Norwich to host gothic folklore programs this weekend
Ghost tours, horror stories and plays will be featured in events
Norwich — Three local groups and a play workshop in Vermont are teaming up to present “Gothic New England” events in Norwich this weekend, featuring ghost stories, horror and folklore in advance of Halloween.
Events start with the sold-out Friday evening annual Walktober tour of the colonial Norwichtown burial ground, “Ancient Ghosts of Norwich,” sponsored by the Norwich Historical Society. The group had to add a fourth tour and has a long waiting list.
At 1 p.m. Saturday, Otis Library will host the first fall session of the Jim Lafayette Memorial Series of Writers of Science Fiction and Fantasy, usually held in July. The keynote speaker is author F. Brett Cox, whose latest book “The End of All Our Exploring: Stories,” is a collection of horror, fantasy and science fiction stories from New England and other regions.
Cox is a member of the Cambridge Science Fiction Writers Workshop. A native of North Carolina, Cox is Charles A. Dana Professor of English at Norwich University and lives in Vermont with his wife, playwright Jeanne Beckwith.
The program is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Copies of “The End of All Our Exploring: Stories” will be available for sale and signing.
Beckwith will join her husband in Norwich this weekend, bringing her Depot for New Play Readings to team up with the local Chelsea Players for a dramatic reading of two plays with New England horror themes at 2 p.m. Sunday at the United Congregational Church hall in the lower level of the church at 87 Broadway. The event is free and open to the public. Attend-
ees interested in reading some of the parts in the play should contact event organizer Faye Ringel at fayeringel@hotmail.com.
Beckwith’s one-act play, “The Rhode Island Chapter,” tells the story of Fred, who is conducting research for an article about the real vampire hysteria in past centuries in New England. In Rhode Island, a focal point for the vampire scare, the character is met with skepticism. He then discovers a very different version of the legend.
Ringel and award-winning fantasy author Greer Gilman co-wrote the second play to be read Sunday, “O Brave New World,” a 10-minute play that transforms Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and sets it in southeastern Connecticut, where a real wizard founded New London.
The playwrights will be present to discuss the plays and take feedback following the readings. Light refreshments will be served.
“Anyone can come in and watch,” Ringel said. “It’s all New England gothic all the time. You can’t get more New England gothic than the Rhode Island vampires. Brett’s stories have New England horror stories and science fiction, as well.”