This is a terrific online conference

The early Gothic has so much to show us about the social conditions which inspired tremendous numbers of women to read & write about moldering ruins, cursed heirlooms, predatory men manipulating & stealing inheritances & property rights & autonomy. This talk was inspiring.

This month on Fabulous Folklore Presents, I'm chatting to @odavies9.bsky.social & @cerihoulbrook.bsky.social about their new book Folklore: A Journey through the Past and Present. There's even a mention of ice cream van folklore! youtu.be/xuX87Hcp53U?...

Marvelous new @helleborezine.bsky.social! Looking forward to digging in to this article to find out what’s going on here & if there’s any chance I’m ever going to get my lipstick just right ever again

It's October! Hurrah! I've specially curated 5 of our spookier titles, and discounted the eBooks to just $2. Grab a couple, or all 5 for $10. It's your choice. @seanbirnie.bsky.social @acwise.bsky.social @stevetoase.bsky.social undertowpublications.com/ebooks

My periodic call for pitches to the 19th-Century Networks section of ✨Literature Compass✨: Do you have a state-of-the-field essay to propose on #Romantic or #Victorian topics? a little-known or understudied author to spotlight? Please get in touch! compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/1741...

I probably should have just included this in the original post. Captain America: the First Avenger includes the obligatory “Nazis hunting for occult artifacts” trope. The Winter Soldier has something cooler: this glass elevator fight scene.

D&D actually received an early 1980s sales bump thanks to the Satanic Panic. The free advertising from Christian organizations allowed teenagers to feel like total, edgy rebels for buying D&D.

Who’s going to sort out the issues with all the edited collections of non-fiction essays? Sigh.

In which I expand on my obsession with the idea that Greendale Community College sits on top of a secret military installation, which is not strange at all no matter what @fishinnards.bsky.social says.

'This archaeology is often a dramatic, action-packed endeavor in which the fate of the world rests in the hands of a plucky group of scholars who can’t remember where they parked their car but can translate a dead language and navigate a series of complex traps and devious puzzles.' 🤣

Haven’t give this a listen yet but I’m a big @baladria.bsky.social fan & you better believe I snapped up a deck of her ancient Egyptian-inspired OFMD tarot cards!

I did a thing

Thanks to @meanlouise.bsky.social from @excavatinghorror.com for the shout out for Dirt Upon My Skin in this great article on archaeological horror at @nightmare-magazine.com www.nightmare-magazine.com/nonfiction/p...

Just informed the phrase “hold on to your butts” isn’t scholarly. Which is delightful! Not bc I’m gonna change my blogging style, but bc it’s always nice to know someone read the footnotes. Anyway, here’s a bit of chatter about the Gothic mode & a book recommendation, if you like that sort of thing.

So good I was able to resist a joke about how this is a chilling tale about the consequences of digging without a permit. Almost.

The end of day 1 of the #WarningToTheCurious conference and what a day! A great keynote from Darryl Jones! 13 fascinating papers! A workshop on haunted objects that has me writing a VERY weird little story and, of course, the cocktail/mocktail hour! Love that for us!

As you may have guessed, I’m looking forward to this conference!

Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! And Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

I feel I should clarify that what made this all super-creepy was that I opened @stevetoase.bsky.social ‘s book to that page THE SAME DAY I got the field school question. Does it matter? No, not really, except to me & maybe the ghost in the Total station.

In case you’re here for actual archaeology & not worried about the thing that’s definitely probably not slithering around in your storage closet, Dr. Daniel Sayers published The Archaeology of the Homed & the Unhomed w UP of Florida in 2023 & also Justin Uehlein recently defended his dissertation 👇

Here’s a silly story to start your Wednesday. Or end your Wednesday. Which I meant because of time zones, not to suggest it’s the last thing you might read because you’ve been tamping down that sense of vague dread that something terrible lurks in your lab 1/

Join us at Writing the Occult: Belief on 6 Sept when we ask: What’s it like to live in a cult? Why do we get swept away by charismatic leaders? Why might someone *not* believe? Where do conspiracy theories come from? Let’s ask if the truth really is out there. Details: writingtheoccult.carrd.co 🧵⬇️

Job opportunity for an historian at Monticello. This is the 4th time they've tried to fill the role this year (they seem to have given up trying to find a senior person and have dropped the PhD requirement). DM me if you want to know what it's like to work there. www.monticello.org/thomas-jeffe...

Calling all American folklorists, pop culture critics, historians, and artists! Please take a look at the call for proposals for Crossroads, a magazine dedicated exclusively to folk horror in the United States. Our first issue will be dedicated to the 1970s.

I knew I couldn’t do Modern Mummies: A Horror Anthology justice with a proper review right now, so instead here’s a short post about my enthusiasm for this excellent new collection from @cateyepress.bsky.social excavatinghorror.com/2025/08/15/m...

Have you ever wanted to study the Gothic with me? At a British university but online so it's accessible to you anywhere? For a fraction of a usual university course cost? With delicious delicious library access? Come join me Liverpool uni starting October! www.liverpool.ac.uk/continuing-e...

Spectacular publicly accessible resource run by a brilliant organizer. I talked about Gothic tourism & local history as it relates the Exorcist, Mothman, & Blair Witch earlier this year for the annual Goths for Breakfast fundraiser to fun free meals for kids & it was a great time all-around.

Speaking of, safe travels to everyone headed to Cusco, Peru for the Mummy Congress. I’m absolutely not jealous! (I’m absolutely jealous).

Enjoying, as always, the Antiquity in Media Studies 2024 conference. Is AIMS here yet? Search is defying me, but that doesn't mean I'm not missing them! antiquityinmediastudies.wordpress.com

Hi! Hello! Actual account here. This username wasn't available last year & I don't know why I didn't doublecheck before falling back on I Dig Horror. As funny as that name is to me as a horror fan & scholar/bio-archaeologist, I thought I'd give this thing called consistency a try, so here we are.