Demons and Nightmares: Why do People Believe in the Malign Supernatural

Date: 26/10/10
Speaker: Deborah Hyde
Title: Demons and Nightmares: Why do People Believe in the Malign Supernatural?

Abstract
Deborah’s talk is on the cultural and physiological aspects of the religious and superstitious experience and she’ll answer such questions as:
When do the dead chew in their graves?
Why do vampires strike in autumn?
Why do ghosts live in electric clocks?

Biography
Deborah Hyde has been writing about the folklore of the macabre for eighteen years. She blogs on the themes of magic and supernatural belief as ‘Jourdemayne’, regularly syndicating the ‘The Lay Scientist’ and ‘The Pod Delusion’. She is writing a book called Unnatural Predators which will get published one day when she gets a minute or two to finish it.She is Deputy Convenor of Westminster Skeptics and will be Managing Editor of The Skeptic Magazine (UK) in the New Year.
Her daytime, grown-up job is a makeup effects coordinator in the film industry – more vampires and zombies, then.

The talk is free, open to the public and there is no need to book.
http://www.gold.ac.uk/apru/speakers/abstracts-1011/

The talks will take place in Room LG01 in the New Academic Building- see maps at www.goldsmiths.ac.uk. It's on the Lower Ground floor immediately underneath the entrance to the building, accessible by stairs in the centre of the building and by the lifts at the far end of the building.