By Mo Moshaty

A Virtual Horror Symposium by NightTide Magazine

October 4–5, 2025 | 3:00 PM – 8:00 PM GMT

Horror is not just a genre; it’s a lens through which we confront transformation, grief, identity, and the unknowable. NightTide Magazine is proud to launch its first-ever horror symposium, Meeting of the Morbid Minds: The Horror of Becoming. This two-day virtual event gathers scholars, writers, critics, and creators to explore how horror reflects the deepest fears of becoming, and unbecoming.

From body horror to folk terrors, cosmic dread to psychological hauntings, our speakers will unravel the ways horror exposes the fractures in culture and the human psyche. With voices ranging from emerging critics to seasoned academics, the symposium is both a celebration of horror studies and a vital conversation about what it means to live, and transform, in monstrous times.

Scheduled Speakers (First Wave)

PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR & SOCIAL HAUNTINGS

Sally Campbell — “My body keeps fucking it up”: Trying to Conceive as a State of Becoming in Dead Ringers (2023)
Sally Campbell is a London-based editor and recent graduate of Birkbeck, University of London, where her thesis explored representations of involuntary childlessness in horror. She has presented at Durham University, Birkbeck, and the Final Girls Berlin Film Festival Brain Binge (2024). She has contributed a chapter on Dead Ringers to a forthcoming collection on liminal horror and served on the FGBFF jury in 2025.

Ray Walton — A Complicated Victim in The Servant (1963): Control and Vulnerability
Ray Walton is a neurodivergent film writer and graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University. Passionate about expressing their experiences through writing, Ray connects deeply with cinema and its emotional textures. This is their first movie-based lecture, with a focus on Dirk Bogarde’s role in The Servant. They regularly publish reviews on Letterboxd and Instagram (@10raywalton17).

Siân Pearce — Less-Children and Changelings: Folk Horror, Monster Theory, and Migrant Childhoods
Siân Pierce (she/they) is an immigration solicitor and PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, specializing in work with unaccompanied migrant children and trauma-informed practice. Their horror writing includes work for NightTide Magazine and their blog The Rules Lawyer. They also run tabletop games in South Wales as a semi-professional Dungeon Master.

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BODY HORROR

Allie Lembo — Help, I’m Trapped in a Doll! Exploring the Loss of Bodily Autonomy Relating to Gender and Childhood in the Forced Dollification Trope
Allie Lembo (she/her) is a Hudson Valley-based writer with bylines in MovieJawn, Insider, Popdust, and NightTide. Her newsletter Chocolate Syrup explores horror’s intersections with history, politics, and pop culture. She also bakes elaborate cakes and shares life with her dog, Frankenstein.

Cullen Wade — Adaptive Aquatics: Disability, Eugenics, and the Horror Film Swimming Pool
Cullen Wade (he/him) is a writer and teacher from Virginia. His book S(p)lasher Flicks: The Swimming Pool in Horror Cinema is forthcoming from McFarland (2025). His criticism appears in Paste Magazine, NightTide, and Horror Homeroom. He lives with his wife, cat, and rescue dogs.

Jennifer Smith — Unbecoming Woman, Becoming Monster: Transgressive Appetites in Robert Eggers’ The Witch and Nosferatu
Jennifer Smith holds an MA in English and specializes in feminist horror studies. She has presented at the Popular Culture Association Conference and contributed essays to NightTide. She currently teaches literature, mythology, and folklore while leading the Literary Love Book Club.

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COSMIC HORROR

Mo Moshaty — Grief Beyond the Stars: Loss and the Lure of the Unknowable in The Beyond, Event Horizon, and Color Out of Space
Mo Moshaty is a horror writer, lecturer, and producer, and the Editor-in-Chief of NightTide Magazine. She co-created 13 Minutes of Horror: Sci-Fi Horror with Nyx Horror Collective and Shudder, which won the 2022 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award. Her fiction includes Love the Sinner and the forthcoming Clairviolence: Tales of Tarot and Torment (Tenebrous Press, Oct 21, 2025), followed by The Annex of the Obscure: The Afterlife (2026).

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BODY HORROR II

Avie M. Fields, MSCJ — Myths of Final Girls and Black Vessels
Avie M. Fields is a Horror Advocate and researcher whose award-winning project The Horror Advocate examines horror’s intersections with social reform and equity. Recognized by the Mass Cultural Council in 2023, she has lectured internationally, joined Brown Girls Doc Mafia, and is currently developing a documentary on representation of bodies and abilities in horror.

Tuğçe Kutlu — Grotesque Metamorphosis: Body Horror, Gender, and the Monstrous Feminine in The Ugly Stepsister
Tugce Kutlu holds dual MAs in Film Studies (UCL) and Turkish Cinema (Ankara). She has presented globally, contributed to the Doing Women’s Global Horror Film History Project, and published in academic journals. She is currently completing her PhD on trauma in Palestinian documentaries.

Sam Logan & Claudia Tom — Teaching Body Horror Through Punk Pedagogy and the Classroom Experience of a Trans Woman
Sam Logan (he/him), PhD, is a professor at Oregon State University who teaches punk, body horror, and disability studies. He is also a fiction writer and co-editor of SLUGGER Magazine.
Claudia Tom (she/it) is an Environmental Science major from California whose interest in body horror centers on gender and self-perception. Together, they bring a dual perspective of instructor and student into the horror classroom.

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BODY HORROR III: FAITH, FLESH, TRANSFORMATION

Matt Rogerson — Religious Trauma Syndrome and the Horror of Unbecoming in the European Zombie Filone
Matt Rogerson is the son of a Video Nasties pirate and writes on horror and Catholicism. His work has appeared in releases from Arrow Video, Severin, and Umbrella Entertainment. His books The Vatican versus Horror Movies (2025) and Fulci’s Inferno (2025) will be published by McFarland. He is also Managing Editor of 1428 Publishing, debuting with Darkest Margins (2025).

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The horror of becoming is never simple, it’s psychological, bodily, folkloric, and cosmic. Over two days, Meeting of the Morbid Minds will showcase how horror interrogates our deepest transformations, whether through grief, faith, gender, or the unknown. This symposium is not just an academic event; it’s a gathering place for all who believe horror matters, as art, as criticism, and as cultural mirror.

Join us October 4–5, 2025, as we open the doors to NightTide’s first symposium and invite you to step inside the morbid imagination.
Find Tickets Here!!