Tag Archives: Romany Reagan

Animal Lore, Feminism, Folklore, Halloween, Nature, Podcast, Romany Reagan, witches

Halloween Special Podcast | Witches’ Familiars

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🎧 Spooky podcast now live! 🎧 I was invited on the @nationaltrust ‘Back When’ history podcast &’Wild Tales’ @wildtalesnt podcast to discuss witches’ familiars and share some of the darker stories of loving pets in the past… 🐈‍⬛🧙🏻‍♀️💜

🕯️🧹 Halloween Special | Witches Familiars 🧹🕯️

Is your cat the devil in disguise? Probably not, although they may act like something possessed sometimes! But once upon a time, friendliness towards cats, rabbits or dogs could lead to accusations of witchcraft, as these animals, known as familiars, were suspected of working for the devil. Learn the history of familiars through the story of Elizabeth Clarke, a poor disabled woman from Essex accused of being seen with these supernatural beings.

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/virtual-visit/podcasts/back-when-history-podcast

Folklore, ghosts, Moonlore, Nature Lore, Romany Reagan, Talk, witches

Live talk at the Folk & Fable Festival in Battle, East Sussex, Saturday 23rd August 2025, 3pm: ‘Witches, Demons, Faeries & Ghosts: Our dreamscapes of legend & lore’

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Come join me and many other speakers, artists and performers for this wonderful festival in Battle, East Sussex celebrating all things Folk & Fable! There will be food stalls, local delightful boozes, story tents, local crafts — and lots of fun and fabulous people coming together to share a great long August bank holiday weekend flirting with the weird side.

Yours truly will be giving a talk at 3pm on the Saturday of the festival, no need to prebook, just come on down and enjoy the descent into madness…

Continue reading Live talk at the Folk & Fable Festival in Battle, East Sussex, Saturday 23rd August 2025, 3pm: ‘Witches, Demons, Faeries & Ghosts: Our dreamscapes of legend & lore’ →
Feminism, Folk Healers, Museum of the Home, Pandemic, Women's Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

Hidden history of women healers in the eradication of smallpox

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When we think of the eradication of the smallpox disease today, we think of the groundbreaking vaccine developed by Dr Jenner — but where did the original knowledge of smallpox inoculation (the knowledge on which the eventual vaccine was based) come from? We actually owe our thanks to the ancient practices kept alive by women healers in Greece, Turkey, China, India, and Africa. Basically, everywhere in the world *except* Western Europe…

Audio Walk, Bloomsbury, Ghost Story, Halloween, London, Romany Reagan

Haunted Bloomsbury Audio Walk: Spiritualism & Ghost Stories in WC1

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Happy 1st of September! You know what this means?? Officially only one month until 🎃🦇💜 !OCTOBER! 💜🦇🎃 London Month of the Dead have a fabulous calendar of spooky delights for you!

Check out my #spiritualism audio walk through 👻#HauntedBloomsbury👻 — it even comes with a glossy guidebook! 🔮

Click here for more info:

Haunted Bloomsbury Audio Walk: Spiritualism & Ghost Stories in WC1

HAUNTED BLOOMSBURY – Spiritualism and Ghost Stories in WC1
An Audio Guided Tour and Map Book with Dr Romany Reagan

ABOUT
Take a journey through darker Bloomsbury as your tour guide Dr Romany Reagan leads you through the occult pathways and hidden histories of this birthplace of British Spiritualism.

The Victorians were fascinated by a wide range of phenomena that might loosely be termed the ‘occult’. In their search for meaning in their mortality during an increasingly secularised age, interest in Spirituality and connections ‘beyond the veil’ touched almost every aspect of Victorian life, from scientific study to literature. Tracing Spiritualism’s lines of origin, we’re driven through these occult pathways into the heart of Bloomsbury. Join your tour guide, Dr Romany Reagan, for an evening stalk of gothic intrigues and Victorian ghosts.

WHAT YOU GET
– An A5 full colour map and guide book
– Each book comes with a download or streaming code so that you can take your tour at any time alone or with a friend

Romany Reagan, Video, Woman's Weeds ACE Funded Research Project

‘Women’s Weeds’ Research Journal — VIDEO: Introduction to what it’s all about (+ bonus gorgeously Creepy Fort)

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Here is a little video I’ve made explaining a bit of what my project is about. I’m now almost two months into my research journey! I will be presenting my preliminary findings at the Bridges 2022 conference, ‘Bridges Between Disciplines: Gender in STEM and Social Sciences’, at the Universitat Politécnica de València – Campus of Gandía. I’m excited to share what I have learned so far!

