Halloween podcast episodes

In part one of our Halloween special, Professor Owen Davies tackles listener questions on the haunted historical festivities surrounding 31 October

In part two of our spooky Halloween special, Professor Owen Davies tackles listener questions on the evolving mythology of our most popular Halloween monsters

Owen Davies answers your top questions about the history of witchcraft – from torture and trials to beliefs about magical powers

Kate Summerscale delves into a tale of the supernatural in London just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Marion Gibson discusses the methods and motivations of “witch finders” who sought out supernatural wrongdoing in Stuart Britain

Dan Jones shares a ghost story from the Middle Ages and explains what it might tell us about medieval attitudes to the afterlife

Marking the 125th anniversary of the publication of Dracula, Roger Luckhurst explores the enduring appeal of Bram Stoker’s vampire thriller

Malcolm Gaskill speaks about a little-known 1651 witchcraft case from Springfield, Massachusetts

From necromancy and the underworld to getting rid of troublesome spirits, Irving Finkel discusses ghost beliefs in ancient Mesopotamia

Roger Luckhurst explores how the ever-evolving Gothic genre has been used to explore society’s anxieties over time

Will Pooley delves into the strange and surprising history of witchcraft beliefs in France, from the Revolution to the Second World War

Join us for the first episode of our series on the Salem witch trials, one of the most fascinating moments in American history…

In order to understand why the Salem witch trials happened, we need to get to grips with how exactly things unfolded over the course of 1692.

In 1692, Salem was a colonial outpost teetering on the edge of a precipice. In this episode we’ll explore what life was like in the New England settlement, and consider whether environmental pressures

Religion was a powerful force at play in the Salem settlement. It not only determined the villagers’ daily routine but their whole outlook on life, influencing how they saw their neighbours and giving shape to their fears

From flying witches to demonic familiars and translucent cats, the Salem villagers believed themselves plagued by a spectrum of supernatural terrors

After the witch trials were over, Salemites had to resume life as normal and come to terms with what had happened. Suspected witches had to go back to living alongside those who had accused them.

The list of failings that could be levelled against the Salem justice system is substantial – from the acceptance of so-called ‘spectral evidence’ to the chaotic scenes that unfolded in the courtroom

Salem was made up of a dense web of social connections – not all of which were harmonious. In fact, it was a community riven with fault lines that threatened to open up into great chasms of conflict

Fourteen of the 19 people hanged for witchcraft at Salem were women. So could their gender – or perhaps their transgression of gender norms – be part of the reason they were targeted?