They were a family of outsiders, who moved to Mumbai from Karachi during the Partition of India, and set up a shop selling and repairing radios. In the 1970s, they transitioned to film producing and, one fateful night while observing the reactions of the crowd in a movie theater, made the decision to pursue the genre that would define their career… In this lecture, Shamya Dasgupta, author of Don’t Disturb the Dead: The Story of the Ramsay Brothers, will detail how seven brothers with a business background embraced every aspect of filmmaking—while economizing at every opportunity—to become India’s first horror film factory and a genre unto themselves. They made a splash in Bollywood, but just like in the movies, their tale has a rise, a fall, and eventual redemption. Join the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies to learn why, even today, decades later, the Ramsay name is synonymous with horror in India. Please note this is a live broadcast event – the class cannot be watched later, so please be sure you are available at the date and time the class is being offered in before registering. All sales are final, and we will not give refunds for any reason other than class cancellation. Classes curated by Miskatonic Los Angeles are in Pacific Time.

Primo Levi responded to Adorno’s startling statement that “after Auschwitz poetry is an act of barbarity” with a slight shift into possibility: “after Auschwitz there can only be poetry about Auschwitz”. In the past twenty years or so, Holocaust Studies has emerged as its own formidable discipline. Despite unique pressure, and possibly because of it, Holocaust Studies has made increasingly relevant advances in most fields of theoretical practice. This lecture attempts a preliminary examination of how these practises and strategies might hyphenate into other areas of study. Themes include the problem of emplotment, modelling exceptional history within history, the productive effect of silence and repression, hybridization, the false opposition of mystification and demystification, fiction and non-fiction, intentionalism and structuralism. This lecture is part confessional, part academic slurry with a literary horror fiction and film focus. Mr. Burgess is donating his fee for the lecture to The Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre. For more information on their work, you can visit their website, www.holocaustcentre.com. Please note this is a live broadcast event – the class cannot be watched later, so please be sure you are available at the date and time the class is being offered in before registering. All sales are final, and we will not give refunds for any reason other than class cancellation. Classes curated by Miskatonic New York are in Eastern Time.

In the late nineties, teen slasher films entered their third production cycle following the box-office successes of Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2. These films are often described as being “like Scream,” criticised as copycats and cash-ins, in which they have become apolitically synonymous with terms such as “metatextual,” “self-reflexive,” “pastiche,” “postmodern,” etc. While such cynicism suggests that the teen slasher film has become a self-deprecating mockery of itself, Daniel Sheppard brings into consideration the role of the gay screenwriter and, in doing so, demonstrates how Kevin Williamson’s use of camp in Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer and Scream 2 created new generic possibilities for other gay screenwriters, directors and producers working in Hollywood at the turn of the millennium—as well as now—including Silvio Horta (Urban Legend), Don Mancini (Bride of Chucky), Gus Van Sant (Psycho), Jeffrey Reddick (Final Destination), and Aaron Harberts (Valentine). Where critical accounts of gay screenwriters, directors and producers have, until now, been near exclusive to “queer horror,” this illustrated lecture calls for a revaluation of what it means for gay screenwriters working in Hollywood to script heteronormative (“straight”) narratives that consciously erase LGBTQ+ representation. Where the teen slasher film has historically been approached in heteronormative terms, then—which itself has “straightwashed” histories of mainstream production—this lecture demonstrates how these films critique heteronormative ideology through camp, thereby encouraging queer positionalities for audiences. Please note this is a live broadcast event – the class cannot be watched later, so please be sure you are available at the date and time the class is being offered in before registering. All sales are final, and we will not give refunds for any reason other than class cancellation. Classes curated by Miskatonic London are either in Greenwich Mean Time or British Summer Time depending on the time of year.

First co-presented with NIGHTSTREAM earlier this year, instructor Simon Laperrière returns for a live broadcast of his lecture. From the Slender Man to Candle Cove, creepypastas have an undeniable influence on pop culture. Internet urban legends and fictions have recently been the object of numerous films, tv series and podcasts. Such phenomenon deserves not an analysis, but an exploration, in order to understand why they fascinate us (and why they keep us in front of our computer late at night). Being one of the first scholars to write about the Slender Man mythology, Simon Laperrière invites you on a journey through those amateur fictions, questioning why their impact is so strong on a sociological point of view. Creepypastas are a new folklore that cannot be ignored, especially when a film like We’re Are All Going to the World’s Fair understands their power so well. Welcome into a world of strange and funny stories. Welcome to the Back Rooms! Please note these are live events – they cannot be downloaded and watched later, so please be sure you are available at the time and timezone the classes are being offered in before registering. For those with global passes and Los Angeles branch passes, your registration link for the original December lecture will work for this replacement class. We hope to present REGRESSION OBSESSION in 2022.

