Hosting 5: GHost-hunters 2

Date: 16 November 2010, 6.30pm – 9pm

Venue: The Senate Room, 1st floor, Senate House South Block,
University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Join us for the fourth GHost Hosting, an evening of exploration into the phenomenon of ghost-hunting, including the findings from the recent and very marvellous 'Vigil' at the Royal Academy and a dissection of the substance of ghost-hunting inside the world of television.

The stately Senate Room is haunted by the smell of academic incense and the ghost of the blue lady may be heard scratching from behind the wood-panelled walls.
Come and play with us...

Lucy Bensusan, “Most Haunted Live” – Interactive Television and the Domestic Ghost Hunter

Blue Firth, David Luke, Mark Pilkington, Vigil

Followed by discussion including the parapsychologist Dr. Ciarán O'Keeffe.
London spirits will be served.

This event is free but places are limited – to secure your seat please email us at ghost.hostings@gmail.com

Abstracts of presentations

Lucy Bensusan, “Most Haunted Live” – Interactive Television and the Domestic Ghost Hunter

'The camera as we know it now and in its future manifestations will continue to function as an apparitional apparatus.' (Daniel Wojcik, 'Spirits, Apparitions, and Traditions of Supernatural Photogrpahy', Visual Resources.)
The subject was initially born from a personal interest in the paranormal, but as I searched for something spooky to watch in the evening I became increasingly aware that I was spoilt for choice, and the body of preternatural television texts that are marketed as either documentary, reality or investigative is more dominant than ever before in television history.
Crucial to my investigation is how Most Haunted Live innovates the traditional notions of live broadcasting as media event, monopolises upon the advantages of digital television, explores multi-platform delivery, creates cult viewing, encourages high levels of audience interactivity to produce an active television viewer, and therefore an active ghost hunter operating from their own domestic sphere. Whilst textually analysing the ideology, address and format of programmes such as these, this project investigates what properties inherent to the medium of television make it suitable as a vehicle of supernatural factual or reality programming. Initially, one must observe to what extent this portrayal of the contemporary investigator imitates previous incarnations of psychic entertainment, but also contemporarily how does Most Haunted revise, re-work or create new formats of television programming? Finally, this discussion will encompass arguments over the potential of the medium of television to be used to channel the deceased, encouraged by televised paranormal investigations, and being able to function as an 'apparitional apparatus', both letting the viewer see far into the distance whilst possibly bringing an unknown energy into the domestic sphere.

Blue Firth, David Luke, Mark Pilkington, Vigil

VIGIL is a participatory investigation into alleged paranormal phenomena at The Royal Academy Schools in Piccadilly, London. It was conducted in October 2010.
The project arose from first hand accounts of anomalous experiences told to RA student Blue Firth by security guards doing night shifts on the site. Their descriptions prompted Blue to unearth a history of unusual phenomena at the Academy buildings.
Wanting to explore these occurrences further, Blue brought in parapsychologist Dr David Luke and fortean author-curator Mark Pilkington. Together they attended training seminars with the respected investigation group ASSAP (Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena) and devised Vigil according to their guidelines. Blue and Mark also interviewed veteran psychical investigator Guy Playfair, who in 1977 experienced, and documented, dramatic poltergeist phenomena at the home of the Hogdson family in Enfield, North London.
Vigil took place over two evenings in October, during which 120 people participated over six sessions. Each session lasted 30 minutes and was conducted in total silence and complete darkness; subjects were asked to complete psychometric assessment forms and detail any unusual sensations felt during the session. Trained medical and psychological facilitators were on site to assist with the project.
For Hostings Blue, David and Mark will present a performative summary of their findings incorporating data and documentation from the Vigil sessions.

Scott Wood and Sarah Sparkes on Resonance FM

http://www.loststeps.org/2010/10/ls030-scott-wood-sarah-sparkes/

Scott Wood iinvited Sarah Sparkes to join him on Lost Footsteps

"Lost Steps is a weekly radio show broadcasting in London on Resonance 104.4FM.


Each week we explore aspects of London's artistic and cultural landscape. Our guests are generally artists, writers, film makers, bloggers, academics, publishers etc.
Lost Steps is presented by Malcom Hopkins and produced by Nick Hamilton."
Contact: nick@loststeps.org

This week Malcom is joined in the studio by Scott Wood and Sarah Sparkes to discuss London Hauntings.

Scott writes the Fortean London column for the wonderful Londonist blog and runs the South East London Folklore Society (SELFS) whose monthly meetings provide a forum to discuss folklore, magic, mysteries and forteana in London.

