Folk Horror: Halloween Event With Drinks & Discussion (and Special Guest!)

**PLEASE ONLY RSVP IF YOU INTEND ON COMING**
Join us at The Chequers Inn for our Halloween special event! With drink in hand we will we chat our way through blood strewn corn fields, wicker men and witchy woods for...

Folk Horror on Film- Black Goats, Demons, Maypoles and Heathens
To join us we have a special guest, Dr Eleanor Baker of Oxford University. Eleanor lectures in Old and Middle English and is an expert in Medieval Literature, religious literature of the era, and folklore. Her recent publication Book Curses explores the fascinating custom of etching curses and warnings onto historic books and manuscripts, in order to ward off would be thieves and vandals.

This will be a relaxed 'fun, informal and informative' discussion about Folk Horror, with Eleanor providing valuable insight into a genre steeped in history and ritual. Although we will discuss a wide range of Folk Horror films (and their historic inspirations) our talk will mainly focus of these four fiendish movies…

* The Wicker Man (1973)
A Christian policeman is sent to an island community off Scotland, to look for a missing girl. There he finds the villagers, strange, evasive, unhelpful and unholy.

* The Blair Witch Project (1999)
A partially complete camcorder 'documentary' from some film students, seeking to make a film about the legendary Blair Witch of Maryland. After interviewing townsfolk they decide to delve into the woods to uncover the truth, and whether the witch is fact or fiction

* The Witch (2015)
New England, 1630s. A family are banished from a puritan settlement, and so set up an isolated home by some woodland. Their teenage daughter Thomasin, starts to get blamed for much of the tragedy and hardship befalling the family. What's lurking in the woods, and is there an evil presence close to home?

*Midsommar (2019)
Dani suffers a devastating tragedy whilst at university. To give her a break her 'I don't really want to be with you anymore but it looks bad to dump a grieving person' boyfriend reluctantly invites her to join his group trip to Sweden. They were invited there by a classmate who is eager for them to witness his communities' traditional midsummer festival

This event will take place upstairs in the (haunted!) 15th century inn The Chequers