Book Talk: Folklore, History and the Stories We Tell About Ourselves

The talk in one sentence

A forensic, funny and quietly subversive evening exploring why Sussex ghost stories and folk traditions are more historically revealing, and more relevant to the modern world, than anyone gives them credit for.

What the talk argues

Disney owns the Little Mermaid.

Nobody owns the Knucker.

That is not a trivial distinction. Folklore is fundamentally democratic: no corporation holds the copyright, no single author controls the canon.

The stories are messy, contradictory, locally specific, and frequently revised – because they were made by ordinary people to make sense of their world. They reflect real anxieties, real landscapes and real historical events, often in disguise.

‘Every tall tale is a historical statement.

You just have to know how to read it.’

Using the Untruth Seekers’ three-tier evidential framework – Documented, Suspected, Invented – the talk moves from the archaeology of Jack in the Green’s contested origins to a Hastings churchyard ghost story whose supernatural dressing conceals a real and morally complicated local history.

Along the way: why fishermen won’t say ‘rabbit’ near their boats, what the Elder Mother is actually protecting, and why the county’s solution to a dragon problem was a poisoned pie.

The argument beneath it all: local folklore is active resistance to the flattening of culture. These stories belong to a specific place in a way that mass culture never can.

The Pharisees – Sussex’s peculiarly misnamed fairies, Biblical sectarians dancing in the fields because a folklorist misheard the local accent – exist only in this county, in this dialect, through this specific linguistic accident. You cannot franchise that. You cannot make it into a theme park ride. It is too particular, too local, too odd.

The audience leaves with an unexpected new way of looking at every pub name, churchyard ghost and May Day procession they encounter afterwards.

Read more about What We Lose When Folklore Goes Global.

Format and logistics

Duration: 45–50 minutes including Q&A

Audience: Adults. Works well for literary and arts audiences, history enthusiasts, and anyone with a local connection to Hastings and East Sussex.

AV requirements: None required. Slides available if projection is possible, but the talk works well without.

Books available: Spirits of Hastings (978-1-916991-13-2), The Treasure of the Cinque Ports (978-1-916991-04-0), Sussex Roots (978-1-739132-31-6), Spirits of Rye (978-1-916991-11-8), plus illustrated bookmarks and other items.

Stock: All titles available via Ingram (55% trade discount, fully returnable), or author copies brought directly to the event.

The Untruth Seekers are dedicated investigators of the legends, ghost stories, and historical mysteries lurking beneath the surface of Sussex and beyond. Their confidential files document the folklore, hauntings, and half-buried histories that most people walk past without a second glance. All findings are published under the series From the Confidential Files of the Untruth Seekers, for readers who suspect there is always more to the story.