Location: Fort Wadsworth, 210 New York Avenue, Staten Island, NY 10305.
Tickets Here!Get spooked at Fort Tompkins! Join us for an evening of presentations exploring the fringes of photography, Victorian art, and occult phenomena. Co-presented by the Alice Austen House and Morbid Anatomy Museum, hosted by National Park Service inside a nineteenth century fort! Meet at Fort Wadsworth Visitor Center (210 New York Avenue, Staten Island). Bring your own flashlight! Cocktail party at Alice Austen House to follow at 10pm. Tickets required and must be purchased in advance.
Author Harold Schechter will discuss the art of writing about serial killers and the chilling true-account of Belle Gunness, the Lady Bluebeard, and the dark tourism around her crimes.
Photographer Corinne May Botz will discuss her book “The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death,” an exploration of miniature crime scene models that were built in the 1940’s and 50’s by criminologist Frances Glessner Lee (1878 – 1962). The models, based on actual homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths, were created to train detectives to assess visual evidence.
Pam Grossman, Getty Images’ Director of Visual Trends and co-organizer of the Occult Humanities Conference at NYU, will present a lecture on “Witch Pictures: Female Magic and Transgressions in Western Art”.
Ronni Thomas, the Morbid Anatomy Filmmaker-in-Residence, discusses mad science, mysticism, romance, and necrophilia within the macabre true story behind his feature film: “No Place for The Living: The Strange Tale of Carl von Cosel”, complete with a chilling score composed by theremin expert Paul Bergel.