Sarah is an artist investigating our fascination for hauntings. Together with Ricarda Vidal she runs GHost which “…aims to address the various roles ghosts play in contemporary culture by bringing artists, writers, curators, researchers and others together”. They’ve been putting on events around town for the last couple of years but until we met I was unaware of them. I’m intrigued by the video evidence and must make an effort to get along to future events, in particular the upcoming GHost III.


After recording the show Scott revealed that he’d received reports of supernatural goings-on at the Resonance studio. Keep an eye on Fortean London for details."

Hear Malcom getting the lowdown on London Hauntings from Scott Wood and Sarah Sparkes.


Listen hear

Originally broadcast October 21st 2010 on Resonance FM.

Selected pictures Hostings 3 - GHost-hunters I

Some pictures from 'Hosting 3 - GHost-hunters I" 

Featuring presentations by:
Maya McKechneay, "Respectable Gentlemen, Techno-geeks and Wise Women: Gender Roles in Ghost-hunter films"

Scott Wood, "Elliott O’Donnell: Number 1 Ghost-hunter"
Rob Gallagher, “Press X to Enter”: Videogame Ghost Hunts and the Horror of the Object"

Hostings 4- GHost-hunters 1

Date: 12 October 2010, 6.30pm – 9pm This event is free but places are limited – to secure your seat please email us at ghost.hostings@gmail.com
Venue: The Senate Room, 1st floor, Senate House South Block,
University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

GHost invites you to join us for three presentations on the wondrous world of ghost hunters in film, in video games and in real life. A 'blue lady' is said to haunt our atmospheric venue, so you'll have the the chance to do a bit of ghost hunting yourself.

Maya McKechneay, "Respectable Gentlemen, Techno-geeks and Wise Women: Gender Roles in Ghost-hunter films"

Scott Wood, "Elliott O’Donnell: Number 1 Ghost-hunter"

Rob Gallagher, “Press X to Enter”: Videogame Ghost Hunts and the Horror of the Object"

The event is part of the GHost project, led by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal

Maya McKechneay, Respectable gentlemen, techno-geeks and wise women: gender roles in ghost-hunter films
In fiction films ghost hunters are usually portrayed in a standardized way: There is the stereotype of the respectable gentleman in the Brit-Mood-Horrorfilm. Like Dr. John Markway in Robert Wise’s “The Haunting” or Mr. Barrett in John Hough’s “The Legend of Hell House”. The respectable gentleman-ghost hunter has greying hair and is on top of the hierarchy within the team he assembles around him (the psychic-medium, the experienced eye-witness, etc.) ... which makes him the love interest of the female participants. There is the clergyman, deeply afflicted by his responsibility, who performs an exorcism, most famously Max von Sydow in William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist”. Then of course, there is the comic ghost hunter: you’ll find him (and his technical gadgetry) in Ivan Reitman’s 1984 classic “Ghost Busters” and its sequels or in family entertainment like “Disney’s Haunted Mansion”.
Female ghost hunters usually choose the mental path and take the role of the psychic medium. They rarely use machines or technical gadgets like the male ghost hunters. Women lure ghosts out of their hidings with their mind, they try to establish communication and offer to be the therapist. Some even offer their voice and body to the ghost, which may take the form of a more or less explicit metaphor for the sexual act.
Ghost hunting is an archaic profession, so – not surprisingly – gender roles are firmly cemented. Still: the classical male ghost hunter is usually far less interesting than his female counterpart. While he is in for ratio and eventually knows less than he thinks, she always seems to know a little bit more than what she chooses to tell the audience.
Maya will explore the gender-theme by talking about some spectacular (and some spectacularly crappy) films. She will also show clips from the films.

Scott Wood, Elliott O’Donnell: Number 1 Ghost hunter.
“And now, as I stared in wonder –and, I admit, not a little fear – I saw something rise from the floor and advance towards me.”
Elliott O’Donnell (1872 – 1965) was an Irish ghost hunter and writer who couldn’t have a drink in his club, sit on a park bench or stay in a boarding house without someone telling him their encounter with a ghost or seeing something spectral himself. His mother was psychic, he saw his first ghost, with “yellowish green and sphinx-like” eyes at the age of 5, he was throttled unconscious by a dangerous spirit in Bristol and his father’s death was heralded by the family banshee. He wrote many books based on these encounters that tell wild tales of almost medieval ghosts and spirits, all with spare but well round narratives attached to them.
Scott Wood, of the South East London Folklore Society and Fortean London column, picks out and discusses some of O’Donnell’s stories, compares them to our meagre contemporary ghosts stories and tries to find out who Elliott O’Donnell was through his stories, ghosts, opinions on Celtic identity and his eagerness to prove his own membership of the O’Donnell clan.

