Terror and Terroir: The Geography of Horror
Panel Discussion with Kenneth Hite (moderator), DB Spitzer, Robert Lloyd Parry, Sean Branney, Adam Scott Glancy.
Lovecraft famously incorporated real places, and the real feelings and geography of imaginary places, into his fiction. How does location strengthen horror, in Lovecraft and in others, and how can geographical realism help feed horrific imagination?
Kenneth Hite has designed, written, or co-authored 100+ roleplaying works, including Trail of Cthulhu, Bookhounds of London, The Dracula Dossier, the Delta Green RPG, Night’s Black Agents, The Fall of Delta Green, and Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition. His other works include the two-volume Tour de Lovecraft, Cthulhu 101, The Cthulhu Wars for Osprey, the “Lost in Lovecraft” column for Weird Tales, an annotated edition of Chambers’ The King in Yellow, and four Lovecraftian children’s books. Half of the Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff podcast and an Artistic Associate at Chicago’s WildClaw Theatre, he lives in Chicago with two Lovecraftian cats and his non-Lovecraftian wife, Sheila.
DB Spitzer is a Podcaster and Portland native. Co host, editor and producer of 'People's Guide to the Cthulhu Mythos'. Spitzer's podcast focuses on small press weird fiction and information about the Cthulhu Mythos including writers and creatures.
Robert Lloyd Parry is an actor and writer who specializes in literary storytelling: theatrical performances based upon texts from the golden age of the short story in English, approx 1880 - 1930. Since 2005 he has been touring the UK with the The M R James Project, a series of solo performances which bring to life the masterpieces of the father of the English Ghost Story. In 2015 he appeared as M R James in Mark Gatiss’s BBC documentary M R James: Ghost Writer. He has himself produced, written and presented two documentaries based on James’s work: “Wits in Felixstowe” and “Dim Presences.” Between 2013 – 16 he toured his adaptation of H G Wells’s The Time Machine around the UK, with the support of Arts Council England. He regularly performs short stories in pubs and libraries throughout the land, works by the likes of H G Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, Saki, Arthur Machen, Kenneth Graham and E F Benson.
Sean is a producer, actor, director and writer with the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society which he runs with his nefarious colleague, Andrew Leman. He was intimately involved in the creation of the motion pictures The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness, nineteen episodes of Dark Adventure Radio Theatre, and many other Lovecraftian projects. With his work at the HPLHS, he's created many other Lovecraftian entertainments. Sean also produces and directs live theatre in Los Angeles. He plays ice hockey and has four chinchillas.
In 1998 Scott Glancy left a perfectly functional career as an attorney to join up with the role-playing game publisher Pagan Publishing, the nerd equivalent of running away to join the Foreign Legion. Today Scott is the man in charge of Pagan Publishing (much in the same sense that the last surviving legionnaire can be said to be in command of Fort Zinderhoff). Pagan’s most recent project is “Horrors of War,” an anthology of scenarios set during the Great War for the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game. Scott is a contributing author on the award-winning Delta Green series of Call of Cthulhu rpg supplements and has had Lovecraftian fiction published in several short story collections including the recent "Book of Cthulhu II," "Shotguns v. Cthulhu," and the upcoming “Swords v. Cthulhu.” You can hear his recorded games sessions on Role-Playing Public Radio, and listen to him bloviate on the Unspeakable Podcast and Podcast at Ground Zero.