“The time is out of joint. O cursèd spite
That ever I was born to set it right!”
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5
On Saturday afternoon on the first floor of York’s The Black Swann Inn, the York Literature Festival began its day dedicated to Folk Horror and Pop Hauntology. Speakers Rob Edgar and Adam Smith from the Hauntology and Spectrality Research Group started the day with an introductory lecture that threaded a connection from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, to Karl Marx and landing in Midsommar (2019).
The two speakers mirrored each other in their talks. Edgars began by pointing to the original seeds of hauntology present in Hamlet and feeding it through to the present-day themes of Britain being haunted by its past; Smith began with a BBC Documentary of Folk Horror and reached back into the past to attempt to find its origins. Both talks were bookended by writing exercises for the audience.
While both dealt with the supernatural, there was also an emphasis on a broader vision of Folk Horror, Hauntology & Pop-Hauntology. With the definition of ontology being the philosophy of being, then hauntology is the absence of being. And that absence can be in the form of a spectral figure, or it can take the form of an idea of “cultural time” folding back on itself – of being haunted by futures of what could have been.
Pop-hauntology is a specific sub-genre within this category, with a dark nostalgia for 1970s and 80s Britain. Usually, it seems, felt by those who were not around in this era. The word ‘Anemoia’ was created to describe this particular branch of nostalgia which links to children’s TV shows of the period such as Bagpuss and books like Discovering Scarfolk by Richard Littler. There were also mentions of music and film as media that look through the lens that examines this dangerous lure of the past. With the idea that a past that is “forged in the mind of the young” and goes on to “exist in the mind of the adult”, the audience was then led through a writing exercise where they took a way of thinking or an object from childhood that conjured up a visceral memory.
The idea of an object like a child’s push car being seen through a dark nostalgic lens was an engaging exercise, even for someone who has no plans for that writing to go further than the notes from this talk.
After this brief interlude, Adam Smith began with the definition of Folk Horror as defined by the BBC Documentary A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss. Folk Horror has three essentials:
- The landscape or topography
- Isolation – which often leads to skewed belief systems and morality
- A happening or summoning
Smith leads us through the first wave of Folk Horror in the 1970s and 80s, to the second wave from 2008 onwards, and finally to the present day. Present-day folk horror includes films such as Midsommar (2019) and Men (2022), but also includes reconstructing the folk horror of the 70s and 80s. With that looking back into the past, Smith also looked back to previous texts that could be considered folk horror.
The thread of folk horror led back to connect to gothic novels of the 18th century, where it was presented to the audience that there was quite an overlap with folk horror and the gothic, sentimental and romantic writings of the period. But pulling on that thread further, folk horror appears further back in older works like Hamlet and John Milton’s Paradise Lost – giving rise to the idea that either everything is folk horror or gothic, or that folk horror and gothic are in conversation with something else.
There was a breadth of knowledge delivered to a willing audience, but with the sheer amount, it is difficult to remember every detail and idea quoted. After this talk, three other talks that were happening off the back of this: Olivia Isaac-Henry, in conversation: Sorrow Spring, York Society of Hauntologists reading group, and finishing with Bob Fischer – The Haunted Generation. All three continued discussing texts brought up in the introduction; Sorrow Spring is the Hauntologists’ current monthly read, the Society’s reading group was discussing Thomas Hardy’s The Withered Arm, and Bob Fischer (who was present for the introductory talk) who wrote The Haunted Generation is referred to as the Professor of Hauntology. In light of this, the introductory talk felt like it was giving a broad scope before the later talks dove into the nitty gritty details of specific texts. In a way, the talk gave a big picture of the Universe before later talks would inspect individual planets or asteroid belts that could take shape within the defined space and scope of this introduction.
It was a fast-paced and interesting talk and has made me consider looking further into the York Society of Hauntologists a little further than their Instagram page. There were also many texts, both novels, films and music, mentioned throughout this talk. I only wish that if this talk happens again at next year’s festival, a full list of all media mentioned is printed so that I can add them to my ‘TBR’ list.
If this talk sounded like something you would enjoy then the Hauntologist Society meet on the last Wednesday of every month at 7pm at the Black Swan Inn. You can find the information here – https://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/hauntology/york-society-of-hauntologists/.
There is also another talk from the York Literary Festival titled ‘Feeding the Monster: Why Horror Has a Hold On Us’ with Anna Bogutskaya on Saturday 22nd March and more information can be found here: https://yorkliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/.
– Rachel Di Nucci