Ritual elements, death whistle, singing bowl, synths and bone rattles… I hope it’s a little bit spooky and we can coax the resident ghost out for a duet.
Phil: Hah, in that case, we definitely have to re-use the Spiricom frequencies that we used in our first album. After that particular recording session, our infant son woke up sat on our bed babbling excitedly to thin air! We managed to record that and include on our track ‘Thanatopsis’! I hope that whatever happens, it will be a mesmerising and sonically engaging experience even for those who don’t buy into the occult side of things!
Lastly, can you tell us something amusing that has happened while working together recently as Hawthonn?
Phil: Well, we’re often quite serious when it comes to Hawthonn and how we go about working on these pieces. They are often entwined in our interests, obsessions, dreams etc, and we have quite critical listening sessions while each piece develops. Sparks often fly, but that process definitely enhances the quality of our output tenfold. Our friend Gretchen (of the noise rock band Guttersnipe) said she imagined us working together in perfect hippyish harmony – but our ‘studio’ is definitely an infernal forge, and what we create there is far more robust for it!
However, one amusing thing that did happen was when we decided to make a kangling, or thighbone trumpet, which is an important tool in chöd rituals of Tibetan Buddhism, which involve the use of fear to cut through the ego. Being made of a human thighbone, the kangling has a unique, utterly unnerving and haunting sound. We were very interested in making our own, and a friend of ours told us that he had some human bones from a medical skeleton that had been given to him by someone else who felt uneasy keeping them around. So, we gathered all the material, including dust masks, hacksaws, knitting needle (for poking through the marrow), and so on. I took the bone outside to cut it, and sat with it for a while, sombrely meditating on death and thanking the original donor from which it came.
As I began to saw the top end off, however, it became apparent something wasn’t right. The bone was too hard… and solid. It turned out to be a very convincing plastic cast! At that point, it seemed like the universe was having a cosmic joke at my expense, and the solemnity of the occasion was undermined somewhat! It was even more amusing to think of our friends respectfully transporting these bones from flat to flat as they moved around Leeds, completely oblivious to the fact that they had never been part of a living thing!
Wow… we probably sound like a right pair of ghouls!
Swansongs takes place on May 12th at the Black Swan, York featuring live performances from Sharron Kraus, the aforementioned Hawthonn and Sarah Dean. Tickets are available from the following link.
John Pilgrim and Folk Horror Revival proudly present ‘Swansongs’, an evening of haunting music at the Black Swan Inn, York featuring Sharron Krauss, Hawthonn and Sarah Dean.
Sharron Kraus is a singer of folk songs, a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose solo work and collaborations offer a dark and subversive take on traditional music. As well as drawing on the folk traditions of England and Appalachia, her music is influenced by gothic literature, surrealism, myth and magick. Her songs tell intricate tales of rootless souls, dark secrets and earthly joys, the lyrics plucked as sonorously as her acoustic guitar.
She has released six solo albums, the first of which, ‘Beautiful Twisted’, was named by Rolling Stone in their Critics’ Top Albums of 2002. As well as her solo work, Sharron has recorded an album of traditional songs – ‘Leaves From Off The Tree’ – with Meg Baird and Helena Espvall of Espers, written an album of songs to celebrate the seasons of the year – ‘Right Wantonly A-Mumming’ – which was recorded with some of England’s finest traditional folk singers including Jon Boden, Fay Hield and Ian Giles – as well as recording and performing as a duo – Rusalnaia – with Ex Reverie’s Gillian Chadwick, with Tara Burke (Fursaxa) as Tau Emerald and with Irish free-folk collective United Bible Studies.
Hawthonn are Mugwort-smoking suburban witches. Sinister wailing from abandoned cooling towers. New observatories for atomic occultism. Synth-haloed chanting from the caverns of the blood moon. Gnostic pentagrams and underground spectralism.
