'The Terror of London': Spring-heeled Jack and the Victorian Metropolitan Press

We are repeating this event on Tuesday 30 June in partnership with Conway Hall. Details and tickets are available from the following link: The Terror of London: Spring-heeled Jack and the Victorian Metropolitan Press.

8pm (doors 7.30pm)
Thursday 29 January 2015
£3 / £2 concessions.
This event has now sold out. Sorry if you did not get a ticket. We will hopefully be booking it again this year. Please watch this space!
The Vaults Bar, Dirty Dicks, 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR
Bus / train / tube: Liverpool Street

One of London's greatest monsters, Spring-heeled Jack has held the city's imagination in his claws since he first appeared as "a ghost, a bear, and a devil" right up to contemporary comics and internet radio dramas featuring the leaping horror of legend.

This talk explores Spring-heeled Jack’s appearances in and relationship to Victorian London. It considers his origins in the capital, and the way the metropolitan press gave life to a strange urban legend that went on to terrorise the rest of the country.

Dr Karl Bell is a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth. He has published on a variety of topics linked to magic and the supernatural in nineteenth-century Britain. He is the author of two books, 'The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England' 1780-1914' (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and 'The Legend of Spring-heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures' (Boydell and Brewer, 2012). The latter won the 2013 Katharine Briggs Award.

Each regular gathering starts with the Fortmanteau, our with our monthly round-up of fortean news stories from the month.

We are repeating this event on Tuesday 30 June in partnership with Conway Hall. Details and tickets are available from the following link: The Terror of London: Spring-heeled Jack and the Victorian Metropolitan Press.

'The Terror of London': Spring-heeled Jack and the Victorian Metropolitan Press event Facebook page.

8pm (doors 7.30pm)
Thursday 29 January 2015
£3 / £2 concessions.
This event has now sold out. Sorry if you did not get a ticket. We will hopefully be booking it again this year. Please watch this space!
The Vaults Bar, Dirty Dicks, 202 Bishopsgate, City of London EC2M 4NR

Bus / train / tube: Liverpool Street

The Haunted Landscape 2025: Ghosts, Magic and Lore

Whose claws are scratching at the church door? What’s that ghost tumbling over the moor? Who’s that figure cut into the earth? What can I do to lift this curse? Join us for a legendary trip through the seventh Haunted Landscape, our day of expert talks on British ghosts, magic, and folklore. Photo by Henrik L. on Unsplash The Haunted Landscape: Ghosts, Magic and Lore 22 November 2025 10 am - 5 pm In advance: Standard £25 / Living Support £17 / Student £21 (inc. £2 venue levy) Advance Tickets Online: £12 (inc. £2 venue levy) Advance Tickets Conway Hall , 25 Red Lion Square, London, WC1R 4RL Tube: Holborn London Fortean Email List Age Recommendation: All ages. Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult. Photo by AJO JOSE on Unsplash Going to the Haunted Landscape, online and at Conway Hall, next Saturday? Or planning to? It'll be a deep, dark dive into British folklore with some fine speakers. Here is the schedule for the day: 10:00 Intro 1...

*** TUBE STRIKE *** Although the tube strike has been called off, we'd already shifted the date of our next meeting at the Bell, Jeremy Harte speaking on Gypsies and the Supernatural , from Tuesday July 25 to Tuesday August 1 . Please note that we're sticking with this new date.

Saints, Sleep-Surgery and Medieval Dream Miracles

7.45pm Wednesday 26 June 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets ) The Bell , 50 Middlesex Street, London E1 7EX. Train and Tube: Liverpool Street. Tube: Aldgate, Aldgate East Facebook Page Thousands of stories of miraculous healing at shrines survive from the middle ages. The most striking tales involve a sick person who was cured in a dream by a saint’s touch. Dreams were considered a space where dead holy figures could interact with the living: saints could manipulate the sleeper’s body, including performing invasive surgery. Dr Bill MacLehose , historian of medieval medicine and religion at UCL, explores the different ways in which saints were thought to heal, purify or even punish people through dreams. What made sleep and dreams so important to healing rituals in mediaeval culture? And how important were sacred spaces, such as shrines and other pilgrimage sites, to these dream cures? 7.45pm Wednesday 26 June 2019 £4 / £2 Concessions ( Advance tickets...

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