Ghosts and monsters thrive in online storytelling – but why? What are the interconnections between digital media and the supernatural? And can you become cursed by listening to a podcast? Join Erika Kvistad and Line Henriksen in a discussion of their shared love of online horror stories. The topics range from creepypasta (digital urban legends), to the annual Jezebel Halloween scary story contest, Twitter horror stories, digital haunted houses, and the history of found footage storytelling as well as cursed literature – digital as well as analogue.
Guest star:
Erika Kvistad is associate professor of English at the University of South-East Norway, and works on sexuality, horror, digital narratives, and the nineteenth century. She is currently writing about digital haunted houses, and her most recent publication, in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic (2020), is on haunted spaces in creepypasta and Twitter horror.
Host:
Line Henriksen is postdoctoral researcher at the IT University of Copenhagen and co-founder of the international research and art network The Monster Network. Her research interests include creative methods, hauntology and monster theory, and she is the author of the monograph In the Company of Ghosts – Hauntology, Ethics, Digital Monsters (2016).
Episode credits:
Stories:
- There’s Something on The Stairs by Snarkychu
- Untitled story by Melwithoudiner5
Narrated by Line Henriksen.
Sound-art:
- PhoneRinging.flac by Acclivity of freesound.org, used under an Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported license.
- Spooky Ambiance #1 by KRISTIANKULTA, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
- doorbell.wav by sjturia, used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
- Quickly Walking Up Stairs by deleted_user_7146007, used under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal License.
Monster Talks podcast series credits:
Monster Talks at University of Stavanger.
Artwork by Joanne Teresa Taylor, NettOp, University of Stavanger.
The Monster Talks jingle: Narration and violin by Sara Orning. Voiced by Ingvil Hellstrand, Aino-Kaisa Koistinen, Donna McCormack, Sara Orning and Line Henriksen. Mixed by Line Henriksen. Sound-art:
- Broken printer, stalled machine.wav by SpliceSound, used under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal License.
- Knock_the_door.wav by Anagar, used under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal License.
The Monster Network 