Sarah Dean aka The Incredible String Blonde, has been writing her own music and ‘noodling’ for years on various instruments, but only since 2007 has Sarah finally pulled all the years of performance as a singer and hours of practice together, to go solo and write and perform her own songs. It is the Celtic Harp that allows Sarah to create rich textures and atmospheres to the words and meaning of a song, taking listeners to another place with its magical and mesmeric soundscapes. Peppered amongst her own self-penned songs are some surprising contemporary covers (the bluesy Man In The Long Black Coat, Pink Floyds’ atmospheric Grantchester Meadows, Walking On The Moon by The Police etc) and beautifully arranged traditional folk songs. 20 years of performing have given Sarah a relaxed and easy stage presence and audiences are treated to amusing anecdotes.
Dating from the 15th century, The Black Swan Inn is a half-timbered pub with rooms is a block from the River Foss, a 10 minute walk from York Castle and a 5-10 minute walk from Jorvik Viking Centre.
Its traditional rooms all include en suite bathrooms and antique, 4-poster beds with rich draperies. Parking and breakfast are complimentary.
They boast a wood panelled restaurant with coffered ceilings and an open fireplace where we serve food daily, and two beer gardens where you can relax with a drink when the sun comes out.
Within this early 15th century merchant’s mansion various ghostly sightings have occurred.
There is a ghost of the gentleman in a bowler hat who appears to be impatiently waiting for someone at the bar – eventually his apparition slowly fades away.
Another ghost can be seen sitting staring into the fire in the bar. It is the ghost of a particularly beautiful young woman thought to be a jilted bride. It is said that should a man stare into her face he will die in ecstasy.
There are several other ghosts who appear regularly. A small boy, known affectionately to the staff as Matthew, is frequently seen in the bar and passageway. He is dressed in Victorian style clothes and is reportedly a pickpocket, which might explain the disappearance of various items kept behind the bar.
A rumoured highwayman, who we know as Jack, appears regularly in the kitchen, dressed in riding boots and a long black cloak. Interestingly, the kitchen was built over the original stable yard. He can also be heard singing along to Irish folk songs in the corner of the bar late at night.
A less frequent ghostly visitor is a large black cat wandering around the pub. This ghost causes confusion among staff and frequent customers alike as it bears a strong resemblance to Salem, the pubs resident feline.
The chair by the fire is reputedly cursed and it is said that should anyone sit in it a curse will fall upon them. We recommend standing.
There have been regular sightings of a pair of legs disappearing up the stairs leading to the landlord’s flat. We believe the landlord may have to be legless himself to dare to sleep there!
In the main bar area there is a clay pipe mounted on the wall. This pipe was found during restoration work. It is said that the workmen threw it out and at that very moment a chill descended upon them. There was a moment of frozen fear until one of them went to retrieve the pipe, after which the chill lifted. The pipe will always remain in the pub for fear of high electricity bills.
Over the festive period, to be found, at both Stuart Duckett Design Store, Bar, Gallery and Record Lounge and Rusty Shears in Whitby, is a rather fine assemblage of dark seasonal art on exhibit. Over the next few days (Yuletide festivities withstanding) we will showcase some of the marvelous artists on show. But go see the work for yourself, both venues do great coffee and Rusty Shears has gin & cakes and Stuart Duckett has vinyl and also a glam rock art exhibition on show too. ☺
Involved in both the curation and exhibiting her own damn fine fine art is Elaine Edmunds of Decadent Drawing
After a long career as a senior practitioner in NHS mental health Elaine relocated to Whitby at the end of 2010 to focus on developing arts practice.
Her interest in themes relating to Folk Horror started in early life with a happy childhood experience of Hammer House of Horror, Pan and Fontana books, and Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
Her enlightened parents also allowed her to read Man Myth and Magic as a comic. As a social psychiatrist she has always been interested in social anthropology and comparative folklore.
Decadent Drawing was started by Elaine and husband Laurence Mitchell in 2013.
Decadent Drawing bring an alternative approach to the experience of art. Formed at the beginning of 2013 partly as a response to the limitations of art education. They started with monthly themed life drawing sessions which quickly developed into multi-media events including music, film, drama, photography and creative writing but still with a focus on presenting opportunities to draw.