From 1940s horror comics to Vertigo characters such as John Constantine and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, American comic books have a wide-ranging history with the occult. Superheroes, whose occupations traverse the fantastical and supernatural, have been receptive to occult influences for decades. However, Marvel superheroes are often sidelined in discussions of occult superheroes, with critics reaching more obviously to DC and independent publishers. Despite this, Marvel has a rich history of dark superheroes and villains, whose representations are often emblematic of cultural shifts. This session discusses the secret occult origins of Marvel superheroes as well as summarising how certain characters can be made sense of through an occult lens while considering their historical and cultural contexts. Western culture’s interest in the occult peaks and troughs throughout history, often occurring at moments of societal distress, upheaval or existential crisis, or as an alternative to traditional models of religious belief. By the 1950s, horror comics—including those invoking occult themes—had caused a moral panic resulting in industry-wide censorship under the Comics Code and ending their stronghold. While superhero comics reinvigorated the industry, the supernatural never really left, with the more socially acceptable face of superheroes merely masking occult undercurrents. Moreover, by the time the Code was relaxed in the 1970s, Marvel was publishing supernatural comics series including Tomb of Dracula, Werewolf by Night and Ghost Rider. While the launch of its Vertigo imprint opened up more avenues for DC’s explicitly occult stories, Marvel’s superheroes maintained their occupation of a realm placed somewhere between science fiction, fantasy and the occult through characters such as Doctor Strange, Daimon Hellstrom (the Son of Satan), Magik and the Scarlet Witch. Using Doctor Strange, who debuted in 1963, as a touchstone, the discussion will position these characters within the cultural context in which they appeared to make sense of their specific configurations of occultism. Incorporating elements of Eastern mysticism filtered through Western Orientalism, Doctor Strange’s early adventures represented the countercultural fixation on psychedelia through Steve Ditko’s surreal hallucinogenic artwork. Later appearances expanded the character’s scope to darker, more supernatural realms, encountering vampires, the devilish Mephisto and more. The session thus concludes with a consideration of genre influences concerning Marvel’s wider historical forays into horror comics, placing the character at the locus of the fantastical and horrific. These appearances mark an interesting merging of genres, navigating the boundaries between fantasy and horror while on a social level, the prospect of science fiction’s abstract networks of virtual embodiment became a reality through technological developments in digital media. Meanwhile, the representations of Doctor Strange’s holistic mysticism have been discussed as speaking to the individualist politics of neoliberal America. With Marvel’s forthcoming film Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness allegedly set to be the studio’s first foray into horror, now is the perfect time to reflect on the changing definitions of the occult in superhero comics history. Please note these are live events – they cannot be downloaded and watched later, so please be sure you are available at the time and timezone the classes are being offered in before registering. 

It’s easy to suggest that cinema at its most base form was born out of a desire to watch others; in its earliest incarnation, moving images mixed the seemingly banal tasks of everyday life alongside brief attempts at narrative. Whether adopting tropes of voyeurism out of sexual perversity/pleasure – see keyhole stag films from the early years of the 20th century – or wrapping a tightly knit narrative around the human proclivity to merely watch other humans with interest (Rear Window), it’s clear that this theme found its way into cinema at large but was specifically ripe fodder for genre cinema thanks to its both carnal and insidious implications. Please note these are live events – they cannot be downloaded and watched later, so please be sure you are available at the time and timezone the classes are being offered in before registering. 

Art critic and artist Ken Johnson will discuss a selection of horror movies in which the main character is an artist. From the perspective of an art critic, rather than a film critic, he will address questions such as, what is an artist in popular consciousness? What makes the artist and the sorts of things artists produce ripe for horror? A short answer would be that the artist’s cultivation of creative imagination, and susceptibility to irrational fantasy, makes him or her particularly attractive to demonic forces arising from the depths of the unconscious or invading from non-ordinary dimensions. As Goya’s famous print declaims, “The Sleep of Reason Breeds Monsters.” The lecture will address what these movies get right about art and artists, and what (as they more often do) they get risibly wrong—akin to what a scientist might have to say about science fiction. The primary subjects will be: “A Bucket of Blood” (1959) “Color Me Blood Red” “Deep Dark” “Velvet Buzzsaw” “Hereditary” Please note these are live events – they cannot be downloaded and watched later, so please be sure you are available at the time and timezone the classes are being offered in before registering. 

