Gates of the Abode - A season of talks and workshops on death, departure and the unseen at Abney Park; this lecture is part of the Tales of Departure series.
Step into the shadowed avenues of Abney Park Cemetery for an evening exploring one of Victorian London's obsessions: photographing the dead.
It's 1872, and a new phase of British Spiritualism is developing. Driven by the Victorian need for evidence of the afterlife, the collodion process of early photography seemed to hold the key to ghost manifestation — a potential upgrade for Spiritualism from faith to science.
Few places suit this story better than Abney Park. Charles Dickens told a ghost story here at the graveside of his friend William Hone, whose funeral he attended in 1842. Edgar Allan Poe, once a schoolboy on neighbouring Church Street, haunts the grounds in spirit through his tales of doubles and hauntings. Daniel Defoe, credited with writing the first modern ghost story, lived within sight of the cemetery's gates. And among the graves themselves lies Georgiana Eagle, a clairvoyant medium, promoting herself as a spiritualist before the movement had even properly begun.
This talk explores the concept of capturing spirits on camera, and the deceptions of the first UK spirit photographer, unmasked in the 1870s by none other than the Psychic and Spiritualistic societies themselves.
Biography:
Alessandra Curtis is a British-Italian folklorist, with a background in archaeology, driven by a passion for material culture and London history. Drawing on a wealth of social history and curious details, she explores the forgotten meanings attached to every-day items that tell stories of ordinary people, often overlooked in conventional records.
Meeting point:
Please meet at the Harriet Delph room, next to the cafe, at the Stoke Newington High Street entrance.
Please arrive 10 - 15 minutes before the start time of 7:00pm.
Access information:
The Harriet Delph room is located next to the Abney Park Cafe.
There is level access at the High Street entrance to Abney Park.
Accessible toilet facilities are available.