Werewolves, Zombies, and Freddy Krueger.

It's well established that if a horror film is a success (and sometimes even when one isn't) that there will be a sequel, often many sequels, a franchise essentially. It's also well established that, in the vast majority of cases, the sequel won't be as good as the original film. So, following last year's Monsters on the Couch talk, Dr Brian Sharpless was back in The Star of Greenwich and back with Greenwich Skeptics in the pub to deliver his follow up, Monsters on the Couch - The Sequel.

This second installment, though, was just as good as the first and even though it, briefly, covered some of the same ground there was enough new stuff to make it a very worthwhile night out during a week when I've started a new job and have been trying to get to bed early. Even if there may be monsters under that bed. Well, it is nearly Hallowe'en. Something that surely played a part in scheduling the talk for this time of year!

Dr Sharpless is good, he knows his stuff but he keeps it pretty jovial - if a little dark, and you get the impression he could talk all night on the subject of horror films and the psychological factors that underpin and inspire them. But, last night, he narrowed it down to three subjects:- werewolves, zombies, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Freddy fucking Krueger again. Though, to be honest, I came away feeling more favourable towards the ubiquitous stripey jumpered slasher than I have in the past.

But more of that later. First the werewolves (which was only right when there was a full moon in the sky). Hollywood werewolves have got a lot of different looks, some are mostly wolf (An American Werewolf in London) and some are mostly men (Lon Chaney's Wolf Man) and there are plenty that are somewhere in between. Werewolves, in the movies, aren't born, they're made. Think again of An American Werewolf in London.

They're usually aggressive or even murderous but they can be killed by silver or fire or even guns or other conventional weapons. Though they can regenerate very quickly, generally. If a film werewolf is injured that injury carries forward to the man when he reverts back. Folkloric werewolves come into being a very different way.

Via a magic girdle (which, apparently, you can buy in Zara!) or through an act of cannibalism. Ginger haired people and bastards (children of unwed parents, not Tory voters) are more susceptible to becoming werewolves than others but the werewolves of Estonia have the best way of turning you into a werewolf. They simply break into your house and drink all your beer. In fact, you can become an Estonian werewolf simply by sharing a beer with one. Cheers to that!

Another way to become a werewolf, which sounds much more hard work and a lot less fun, is to rub a salve of bird's blood, hemlock, wolfsbane, celery, and various other seemingly random ingredients into your skin. I'd rather go to Tallinn and crack open a Double Bock with one of those hairy handed gents. But if you find yourself troubled by a werewolf, and they can be trouble - don't doubt it, you need to stab them three times in the exact same place.

Or, and this sounds like a faff, keep it kneeling in the exact same spot for one hundred years. At which point it won't die but will revert back to being a man. Though, you'll be dead by then so it's immaterial. In Denmark, the method is much easier. You simply tell a werewolf that they are a werewolf and they stop being a werewolf. Job's a good 'un.

Silver bullets, unlike in the movies, are useless and have no affect on folkloric werewolves. So where does this werewolf thing come from. Sufferers of lyncathropy, and other related diseases, have been treated for depression, schizophrenia, hallucinations, and other disorders and in some cases, but not all, there has been some success in curing people who not only believe they have been turned into wolves but believe they have been turned into dogs, cats, gerbils, frogs, and even rhinos.

Dr Sharpless reckons we like werewolf stories and werewolf movies because wolves were, for much of human history, a real and legitimate threat but he also thinks there's something about being attracted to forces beyond our control - even if those forces come from inside us. Essentially, we fear our own dark side and werewolves represent that dark side.

As do zombies and horror movie zombies, like their werewolf cousins, don't sync up with folkloric zombies at all. Horror zombies are a mix of three things. Norse draugrs, ghouls, and Haitian zombis (the correct spelling). Draugrs are undead vikings that live in ancient hollow Scandinavian burial mounds where the vikings buried their treasure and they don't walk, they run. They run fast. They're also supernaturally strong and they never get tired.

