It’s that time of year once more folks – as comedy, theatre, cabaret, magic and storytelling don a more ghoulish guise as they embrace the darker tales to offer tricks and treats for Edinburgh audiences. Featuring a couple of reanimated favourites, plenty of original creations, and a heaping helping of scares and frights – the Edinburgh Horror Festival is back.
With almost thirty live shows at the Banshee Labyrinth or at Lauriston Castle, The Edinburgh Horror Festival is set for a bumper year of creative expressions, original theatre, a few cadavers, and events and live theatre, magic, comedy, and cabaret for all ages – yes, the spooks aren’t just for the adults this year.
On top of that, a number of these productions will be live-streamed to audiences unable to make it to the venue, or who might feel a touch safer from the ghouls and monsters in their homes.
Handel Fledermaus has travelled from the distant and idyllic town of Vondorvotteimittiss, where the cabbage is king and time is sacred. A supernatural invader has plunged his once idyllic home into chaos, and he seeks the help of anyone who would believe his tale. But with a giant clock, a flying fiddler and a horde of ravenous pigs, it’s a very tall tale indeed. Edgar Allan Poe’s satirical short grows arms, legs and teeth in a fantastical and frantic monologue by Dave Robb, directed by Flavia D’Avila.
Content Warning: Verbal references to racism, xenophobia, death and violence
October 26th – 29th
21:10pm – 22:10pm
The Banshee Labyrinth (Cinema Room) – 29 – 35 Niddry St, EH1 1LG
Tickets: £5.00 – £7.00
This is not [your traditional] ghost story and there seems to be no reason why any of it should have happened. But that is no reason why it should not be told…”
Edith Nesbit, creator of “The Railway Children” and “Five Children and It”, invites you into her parlour, as she recounts some of her unsettling horror stories which have long been overlooked in favour of her male contemporaries.
Featuring an all-female cast, and including magic lanterns, eerie soundscapes, and stylised presentations popular at the time of her writings, this show presents an adaptation of “The Shadow”, a ghost story of lost love and longing, and “In the Dark”, a terrifying paranoid confession of a (accidental?) murderer, along with real-life terrors from Nesbit’s life.
Content warning: Murder, death, some outdated views
October 26th – 29th
19:40pm – 20:30pm
The Banshee Labyrinth (Chamber Room) – 29 – 35 Niddry St, EH1 1LG
Tickets: £8.00 – £15.00
At the world’s weirdest dinner party, Ben and Hannah discover magic rituals to rewrite reality and manifest the life they always wanted. But is it the magic or their new-found self-belief that’s getting them so far? And what will their new lifestyle cost? Because everything comes at a cost… Sycamore Grove is a tight suburban horror about what goes on behind closed doors and getting the life you always wanted…
Content Warning: Addiction, emotional abuse, fire & burning
October 26th – 29th
18:25pm – 19:25pm
The Banshee Labyrinth (Chamber Room) – 29 – 35 Niddry St, EH1 1LG
Tickets: £5.00 – £8.00
Frighthouse presents The Fear House
Three theatrical tales of the dark. The surreal and the macabre.
Following their successful Wheel of Misfortune (which also returns as an Audio play), The Frighthouse returns to spread tales of the dark and the bizarre. The strange and surreal. But of course the sinister. Inspired by horror anthologies such as Tales From The Crypt and Creepshow. This is a multimedia theatre show, mixing theatre with film.
October 30th
19:30pm – 20:20pm
The Banshee Labyrinth (Chamber Room) – 29 – 35 Niddry St, EH1 1LG
Tickets: £5.00
In a secret place, there exists Wendy…
In a secret place, there exists Wendy. Restless and with no grand objective, she dances in fear. The colour red haunts her, obfuscating her reality in a sad shade of pink. A macabre perception of femininity composed by the troubled imagination of its director, who has moulded his transgender experience into a semi-autobiographical absurdist horror, which dissects his experience of gender – both physically and mentally.
Content warnings (implied): gender dysphoria, psychological trauma
October 26th – 29th
17:20pm – 18:10pm
The Banshee Labyrinth (Chamber Room) – 29 – 35 Niddry St, EH1 1LG
Tickets: £5.00
Embark on a voyage from the high seas on a Spanish galleon to concert halls, where violin melodies entwine with obsession. Two gothic tales that will haunt your dreams!
Storyteller Inés Álvarez Villa will share two stories of her own creation. These gothic horror tales will take you on a journey from the high seas, where a Spanish galleon becomes a vessel of terror, to packed concert halls, where obsession dances hand in hand with the enchanting melodies of violins. It will be eery, vivid, and full of dark wonder!
October 26th – 29th
17:30pm – 18:30pm
The Banshee Labyrinth (Cinema Room) – 29 – 35 Niddry St, EH1 1LG
Tickets: £10.00
Ruth Hunter (So You Think You’re Funny first runner-up, skin owner and Irish person) presents a new show of fun, spooky and very good stand-up comedy. Ruth has a unique voice and surreal perspective on the increasingly tragic state of affairs that is being alive. She has supported Fern Brady, Kiri Pritchard-McClean and Alison Spittle and is a regular at The Stand and Monkey Barrel. Ruth knows where you live and is so excited to meet you.
October 27th – 28th
23:40pm – 00:30am
The Banshee Labyrinth (Cinema Room) – 29 – 35 Niddry St, EH1 1LG
Tickets: £7.00
A teen horror B-movie for the stage, this is an award-nominated monster mash of theatre and spoken word.
Junior just wants to be an ordinary guy. But it feels like everyone knows he isn’t. Bullies pick him apart at school, while his dad wants him to be manlier. Aside from his body-image issues, he also wrestles with dreams and desires he can’t tell anyone about.
Just when he thinks things couldn’t get worse for him, bodies start turning up, and suspicion falls on folkloric beings. Beings who sound very similar to him…
Content Warning: Homophobia, biphobia, misogyny, violence, conversion therapy
October 31st
22:00pm- 22:45pm
The Banshee Labyrinth (Chamber Room) – 29 – 35 Niddry St, EH1 1LG
Tickets: £6.00 – £8.00
A new urban horror from Crested Fools, the makers of ‘The Rotting Hart’, the review of which you may find here.
Who’s that waving at you from the other corner of the parking lot? Isn’t it Isla from Merryburn? It’s been years since you worked together at that school. Remember the sweet stories she used to tell the kids?
But the tales she shares with you now are different: blood-weeping daughters, tech-shackled crones, women kept hostage by the granite grey walls of their high-rise flats… Where are all these stories coming from, Isla? And who are they about?
Content Warning: References to gore, violence and abuse.
October 26th – 29th
19:55pm- 20:55pm
The Banshee Labyrinth (Cinema Room) – 29 – 35 Niddry St, EH1 1LG
Tickets: £5.00
Interested in being featured? With many previews and Q&As lined up, we’re always happy to chat about including your show in future articles. Please do get in touch through the contact page to feature in an upcoming ‘Have A Gander’