The blog post I reference in the video is ‘The Language of Flowers: Breaking into the Boys Club of Botany & the Flowery Dress as a Feminist Act’

Folklore, ghosts, London, Museum of the Home, Romany Reagan, witches

Live Talk in London, Sat 1st October 2022 — Witches, Faeries & Ghosts: Our Dreamscapes of Legend & Lore

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Saturday October 1st, 6pm at the Museum of the Home, 136 Kingsland Road, London E2 8EA

Tickets £7 and includes wine!

TICKETS AVAILABLE HERE

Where do we go when we dream?

Throughout history, using legend and lore, we have sought to understand this night-time adventure. Witches have been condemned as the conjurers of nightmare sleep paralysis and faeries blamed for time loss or sleep-walking; we convince ourselves that ghostly spirits visit us at night with messages of hope or portents of danger.

The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli, 1781 

In this illustrated lecture, Dr Romany Reagan will explore the creatures and meanings that fill our dreamscapes, from mediaeval British horrors to 19th-century curiosities and theories—and how these nocturnal happenings can play out in our waking lives.

Dr. Romany Reagan is an Arts Council England-funded research fellow with Museum of the Home, studying the hidden histories of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, from mediaeval cunning women and herbal witchcraft to 19th-century feminist botany. Her research has explored the layers of heritage within Abney Park cemetery and an occult literary heritage of London’s Stoke Newington area, as well as ‘earth mystery’, psychogeography and folklore, legends and lore from the British Isles.

This event is part of the Museum of the Home’s Festival of Sleep, running from June through September 2022.

London, Museums, Romany Reagan, Wedding

Our Wedding Is Featured in Rock n Roll Bride Magazine! ‘Faded Arcadia Wedding with Historic Inspiration’

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Romany found Andy under a tree on Hampstead Heath at an ‘Alternative Picnic’ and a year and a half later they were engaged. Their wedding concept was inspired by rich fabrics, autumnal colours and the history of their venue, The Charterhouse in London.

Read full article and see gallery of photos on Rock n Roll Bride magazine

Folklore Thursday, London

‘Terra Incognita’: Tracing Literary Occult Pathways in North London

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By Romany Reagan

North London has quite a gothic pedigree. From Bram Stoker’s Lucy Westenra stalking Hampstead Heath to Stephen King’s terrifying Crouch End ‘Towen’, an otherworldly atmosphere lingers here. The region has captured the imagination of writers through the ages, casting the area as both friend and foe.

William Blake felt uneasy in North London. Shortly before his death, in a letter to painter and friend John Linnell, Blake said: “When I was young, Hampstead, Highgate, Hornsey, Muswell Hill, and even Islington, and all places North of London, always laid me up the day after and sometimes two or three days.”[1] It is rather strange that he kept going back, if these persistent physical ailments always followed the journey. Perhaps there was something about the otherworldliness of North London that drew Blake almost as a siren call.

Read the full article on FolkloreThursday.

 

Photo credit: Romany Reagan

Feminism, Folklore Thursday

Tattooed Ladies: Between Myth & Truth, from Burma to Barbie, the Feminist Evolution of ‘Monster Beauty’

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By Romany Reagan

Everyone knows: tattoos are for convicts, prostitutes, and drunken sailors. Any woman who dares get one is destined to live fast and die young. Harlots of the saucest degree. Her only job prospects are the circus sideshow or a biker’s Old Lady.

Or so we think…

Tattooed women have meant many things over the past several hundred years that have nothing to do these stereotypes: an emblem of the aristocracy, an unlikely international impulse towards sisterhood, and a mark of feminism. 

But before I dive into what the tattoo is, let’s explore what it is not. Debunking myths is, to me, one of the most thrilling aspects of historical research.  So here we go…

Continue reading Tattooed Ladies: Between Myth & Truth, from Burma to Barbie, the Feminist Evolution of ‘Monster Beauty’ →

Audio Walk, Ghost Story, spiritualism

Haunted Bloomsbury — Audio Walk Tracing Spiritualism, Ghost Stories & the London Occult

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By Romany Reagan

Whether it was considered an intellectual pursuit, a genuine religious order, a feminist flag, or just a grand excuse for a gin-soaked party, Spiritualism was a crucible where many of the conflicting and newly forming ideas of the late Victorian era brewed and clashed. At one point it was the domain of the intellectual elite, who held literary salons discussing Swedenborg and Blake. At the other extreme it was reverse colonialism gone mad, with female liberation, drunkenness—and worst of all Americanness—running rampant through England. 

The Victorians had long been fascinated by a wide range of phenomena that might loosely be termed the ‘occult’; and earlier manifestations of interest in spirituality had made their mark during the first half of the 19th century. Tracing Spiritualism’s lines of origin, we’re driven through these occult pathways into the heart of Bloomsbury. Button your greatcoat and steel your nerves as your tour guide Dr Romany Reagan leads you on an audio journey through the Bloomsbury backstreets into a landscape of gothic intrigues and Victorian ghost stories.