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Upcoming talks - Demons, Nightmares, Sleepwalking and Violence.

26 April 2019

Dr Bill MacLehose will be giving two separate talks on the history of dreams, sleep and more - firstly at Brompton Cemetery, and then at the Old Operating Theatre.

Section of 'The Beast Acheron', Simon Marmion, 1470

Bill's first talk - "Midnight Ramblers - Sleepwalking, Violence and Desire" - looks at the history, and medieval understandings, of somnambulism, and explores the different activities sleepwalkers were thought to perform. The talk takes place at 1pm in Brompton Cemetery on Saturday 4th May, and tickets are £12 including a free cocktail - visit the London Month of the Dead website for more details and to book tickets.

Secondly, Bill will give his talk 'Demons, Revenants and Nightmares: Fear and Dreaming in the Middle Ages" as part of the Old Operating Theatre's 'Fear Series' on Thursday 16th May at 7pm. Bill will hold a discussion of the dark side of the medieval world of dreams, and will explore the ways fear entered people’s dreams in the middle ages. He will look closely at the history of the medical condition called the incubus, in which sufferers awoke unable to move and often imagined that they were being attacked by a demon or other creature. Night terrors of various sorts appear often in medieval sources, and allow the audience to delve into the dark corners of social, religious and political life, as ghosts and devils disturbed the dreams of kings and commoners.

Tickets for the talk are £12, and can be found on the Old Operating Theatre Eventbrite page.