Weirdosphere

Peter Bebergal

Peter Bebergal

Peter Bebergal writes widely on the speculative and slightly fringe. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The New Yorker, The Times Literary Supplement, Boing Boing, The Believer, and The Quietus. He is the author of Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural and Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, among others. Bebergal studied religion and culture at Harvard Divinity School. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

PB101: Hacking the Invisible

At the Intersection of Technology and Magic

with Peter Bebergal

The occult magician and the hacker/inventor both attempt to break open conventional ways of working with the forces that shape our lives.

Peter Bebergal will take participants through the history of how human beings have attempted to interact with the otherworldly using technology to ‘hack’ the machine of the universe. Stemming from a class originally given at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, this presentation will cover the legend of the golem; automata and the uncanny valley; magic lanterns and natural magic; spirit photography; electronic voice phenomena; and the dreamachine. Belief in the supernatural is not a prerequisite to enchantment. Technology has long offered means through which we can engage with our occult imagination.

Purchase details coming soon!

This course starts November 20.

EV003: Creature Features In an Anxious Age

How pop culture monsters mythologize our worries about sexuality, nuclear war, race, and the other.

with Peter Bebergal

EV003 traces the changing face of monsters as mythic and literary creatures and argues that we need monsters to learn how to imagine what frightens us in a way that remythologizes our anxieties and offers a path for re-enchanting our imaginations.

This event concluded on June 20, 2025.