Do you enjoy reading ghost stories alone at night? Have you ever binged an entire true crime series? Or do you unwind watching horror films like The Exorcist, or reading the supernatural novels of Stephen King? The Dublin Gothic Podcast is a series looking at the intersection between art, psychology, folklore, architecture, natural history and Ireland’s urban gothic writing.

In this episode, Dr Katie Mishler interviews horror aficionados and experts Dr Noreen Giffney and Brian J. Showers about the psychology of horror, the lasting impact of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s ghostly terrors, and why we find comfort in experiencing fear.

Listen to Sheridan Le Fanu’s The Familiar here.

Dr Katie Mishler is an Irish Research Council Enterprise Partnership Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2022) in collaboration with the UCD Centre for Cultural Analytics and Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI). Her current project, Mapping Gothic Dublin: 1820-1900, researches the relationship between Dublin’s urban history and the development of Ireland’s literary gothic tradition.

The research for this podcast is supported by Dr Mishler’s postdoctoral project Mapping Gothic Dublin: 1820-1900, funded by an Irish Research Council Enterprise Partnership Fellowship.

Producers Ian Dunphy & Benedict Schlepper-Connolly
Sound Ian Dunphy
Music CAPE