Profs & Pints Richmond: How We Scare Each Other

Profs and Pints Richmond presents: “How We Scare Each Other,” an exploration of the enduring tradition of telling terrifying tales, with Joshua Barton, lecturer in English at Virginia Commonwealth University and scholar of horror.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/richmond-scary-stories .]

They’ve long emerged from the darkness around campfires. They pop up at kids’ slumber parties and come at us through our computer screens. We probably could escape them, but where’s the fun in that?

Gear up for Halloween by learning about the oral telling of scary stories and how this ancient tradition flourishes in new forms in the digital age.
Joshua Barton, whose excellent talks on horror have earned him a big following among Profs and Pints audiences, will take us back into time to witness the rise of the scary story in folklore and myth.

He’ll discuss indigenous trickster narratives, the centuries-old European cautionary tales collected by the Brothers Grimm, and other unnerving lore. We’ll consider how such stories functioned as both entertainment and social instruction, and also how they reflected broader anxieties and the core human impulse to narrate fear, mystery, and the unknown.

We’ll look at how these storytelling traditions have persisted and been adapted across media, venturing into the realm of urban legends circulated through spoken word, print, and mass media. You'll get to know “the vanishing hitchhiker,” “the Hookman,” and “Bloody Mary.”

We’ll also explore how with the rise of the internet these forms of modern folklore were reimagined for digital spaces. We’ll analyze the emergence of “creepypasta,” a genre of short-form horror shared across forums and early social media, focusing on examples such as “Slender Man,” “Candle Cove,” and “Ben Drowned.”

Finally, we'll examine analog horror, a contemporary digital subgenre that leverages retro aesthetics and found-footage techniques in works such as “Local 58” and “The Mandela Catalogue.”

It will be a night full of frights you’ll be eager to pass on to others. ( Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.