The History of Folk Horror

Why do specific locations and landscapes remain associated with fear and Gothic storytelling? When we talk about folk horror, we’re really talking about places and stories that don’t just sit quietly in the background; they press on the imagination. They make the past feel close, and sometimes uncomfortably alive.

Join Prof Robert Edgar as he traces how the term folk horror became popular, exploring its first wave in the 1970s through to today, before looking back to its roots in the 18th and 19th centuries. From Thomas Hardy to The Wicker Man and beyond, we will consider how writers and filmmakers return again and again to the idea that the past is never truly past. Together, we’ll explore how these stories show that the past continues to influence the present, and that early experiences, including those from childhood, can still affect us today.

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

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Speaker Bio:

Prof Robert Edgar is Professor of Writing and Popular Culture in the York Centre for Writing at York St John University, UK. He is one of the series editors of Bloomsbury Academic, Spectres, Hauntings and Horrors. He has published on Thomas Hardy and the Folk Horror Tradition (Bloomsbury 2023), The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror (Routledge 2023), Haunted Writing (Bloomsbury 2026), and many more, including numerous works on folk horror, adaptation, music culture, and hauntology.

His work has been published in books and journals including P.O.V. and the Journal of Writing in Popular Culture. He is co-convener of the Hauntology and Spectrality Research Group and regularly runs creative and critical workshops and presentations, including organising the annual folk horror events for the York Literature Festival.

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