Profs & Pints Northern Virginia: The Haunted House

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “The Haunted House,” on scary dwellings and their grip on us, with Brittany Warman, former instructor at Ohio State University and co-founder of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/haunted-house .]

The haunted house has long held a place in the imaginations of those who enjoy a bit of uncanny terror, posing the ultimate threat to security and normalcy. It’s where something familiar becomes strange and unsettling, even threatening. You initially might have thought you're safe—after all, you should be safe indoors—but you're not. Sanctuary and shelter have turned against you. The very walls trouble your dreams.

Come tour some of the most terrifying real estate ever imagined with Brittany Warman, who has earned herself a large and devoted following among Profs and Pints audiences with excellent past talks on folklore, fairly tales, and horror.

In the perfect event to kick off your Spooky Season, she’ll show you the fascinating folkloric, literary, and real-world history of the haunted house. She’ll leave you wondering about the creepy old places in your town with doors that you’re afraid to approach on Halloween, and she might even leave you eager to turn your own home into such an eerie dwelling.

She’ll begin by discussing the scary structures of fairy tales, such as gingerbread houses and Bluebeard's castle, exploring how the early stories told about them influenced the terrifying tales of Henry James' Bly Manor and Edgar Allen Poe's House of Usher. She’ll consider the impact of haunted spaces on the Gothic and horror genres and explain why haunted houses are often so opulent and so decadent in their decay.

Among the questions Dr. Warman will tackle: What might the haunted house have to say about history, culture, and society? What draws us, again and again, to haunted houses, making us want to visit them, find their ghosts, and uncover their stories?

She'll conclude by examining how these tales still resonate today, in haunted houses both purportedly real and those decidedly fake, meant for shocks and thrills. Even Disney's Haunted Mansion ride will make an appearance. It’s a scary world after all. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: An abandoned house near Pocomoke City, Md., in 2008. (Photo by Matt Trostle / Creative Commons.)