On top of that they hold grudges and they seem to choose Christmas, specifically, as a time of year when they act on those grudges. They are never born and they are always made, You can become a draugr if your corpse remains unburied, if you're killed by another draugr, or, rather harshly, if  you're inappropriately dressed.

Ghouls are demons who feed on the flesh of human beings, dead or alive. The western idea of the ghoul actually comes from an eccentric translation of the Arabian Nights and you can kill a ghoul with one well placed powerful blow. But if you fail with that first blow, you will have to strike it at least one hundred times to kill it. For some reason.

Haitian zombis are quite different to horror zombies. They're non-violent vegetarians who refuse to even eat salt and have all their meals served on banana leaves (not sure who serves them, are there zombi waiters out there?). They're more likely to run away from you than run after you and they can't create new zombis. In fact, they're tireless workers that labour in flaming hot sugar cane fields throughout long Caribbean summers.

They don't seem to complain but the horror zombie doesn't like being (un)dead. It hurts being dead and the only thing that makes the pain go away is feasting on human flesh. Cotard's syndrome is a thankfully rare condition in which the sufferer believes they are dead. Often the sufferer will be nihilistic, undergoing an experience of depersonalisation, very depressed, psychotic, or, possibly, have brain lesions, MS, or Parkinson's disease. Quite often they will feel suicidal - despite the fact that they believe they are already dead.

Possibly the most well known sufferer of Cotard's syndrome was the now aptly named Dead (who died, aged 22, in 1991 - suicide) from the Norwegian black metal band Mayhem. Dead, or Per as his mum called him, used to bury his clothes in graveyards before wearing them and slept with dead animals under his bed so he would smell like death.

He took it as far as you could, really. But zombie movies, for most of us, are pure escapement. They're popular because they're a break from the sometimes frustrating routines of life, they safely activate a disgust response that many of us secretly desire, and they represent siege situations very very well. For our ancestors (especially if you're descended from the Mongols or the Huns) siege situations were very real and very dangerous.

Which bring us to the not very real Freddy Krueger and A Nightmare on Elm Street (Johnny Depp's first ever film I found out last night). A film about teenagers in America who keep having scary dreams about Krueger before the man himself starts attacking and killing them - both in their dreams and their real lives.

Krueger, in the film, had been a real life child who had been burned to death by the parents of the teenagers now being attacked by him. He was after revenge and the film, like many horrors, played very well on the fact that we are most vulnerable when we're asleep - and when it's dark.

Dr Sharpless talked a bit about the inspirations for the first Nightmare on Elm Street film and some of that was covered in last year's talk/blog but what wasn't was his belief that it may have been, at least partly, inspired by the Hmong people of South East Asia. Many of whom became refugees from Cambodia when Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge took over and turned the country into a bloodbath.

The Hmong people were so worried that Pol Pot's killers would catch up with them that they tried not to sleep. They drank as much coffee as they could and they set alarm clocks to go off every twenty minutes all in a forlorn hope to avoid the killers and to avoid SUNDS (sudden unexpected nocturnal death syndrome) and it is SUNDS, which can be found globally - though is very rare, that may also be something that Wes Craven factored into his film.

And that was it. The walk hung together better than my account of it but I hope you get some idea of how interesting, and fun, it was. There was a Q&A afterwards which took in dragons, witches, elves, emus, time travel, djinns, Freud, The Exorcist, furries, TikTok, BDSM, sleep paralysis, Slenderman, Indiana Jones, social contagion, film noir, and a dribbling hag that lives in a Welsh castle and then it was time to head home for a relatively early, and totally sober, night and, yes, I slept well thankyou very much.

Thanks to Dr Brian Sharpless for the talk, to Professor Chris French and The Star of Greenwich for hosting, to Goddard's Pie & Mash for the tasty food (and warming cuppa) that stopped my stomach from rumbling during the bits about cannibalism, and to Jade for joining me and presenting me with a cute Nessie (Loch Ness Monster) from her recent trip to Scotland. Maybe Dr Sharpless can do Nessie next time. I mean, a trilogy of horror themed talks would still be a long way off the astronomical cricket scores that Halloween and Friday the 13th have notched up.