- Classic horror films
- Talks
- Locally made short films
October 24th 25th & 26th
Our speakers
If you've attended CULTure Babylon’s previous events, you’ll know that we put the CULT into culture, by showing great films and further exploring their themes with the insight of our brilliant speakers.
This year is no exception and we're proud to introduce some truly outstanding speakers once again.
Selene Paxton-Brooks
After the success of last year's talk on the making of Dead of Night, we're delighted to be welcoming Selen Paxton-Brooks back for a second year.
Selene is a lifelong classic horror film devotee who has immersed herself in mysticism and folklore since the age of seven.
She has a First-Class honours degree in Early childhood studies, where she wrote a thesis on Faeries and Fairy Tales. She has had several fantasy stories published, writes regular film reviews, and has a bi-monthly column about film tie-in books in We Belong Dead magazine.
She is a Rondo nominated artist, who dabbles in black-and-white nightmarish illustration.
She also runs Great Yarmouth’s ‘50 Years of Classic British Horror’ every July.
Gavin Baddeley
Gavin Baddeley is an English writer specialising in the devilish and decadent, Gothic and macabre, and has been a favourite speaker at Fear in the Fens since its start.
In addition to penning books such as:
Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship and Rock and Roll
The Gospel of Filth: A Bible of Decadence and Darkness
Goth: Vamps and Dandies
Goth Chic
Vampire Lovers
Dissecting Marilyn Manson
God's Assassins: The Medieval Roots of Terrorism
Saucy Jack: The Elusive Ripper
Vlad the Impaler,
he has also written for a diverse range of periodicals and newspapers, including the Observer, Knave, Metal Hammer and Medieval History magazine.
Gavin was personally ordained as a priest in the Church of Satan by the ‘Black Pope’ himself, Anton LaVey, and has subsequently made numerous media appearances and advised sundry bodies as a leading expert on the dark arts.
Samantha George
Sam George is Associate Professor of Research at the University of Hertfordshire and the Co-Convenor of the Open Graves, Open Minds Project.
Her research focusses on the intersection between folklore and the gothic.
Her books include Representations of Vampires, 2013, In the Company of Wolves: Werewolves: Wolves and Wild Children, 2020 & The Legacy of John Polidori: The Romantic Vampire and Its Progeny, 2024.
She is the co-editor of the first ever issue of the journal Gothic Studies on vampires (2013) and werewolves (2019).
Sam is a leading spokesperson for the contemporary gothic; her interviews have appeared in newspapers from The Guardian and The Independent to the Sydney Morning Herald, The South China Post, and the Wall Street Journal. She’s a regular contributor to The Conversation, amassing 261,802 reads for her lively and unusual articles on vampires, werewolves and fairies.
Her unusual area of research has seen her appearing at London Month of the Dead , the Edinburgh Festival and Living Frankenstein, and guesting on the BBC World Service’s ‘The Forum’ on Dracula, and the BFI’s Blood and Celluloid Festival.
She has recorded an obituary of the Gothic writer Anne Rice for BBC Radio 4’s Last Word, and appeared on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking on Varney the Vampire.
She was a guest on Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time on John Polidori’s ‘The Vampyre’. Sam is affectionately known on social media as the ‘Coffin Boffin’; she shares her research into folklore and the gothic with her 33K followers @DrSamGeorge1.
Sam is currently completing a book on the folklore of the Shadow in nineteenth-century literature and writing a history of gothic fairies for Bloomsbury. She uses her research into wolf folklore and werewolf myth to promote ecological conservation, working with the UK Wolf Conservation Trust to help inform public perceptions of wolves.