What Lies Beneath: Underground Spaces and how Culture, Geography and History Shape the Horrors We Perceive In Them
Dr Jay Gilbert, Thursday 16th October
“Once upon a time, the world below ground in the British Isles was the preserve of the Fair Folk in all their many and varied guises. People saw green glowing lights, lost time, and were spirited away — reporting phenomena eerily similar to what we hear, in recent years, from those who claim to have encountered “aliens”. It’s important to us to fill our liminal spaces: in former mining areas such as the North East and Cornwall, workers have identified the same strange smells and lights for many years, but as time marches on, what was once perceived as a redcap or coblynau has become a ‘knocker’, or a former colleague’s ghost. Meanwhile, when the London Underground was built, commentators at the time levelled dire predictions about what happens when we dig below ground and “disturb the Devil” — and, since then, the ghosts of the Underground have indeed been commonly complained about, particularly by Tube workers and track-walkers.”
This talk draws from research conducted for my book, Haunted: Ghost stories and their afterlives, and explores the changing shape of what we imagine in our underground spaces, dependent on geography, time, and our own history.
Please email Development.Events@St-Annes.ox.ac.uk if you would like to attend.