Since 18th century visitors to Tintern Abbey gawked at gothic ruins, and Thomas Cook referenced the supernatural writings of Sir Walter Scott in his 19th century marketing of Scottish tours, ghosts have been part of popular tourism. Modern ghost tours continue to exploit supernatural appeal in a mass market format, delivering moderate thrills three times a night to paying audiences in historic city centers throughout the world. This illustrated lecture draws a line from these proto-ghost tours to contemporary (and often problematic) ghost tours of present-day America, focusing on the ways people interact with these haunting and supposedly haunted spaces. A subcategory of the broader term “dark tourism”, ghost tourism is defined as any form of leisure travel that involves encounters with or learning about ghosts or hauntings; this lecture focuses on the ghost walk, the most accessible and affordable ghost tourism experience. Ghost walks offer many potentially positive aspects: they can provide a welcome space to begin to address troubling histories, and have, since their beginnings, provided a cathartic emotional release for participants. The Victorian-era practices of visiting and picnicking in cemeteries, or visiting the Paris catacombs, similarly provided tourists with a way to safely enjoy death-adjacent surroundings, and process their own complex feelings about mortality, grief, and the afterlife. The commercial aspect of contemporary ghost tourism, however, is inherently problematic, and questions of taste, morality, and exploitation continue to plague what has been called the “worst form of tourist trappery around.” So how can ghost tours approach the delicate line between one person’s good time, and another’s spiritual taboo? And how are a new group of emerging ghost tour operators attempting to change the kitschy and exploitative nature of the industry? Case studies of various American ghost tours will illustrate this complicated interplay between exploitation, education, and emotion. We will look at traditional and “new age” spirit walks in Salem; parse the complex racial dynamics at play in ghost tours of New Orleans and Savannah; explore the tensions between history and sensationalization in commercial ghost walks of New York City; and look at new perspectives on supernatural storytelling in Maine. Presented by Andrea Janes, owner and founder of Boroughs of the Dead: Macabre New York City History Tours, this lecture acknowledges the difficult aspects of ghost tourism while also positing that, as our death-positive Victorian forbears knew, ghost tours may offer a healthy way to process grief and address the difficult histories that must be acknowledged lest they continue to haunt us forever. Please note these are live events – they cannot be downloaded and watched later, so please be sure you are available at the time and timezone the classes are being offered in before registering. 

In 1888 a series of brutal murders shocked London. The killer was never caught but his name has become synonymous with murder and misogyny – Jack the Ripper. The murders were avidly reported in the press and captivated the public but alongside fear an entertainment industry developed. Residents of streets near the murder sites rented window space out and a waxwork show complete with red paint stained models opened on Commercial Road. It is not then a surprise that film embraced Jack the Ripper as a character. Many theories have been put forward regarding the identity of the killer, from royalty to artists with ever more convoluted motives. This class will consider who the killer is on screen, not who the killer was in reality but who he, and in some films, she becomes on screen. How one unidentified serial killer can project fears and anxieties on screen that have carried over since the late nineteenth century. In this class I will examine the Ripper’s screen presence as arguably one of the most recognisable characters on screen. An audience presented with a man in a top hat and cape, carrying a Gladstone bag emerging from a fog bound street identifies this character as the Jack the Ripper. I will consider the iconography of this costume and setting as each element borrows from tropes across the horror genre connected to class, gender, madness, medicine, the gothic and the Freudian theory of the uncanny. While the source material for many iconic horror characters such as Dr Frankenstein and Dracula is literature the Whitechapel murders are fact not fiction. While we do not know who the killer was we know a great deal about the victims, the detectives who investigated the killings and the scene of the crime – the East End of London. What shall emerge during this talk is that film sacrifices the truth of these people and place to further the development of the character of Jack the Ripper. For in these films it is always 1888 in Whitechapel, women will scream, detectives will fail and it is all about Jack. This class will include stills and clips from films including From Hell, Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Hands of the Ripper, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, The Ruling Class, Jack the Ripper (Franco) and Murder by Decree. Please note these are live events – they cannot be downloaded and watched later, so please be sure you are available at the time and timezone the classes are being offered in before registering.