Profs and Pints Meetup-Metro DC

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “The Haunted House,” on scary dwellings and their grip on us, with Brittany Warman, former instructor at Ohio State University and co-founder of The Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/haunted-house .]

The haunted house has long held a place in the imaginations of those who enjoy a bit of uncanny terror, posing the ultimate threat to security and normalcy. It’s where something familiar becomes strange and unsettling, even threatening. You initially might have thought you're safe—after all, you should be safe indoors—but you're not. Sanctuary and shelter have turned against you. The very walls trouble your dreams.

Come tour some of the most terrifying real estate ever imagined with Brittany Warman, who has earned herself a large and devoted following among Profs and Pints audiences with excellent past talks on folklore, fairly tales, and horror.

In the perfect event to kick off your Spooky Season, she’ll show you the fascinating folkloric, literary, and real-world history of the haunted house. She’ll leave you wondering about the creepy old places in your town with doors that you’re afraid to approach on Halloween, and she might even leave you eager to turn your own home into such an eerie dwelling.

She’ll begin by discussing the scary structures of fairy tales, such as gingerbread houses and Bluebeard's castle, exploring how the early stories told about them influenced the terrifying tales of Henry James' Bly Manor and Edgar Allen Poe's House of Usher. She’ll consider the impact of haunted spaces on the Gothic and horror genres and explain why haunted houses are often so opulent and so decadent in their decay.

Among the questions Dr. Warman will tackle: What might the haunted house have to say about history, culture, and society? What draws us, again and again, to haunted houses, making us want to visit them, find their ghosts, and uncover their stories?

She'll conclude by examining how these tales still resonate today, in haunted houses both purportedly real and those decidedly fake, meant for shocks and thrills. Even Disney's Haunted Mansion ride will make an appearance. It’s a scary world after all. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: An abandoned house near Pocomoke City, Md., in 2008. (Photo by Matt Trostle / Creative Commons.)

Profs and Pints DC presents: “Washington’s Spookiest Days,” on local seances and other efforts to communicate with the beyond during the early 20th century, with Mark Benbow, lecturer in American history at George Washington University and former historian at the Woodrow Wilson House Museum.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/dc-spooky-days .]

What do Harry Houdini, Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Conan Doyle, the famous Washington brewmaster Christian Heurich, and the spirit of a Native-American “Princess” named Monotowah have in common?

They’re all part of an eerie chapter of Washington history, the 1910s and 1920s, when seances were the focus of both harmless parlor games and serious religious practices and when skeptics of the occult clashed with its believers in the halls of Congress.

Learn about this fascinating time with Mark Benbow, a historian who wrote two books on Wilson and one on Heurich, and who has given several excellent Profs and Pints talks in the past.

He’ll discuss how a Spiritualist movement that arose the previous century and a spike in interest in contacting the dead following the First World War left many Washingtonians trying to reach those on “the other side.”

Among the fascinating figures he’ll summon up: Madame Marcia Champney, a popular DC medium, who claimed to have visited Edith Wilson and other First Ladies in the White House. She bragged of having fatally cursed debunker Harry Houdini during a Congressional hearing in which he testified in favor of legislation banning seances.

Edith Wilson, Woodrow’s second wife, was not the only believer. Her brother Randolph hosted seances in their S Street home using a Ouija board and color-coded lights and music, to contact wise spirits including a Native American maiden and a “Hindoo” mystic.

Benbow will share a few ghost stories from his time as the Woodrow Wilson House Historian and even let you know where the house’s “haunted” bathroom is. He’ll leave you with a better sense of where to look for ghosts when Halloween arrives. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image by Canva.

Profs and Pints DC presents: “The Everyday Supernatural,” a discussion of how folklorists and anthropologists view our belief in not easily explained beings, forces, and experiences, with Benjamin Gatling, folklorist, scholar of belief and everyday religion, and associate professor of English at George Mason University.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/profs-pints-dc-the-everyday-supernatural .]

Three out of four Americans believe in some aspect of the supernatural such as astrology, telepathy, clairvoyance, or communication with the dead. About half attest to having personally had a mystical experience.
The supernatural isn’t something strange or extraordinary. It’s part of the everyday lives of most people around the world, and it’s fundamental to virtually all cultural traditions.

Why do people believe in the supernatural? Where do these beliefs come from and what purposes do they serve?

Come to DC’s Penn Social to hear such questions tackled by Benjamin Gatling, who teaches a course on folklore and the supernatural, studies various cultures’ oral traditions, and serves as editor of Folklorica: the Journal of the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Folklore Association.

In discussing the nature of supernatural beliefs, he’ll talk about how our experiences are inexact and ambiguous and how we operate on incomplete information. In many ways belief in the supernatural represents an affirmation that human understanding extends beyond empirical observation and that we live in an imprecise, infinite, irrational, and mysterious world.

The goal of folklorists and anthropologists studying such beliefs is not to prove or disprove them, but rather to understand various peoples’ lived experiences and gain insight on how individuals make sense of the uncanny around them. Dr. Gatling will talk about such researchers’ findings in terms of how such beliefs are expressed in dream interpretation or the stories people tell about encounters with ghosts or their relationship with the dead.

He’ll talk about visits to haunted places and touch upon subjects such as UFO sightings, encounters with the divine, and magic in our everyday lives. Given that October and Spooky Season will be upon us, he’ll also discuss how individuals engage the supernatural in various Halloween traditions. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: A deck of 22 Tarot cards. Photo by Roberto Viesi / Wikimedia Commons.

Profs and Pints Northern Virginia presents: “It Came from Within,” a look at the real-life psychological disorders linked to some of your favorite movie frights, with Brian A. Sharpless, former assistant professor at Penn State University and Washington State University, editor of Unusual and Rare Psychological Disorders, and author of Monsters on the Couch: The Real Psychological Disorders Behind Your Favorite Horror Movies.

[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at https://www.ticketleap.events/tickets/profsandpints/nv-movie-monsters .]

Gear up for Halloween with something that will leave you even more rattled by your favorite horror films: A look at real-life psychological conditions connected to movie monsters.

Clinical psychology has a lot to teach us about horror, and horror movies reveal a lot about both psychological distress and some of the fundamental fears that go along with being human. Join Brian Sharpless, a clinical psychologist with a big following among Profs and Pints fans, for a talk that will give new meaning to the phrase “It’s all in your mind.”

In a talk that draws from history, folklore, and film studies, Dr. Sharpless will discuss what clinical psychology and psychiatry have to say about various movie monsters. Starting with those from the golden age of cinema, he’ll discuss famous fiends such as Dracula, and why some people today seek to drink others’ blood. You’ll learn how professionals can detect Renfield's syndrome in people who try to conceal having it, as well as how real vampires behave differently according to sex.

Moving ahead to more recent films such as The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and It Follows, he’ll talk about the delusional misidentification disorders, surprisingly common in certain elderly populations, which involves the belief that loved ones have been kidnapped and replaced with imposters. You’ll learn about the relationship between sleep paralysis and films such as Mara or Dead Awake, and how movies depicting alien abduction or “shadow people” are tied to psychological conditions.

Finally, Dr. Sharpless will look at what drives certain monstrous behaviors, such as cannibalism. Just in case you might someday be unlucky enough to find yourself in a “survival cannibalism” situation, Dr. Sharpless will give you practical tips for not becoming someone’s next meal.

You'll end up watching horror movies differently and, perhaps, wondering what might be going on in the heads of people seated in the theater near you. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: An 1810 engraving by Jean-Pierre Simon depicts a vision like those often associated with sleep paralysis (Wellcome Trust / Wikimedia Commons).