Rob Gallagher, “Press X to Enter”: Videogame Ghost Hunts and the Horror of the Object
Rob will discuss the Fatal Frame, Silent Hill and Forbidden Siren videogame series, all of which allow players to go hunt ghosts from the (dis)comfort of their own settees.
While the games remediate various tropes from gothic literature and horror cinema, their plots – and their marketing campaigns – have also drawn heavily on the culture of contemporary ghost hunting and paranormal investigation: the Siren games were promoted via a series of hoax websites and blogs purportedly maintained by in-game characters, while Fatal Frame was marketed in America as ‘based on a true story’ - a claim that catalysed widespread online debate as to the location of the game’s (fictional) setting.
These electronically-orchestrated misinformation campaigns hint at a dominant theme in the titles, which are profoundly preoccupied with the capacity of technology to unearth and make sense of the past. While all the games stage dramatic confrontations with spectral, undead or demonic antagonists, the horror they generate turns out to have much more to do with the ghostliness of electronic media and the intractability of material objects; players spend as much time fiddling with cameras, radios and telephones, collecting keys, lockets and dolls as they do discharging firearms.
What emerges is a fear of the capacity of objects to look back – both in the sense of indexing the past, and that of seeming, uncannily, to return the player’s gaze. Via a reading of these titles informed by Sartrian phenomenology and the ‘thing theory’ of Bill Brown, Rob hopes to throw light on their presentation of ghost hunting as paradigmatic of modern experience and to suggest how their interactivity furthers this end. He will use footage of play to illustrate his argument.

If you want to attend more hostings in the ghost hunters series please put the following dates in your diary:

Hosting 5: Ghost hunters 2: 16 November 2010, 6.30 – 9pm
Senate Room, Senate House, University of London

Lucy Bensusan, “Most Haunted Live” – Interactive Television and the Domestic Ghost Hunter
Blue Firth, David Luke, Mark Pilkington, "Vigil"

GHost III - Call for Artist Films

A project by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal

17th December 2010, 6 - 10pm at St Johns Church on Bethnal Green

200 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA

We are inviting submissions of artist films on the theme of ‘Ghost hunters’. We welcome short films, but will consider films of up to 20 minutes in duration. Films should be suitable for screening as part of a show reel, rather than for installation. The works will be screened on a big screen in the nave of the church of St John Bethnal Green as part of “GHost III”, an annual weekend-long exhibition with performances and screenings.


We are interested in moving image works which explore the various angles and aspects of ghost-hunting.

"HAUNTED HOUSE: Responsible persons of leisure and intelligence, intrepid, critical, and unbiased, are invited to join rota of observers in a years night and day investigation of alleged haunted house in Home counties. Printed Instructions supplied. Scientific training or ability to operate simple instruments an advantage. House situated in lonely hamlet, so own car is essential. Write Box H.989, The Times, E.C.4"

This ad appeared on 25 May 1937 in The Times. It was posted by Harry Price, an early-20th-century ghost-hunter who was looking for fellow researchers to investigate the paranormal activities in Borley Rectory, allegedly Britain’s ‘most haunted house’. While it is unlikely that a similar ad would be taken seriously by most readers of The Times these days, TV-shows such as ‘Britain’s Most Haunted’, or cinema films like The Blair Witch Project (1999) or Paranormal Activity (2010) as well as the abundance of websites dedicated to the paranormal attest to the continuing interest in the field. In some sense ghost-hunting has become popular entertainment, but its popularity is also an expression of a need to prove the existence of life beyond death.

Deadline for submissions: 1st November 2010

Please send submissions to:

S. Sparkes
GHost III
9 Venetian Road
Camberwell
London
SE5 9RR

Or hand-deliver to

R. Vidal
GHost III
Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies
School of Advanced Study
Stewart House, 32 Russell Squ, London WC1B 5DN

Email: ghost.hostings@gmail.com
join the GHost group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=1166662399611&mbox_pos=0#/group.php?gid=117301037117&ref=mf

Call for papers/presentations for GHost III: Hostings 3 & 4

GHost-hunters

GHost is led by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal

Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DN

Deadline for submissions of proposals: 12 July 2010

Date for Hosting 3: 12 October 2010

Date for Hosting 4: 16 November 2010

Venue: The Courtroom, Senate House South Block, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

"HAUNTED HOUSE: Responsible persons of leisure and intelligence, intrepid, critical, and unbiased, are invited to join rota of observers in a years night and day investigation of alleged haunted house in Home counties. Printed Instructions supplied. Scientific training or ability to operate simple instruments an advantage. House situated in lonely hamlet, so own car is essential. Write Box H.989, The Times, E.C.4"

This ad appeared on 25 May 1937 in The Times. It was posted by Harry Price, an early-20th-century ghost-hunter who was looking for fellow researchers to investigate the paranormal activities in Borley Rectory, allegedly Britain’s ‘most haunted house’. Price was a member of the Ghost Club and the Magic Circle and avid collector of magical artefacts and literature on the paranormal and occult. He visited and researched ‘haunted houses’ all over Britain and Europe and documented the presence of ghosts and other inexplicable phenomena. He was also the first person to broadcast live from a ‘haunted house’ and is usually referred to as ‘the original ghost hunter’.

