Meeting of the Morbid Minds - The Horror of Becoming

• Type: Online event
• Dates/Times: Sat 4 Oct & Sun 5 Oct 2025, 15:00–20:00 GMT each day
• Organizer: NightTide Magazine (virtual)
• Time zone note: All times listed in GMT (London time).

About the Symposium: NightTide Magazine presents Meeting of the Morbid Minds: The Horror of Becoming, a two-day virtual symposium dedicated to the rigorous, creative study of horror. Across keynotes, talks, and panels, we’ll examine the transformation of the self, the body, the community, and the universe through four subgenres that reshape how we think about fear and existence.

Themes we’ll explore

• The Monstrous Mind: Psychological Horror and the Fear of the Self - Madness, trauma, perception, and the instability of the human psyche.
• Folk Horror and the Fear of the Outsider - Community, ritual, isolation, and the friction between tradition and modernity.
• Cosmic Horror and the Limits of Comprehension - Vastness, dread, and the curse of knowing too much.
• Body Horror and the Politics of Transformation - Mutation, autonomy, identity, sexuality, and technological intrusion.

Why NightTide? NightTide champions rigorous horror analysis and elevates diverse voices—scholars, critics, and creators who interrogate folklore, fear, and transformation in culture. This symposium brings that mission into a live, shared space for collective thinking.

Who is it for? Scholars, students, programmers, critics, authors, filmmakers, festival teams, educators, and horror fans who love deep dives.

Accessibility & Format - Closed captions enabled for all live sessions; recordings available to All-Access pass holders for 30 days. Session chat moderated. Content warnings will be provided at the start of the session, where relevant.

Featuring:

Sally Campbell: “My body keeps fucking it up”: Trying to Conceive as a State of Becoming in Dead Ringers (2023).

Sally Campbell is a London-based editor and recent graduate of Birkbeck, University of London, where her master’s thesis examined representations of involuntary childlessness in horror. She has presented on this subject at Durham University, Birkbeck, and the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival Brain Binge (2024). Sally has also contributed a chapter on Dead Ringers to a forthcoming collection on liminal horror and served on the FGBFF feature jury in 2025.

Ray Walton: A Complicated Victim in The Servant (1963) – Control and Vulnerability

Ray Walton (They/Them) is a neurodivergent film writer and graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University. Passionate about expressing their experiences through writing, Ray connects deeply with cinema and its emotional textures. This is their first movie-based lecture, with a focus on Dirk Bogarde’s role in The Servant. They regularly publish reviews on Letterboxd and Instagram (@10raywalton17).

FOLK HORROR

Siân Pearce: Less-Children and Changelings — Folk Horror, Monster Theory, and Migrant Childhoods

Siân Pierce (she/they) is an immigration solicitor and PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, specializing in work with unaccompanied migrant children and trauma-informed practice. They have authored policy work for the Public Law Project and written extensively on horror and folklore, with publications in NightTide Magazine and their blog The Rules Lawyer. Siân also runs tabletop games as a semi-professional Dungeon Master in South Wales.

BODY HORROR

Jennifer Smith: Unbecoming Woman, Becoming Monster — Transgressive Appetites in Robert Eggers’ The Witch and Nosferatu

Jennifer Smith holds an MA in English and specializes in feminist theory and horror. She has presented at the Popular Culture Association Conference and contributed multiple essays to NightTide Magazine, including work on Stephen King, Ginger Snaps, and ritual in horror. Jennifer teaches literature, poetry, and folklore to middle and high school students, while leading the Literary Love Book Club.

Avie M. Fields, MSCJ: Myths of Final Girls and Black Vessels

Avie M. Fields is a Horror Advocate, crime trends expert, and researcher whose award-winning project, The Horror Advocate, explores horror, equity, and social reform. Recognized by the Mass Cultural Council in 2023, she has lectured internationally, joined Brown Girls Doc Mafia, and begun work on a documentary exploring the representation of bodies and abilities in horror. Avie creates educational resources connecting film literacy with civic change and produces The Horror Advocate’s Guide to Streaming with Intention and video essays on horror sequels.

Allie Lembo: Help, I’m Trapped in a Doll! — Gender, Childhood, and the Forced Dollification Trope

Allie Lembo (she/her) is a Hudson Valley-based writer whose work has appeared in MovieJawn, Insider, Popdust, and NightTide. She explores horror’s intersections with modern history, politics, and pop culture in her newsletter Chocolate Syrup. A baker and dog enthusiast, Allie shares her work at allielembo.com and on Instagram (@allielembo).

Tuğçe Kutlu: Grotesque Metamorphosis — Body Horror, Gender, and the Monstrous Feminine in The Ugly Stepsister

Tuğçe Kutlu is a scholar with dual MAs in Film Studies (UCL) and Turkish Cinema (Ankara University), specializing in trauma, grief, and global horror. A contributor to the Doing Women’s Global Horror Film History Project, she has published in academic journals and presented internationally. She is currently completing her PhD on war and trauma in Palestinian documentaries.

Sam Logan: Teaching Body Horror — A Punk Pedagogy Approach

Sam Logan (he/him), PhD, is a professor at Oregon State University, where he teaches on punk, body horror, and disability studies. His research explores rights-based pediatric rehabilitation and mobility interventions for children. Also a fiction writer and co-founding editor of SLUGGER Magazine, Sam uses horror pedagogy as a lens for empowerment.

Claudia Tom: Gender, Self-Perception, and Body HorrorClaudia Tom (she/it) is an Environmental Science major from California whose interest in body horror began with friends and expanded into studies of gender and identity. They are fascinated by horror’s intersections with self-perception and often explore unconventional topics through music and research rabbit holes.

Cullen Wade: Adaptive Aquatics — Disability, Eugenics, and The Horror Film Swimming Pool

Cullen Wade (he/him) is a writer, teacher, and author of the forthcoming S(p)lasher Flicks: The Swimming Pool in Horror Cinema (McFarland, 2025). His film criticism has appeared in Paste Magazine, Horror Homeroom, and NightTide, while his fiction appears in anthologies such as This Exquisite Topology. He lives in Virginia with his family and rescue dogs.

Matt Rogerson: Religious Trauma Syndrome and the Horror of Unbecoming in the European Zombie Filone

The son of a Video Nasties pirate, Matt Rogerson writes on the intersections of horror cinema and Catholicism. His work appears in releases from Arrow Video, Severin, and Umbrella Entertainment. His forthcoming books include The Vatican versus Horror Movies (2025) and Fulci’s Inferno (2025), both with McFarland. He is Managing Editor of 1428 Publishing, whose first book, Darkest Margins, will be released in late 2025.

COSMIC HORROR

Mo Moshaty: Grief Beyond the Stars — Loss and the Lure of the Unknowable in The Beyond, Event Horizon, and Color Out of Space

Mo Moshaty is a horror writer, lecturer, and producer, and Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine. She co-created 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror with Nyx Horror Collective and Shudder, which won the 2022 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award. Her work centers on women’s trauma in horror cinema, with lectures across the US, UK, and Europe. Mo’s fiction includes Love the Sinner and her forthcoming Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment (Tenebrous Press, Oct 21, 2025), followed by The Annex of the Obscure: The Afterlife (2026).