Halloweenist: Events This Week

By Hazel Last edited 185 months ago
Halloweenist: Events This Week
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London: full of people who look like witches or are talking to the spirits of the dead and damned all the time. So at Halloween, why not join in with them?

TONIGHT

Start with the Tribe of Avalon’s Samhain (that’s Celtic / pagan for Halloween) gathering tonight, starting 7.15pm for 7.30pm start (don’t keep the Goddess waiting), at Atlantis Bookshop, 49a Museum Street, London, WC1. The ceremony will celebrate darker aspects of the Goddess; attendees are welcome to bring something that signifies Her for the ritual’s altar. £5 / £3 concessions, visit their yahoo group or contact the Tribe of Avalon.

All this week is the London Ghost Festival, with talk on Highgate ghosts, haunted theatres and a haunted boat trip, among much more, put on by London Paranormal.

THURSDAY 30 OCTOBER: ALL HALLOWS EVE EVE

Our favourite London horror story magazine One Eye Grey teams up with the South East London Folklore Society for The Dark Arts Walk around New Cross and Deptford. This ghost walk begins at 7pm at The Hobgoblin Pub, opposite New Cross Gate Station before landing for a stiff one at the, (legend in its own right) Dog & Bell. Ends 8.30pm-ish. Email to book.

If you’re of a less earthy, outdoors bent, occult film-making enfant uncomfortable Kenneth Anger will be at a showing of his films, including Lucifer Rising and Scorpio Rising at London Bridge bolt-hole Shunt on 30th October, and participating in a Q&A, for £5.

FRIDAY 31 OCTOBER: HALLOWEEN

Halloween night itself is the night of the Ceremony at Crossbones, the shrine on the prostitute and pauper’s graveyard on Redcross Way (London Bridge). Borough poet John Constable was visited in 1996 by the Goose, a spirit/goddess manifest in Southwark who compelled John to begin a Halloween ritual at the site. At the Crossbones Graveyard, prostitutes, paupers and other outsiders are remembered and celebrated by John and company with magic, poetry, procession and song. Starts this year at The Hop Cellars, 24 Southwark Street SE1 (London Bridge tube), arrive 6.45pm for 7pm start, £10; £7 concessions.

Fancy offering far less sympathy for the departed? Join the anarcho-pagans and witchy-lefties in Docklands instead, gathering outside 25 Canary Wharf, the now cold, empty building of Lehman Brothers, to dance on the grave of capitalism. 5pm to midnight, but as it’s an anarcho, don’t worry about getting there too early. This event has a Facebook page. Continue after the jump for the day after Halloween...

SATURDAY 1 NOVEMBER: ALL SOULS DAY

All Souls Day but there’s no respite: Fortean Times fans can gather at University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street for their annual Unconvention (awkward buggers) on 1st & 2nd November. Weekend tickets £36 plus booking fee, expect Spring Heeled Jack, “Burlesque of the Victorian Séance” plus of UFOs, rains of beasts and many more weird and wonderful things.

To finish this darkest of weeks, before fleeing back home to the kittens and bunnies, head to The Day of the Dead at edgy-arty venue the Horse Hospital from 7.30pm. Hosted by connoisseur purveyors of weirdness Strange Attractor and Dreamflesh, there will be discussions about death in many forms, from DMT to shamanism. £7 entry.

WEDNESDAY 29 OCTOBER: BONUS SECRET MATERIAL

One Eye Grey is having a launch party for issue 6 at a secret-ish and very cool location on 29th October. Book in advance only, email to book, be ready to be somewhere in west London for 7-9pm.

By Scott Wood, image by Hazel Tsoi-Wiles

Last Updated 27 October 2008