While it is unlikely that a similar ad would be taken seriously by most readers of The Times these days, TV-shows such as ‘Britain’s Most Haunted’, or cinema films like The Blair Witch Project (1999) or Paranormal Activity (2010) as well as the abundance of websites dedicated to the paranormal attest to the continuing interest in the field. In some sense ghost-hunting has become popular entertainment, but its popularity is also an expression of a need to prove the existence of life beyond death.

We would like to invite proposals for presentations of 30 minutes on the theme of ghost-hunters for the two hostings on 12 October and 16 November. We are interested in presentations which look at ghost-hunting as a historical as well as a contemporary activity and would like to hear from practicing artists as well as from researchers within the fields of anthropology, art history, cultural studies, film studies, history, law, literary studies, parapsychology, psychology etc.

Whether you are proposing an academic paper, a performative talk, a recital or a presentation of your art practice please think of ways of presenting your work beyond the neat framing of Power Point and take us somewhere on the far side of Windows Vista.

Please send a (working) title, an abstract of ca. 300 words, and, if applicable one or two pictures, to ghost.hostings@gmail.com

Abstracts should reach us no later than 12 July 2010.

The GHost project has been running since 2008. It addresses the various roles ghosts play in contemporary culture by bringing artists, writers, curators and researchers together for workshops, so-called ‘hostings’ and exhibitions of moving image and performance art. The hostings take place at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies and exhibitions are hosted by St Johns on Bethnal Green (East London).

For more info please see our website: http://www.host-a-ghost.blogspot.com/

Or join the GHost group on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/inbox/readmessage.php?t=1166662399611&mbox_pos=0#/group.php?gid=117301037117&ref=mf

Artists, please note that there will be a separate call for submissions for the GHost exhibition at St Johns on 17-19 December. We will circulate this soon and will also post it on our website and on facebook as soon as it is ready.

Hostings 3 - The Post GHost Hostings

25th Feb
6.30 - 9.30
The Court Room and Jessell Room
Senate House, University of London
Malet Street, WC1E 7HU

This evening concludes the cycle of events that comprised GHost II and opens the curtain for the entrance of GHost III.


In a parallel projection on the walls of the Courtroom we will show Julian Wakeling’s haunted photographs of hostings I and II, which took place in the same room in October and November last year and of the GHost II exhibition at St Johns Church on Bethnal Green. Fabrizio Manco, Calum F. Kerr, Miyuki Kasahara and Derek Jordan, who have all taken part in GHost II, have devised a series of performances for the evening and will invite audiences to interact with the space and its invisible entities. The Reverend Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly breaks his silence to give a sermon in the haunted room.


Wine will be served and you will have a chance to purchase a copy of our GHost publications, “Hosting I: Haunted Houses” and “Hosting II: Ghost Voices”, which contain essays from the hostings and a selection of Julian’s photographs.


The Daughters of Moroni will preside over the evening.This is a free event but please email us at ghost.hostings@gmail.com so we know how many to expect.
GHost is organised by Sarah Sparkes and Ricarda Vidal.

The GHosts
In the darkness of the séance room Julian Wakeling's other-worldly photograghs of Hostings I & II and Ghost II are shown, for the first time, as a dual projection. The illuminated memories of one observing from beyond the glass.
Fabrizio Manco haunts the imposing corridors and chambers, walking whilst drawing his binaural experience of auditory phantom perceptions and ghost acoustics.
Miyuki Kasahara waits for you in in the Jessell room. As a zashiki-warashi, a child specter who lives in haunted house she will invite you to hear her 'I Ching' predictions of happiness or disaster.
The ghosts of Bethnal Green are stirring, emanating from the Haunted Lecture Room are live recordings from Calum F. Kerr. These oratories are echos from figures each known as John, returning once more from the dead.'
Derek Jordan entertains with haunting choral renditions guaranteed to send chills down you spine.
For the benefit of our lost souls the Reverend Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly will give a rousing sermon from the very heart of the blue lady's domain.