Since February 2015 they have been concentrating on larger events such as Whitby Krampus Run and the Dark Arts series of exhibitions.
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Also exhibiting is Eolith Designs. Though perhaps most noted for sculptural work, Eoilth is exhibiting and selling 3d prints at Whitby this season.
Eolith: from the Greek eos, meaning dawn, and lithos, meaning stone.
Eolith Designs’ sculptures take their inspiration from the dawn and dusk of civilisations; from real and imagined histories, and the world of myth and legend. Bringing together things that were, things that could have been, and things that may be …
Rusty Shears: 4 Silver St, Whitby YO21 3BU
Stuart Duckett Design Studio, Bar & Gallery: 1 Mulgrave Pl, Whitby YO21 3EU
On the weekend of 15th and 16th December 2017, a strange mist will fall upon the coastal town of Whitby. From the sea fret will come haunting sounds and tales and more besides. Here over the coming days we shall in turn usher in the ghosts of winter …
Folk Horror Revival are delighted to round off the Winter Ghosts event with a double bill of eerie films with a Whitby connection.
Firstly we will be screening Michael J. Smith and Maxy Bianco’s chillingly beautiful short film Stranger on the Shore.
“Stranger on the Shore is a new cycle of video-poems by Michael Smith and Maxy Neil Bianco, looking at the bohemian eccentricity of Hastings, the dockside desolation of the Thames Estuary, and the spooky enchantment of Whitby. The films feature an original soundtrack by Andrew Weatherall & Nina Walsh.”
“It’s different by the sea. A bit strange even. Just as the coast lies at the ends of England geographically, it’s also at the edges of our society and the margins of our culture, a place of transgression, eccentricity, colour and romance. Stranger on the Shore is a cycle of video-poems exploring these liminal spaces; this film looks specifically at the spooky enchantment of Whitby, the most romantic evocation of the old idea that it’s grim up North.”
Following this, presented by director Mark Goodall will be the film-
Arthur Machen was a dark fiction writer who has been unfairly overlooked but who inspires fanaticism by those who know his work. Much more than just Britain’s answer to HP Lovecraft, America’s 20th century master of the macabre, Machen was the writer who constantly saw fantasy and horror in the everyday landscape of Victorian England.
Filmed in Whitby, Goodall’s hauntingly atmospheric movie, finally brings to the screen some of the eerily beautiful tales of this great imaginative writer.
Join us at Winter Ghosts – Tickets and full line up – Here
On the weekend of 15th and 16th December 2017, a strange mist will fall upon the coastal town of Whitby. From the sea fret will come haunting sounds and tales and more besides. Here over the coming days we shall in turn usher in the ghosts of winter …
Folk Horror Revival are happy to announce that headlining the music sessions of Winter Ghosts will be Inkubus Sukkubus
Inkubus Sukkubus formed in the summer of 1989, when Candia Ridley and Tony McKormack met at college in Gloucestershire, studying graphic design and photography. They soon discovered they shared interests in witchcraft, magick and folklore, as well as similar tastes in music. The band went on to tour extensively, including Russia, USA, Australia, Mexico, Scandinavia and Europe, and have to date released 22 albums, their latest being ‘Belas Knap: Tales of Witchcraft and Wonder, vol 2’.
Having grown up watching with delight, through barely parted fingers, British films such as Blood on Satan’s Claw and The Wicker Man, folk horror has both shaped them as individuals as well as inspiring the music they create. They will be joined by like-minded friends to perform an acoustic set of some of their more dark folkloric songs for Winter Ghosts.
On the weekend of 15th and 16th December 2017, a strange mist will fall upon the coastal town of Whitby. From the sea fret will come haunting sounds and tales and more besides. Here over the coming days we shall in turn usher in the ghosts of winter …
As part of the Winter Ghosts event at Whitby, there will be a session of book readings at the Rusty Shears Gin Cafe from 11am to 1pm on Saturday 16th December.
Folk Horror Revival & Urban Wyrd Project ⨘ 