Karl Bell

University of Portsmouth, School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, Faculty Member

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My research interests fall under the umbrella heading of ‘the fantastical imagination’. This includes an interest in magical beliefs and practices, witchcraft, the supernatural, legends, folklore, and (proto-)science-fiction tropes in the modern period. My work frequently explores the relationship between the fantastical imagination, the environment, and identity. I also have developing interests in the digital humanities and cross-disciplinary collaborations.

I am the director of the Supernatural Cities project, and an active member of the Port Towns, Urban Cultures research team at the University of Portsmouth.
Address: School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies
University of Portsmouth
Milldam Building
Burnaby Road
Portsmouth
Hampshire

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Books by Karl Bell

The Legend of Spring-heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures

The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780-1914

This book explores the dynamic ways in which the magical imagination helped people to adjust to u... more This book explores the dynamic ways in which the magical imagination helped people to adjust to urban life in nineteenth-century England. Previous studies of modern popular magical practices and supernatural beliefs have largely neglected the urban experience. This study examines the magical imagination as a key cultural resource which granted an empowering sense of plebeian agency in the nineteenth-century urban environment. Rather than portraying magical beliefs and practices as a mere enclave of anachronistic 'tradition' and the fantastical as simply an escapist refuge from the real, this study explores magic's adaptive and transformative qualities and the ways in which it helped ordinary people navigate, adapt to and resist aspects of modern urbanization. Drawing on perspectives from cultural anthropology, sociology, folklore and urban studies, this book seeks to contribute to our understanding of modern popular magic and the lived experience of modernization and urbanization.

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Papers by Karl Bell

Victorian scientists thought they'd found an explanation for ghosts - but the public didn't want to hear it

The Magical Imagination

This innovative history of popular magical mentalities in nineteenth-century England explores the... more This innovative history of popular magical mentalities in nineteenth-century England explores the dynamic ways in which the magical imagination helped people to adjust to urban life. Previous studies of modern popular magical practices and supernatural beliefs have largely neglected the urban experience. Karl Bell, however, shows that the magical imagination was a key cultural resource which granted an empowering sense of plebeian agency in the nineteenth-century urban environment. Rather than portraying magical beliefs and practices as a mere enclave of anachronistic 'tradition' and the fantastical as simply an escapist refuge from the real, he reveals magic's adaptive and transformative qualities and the ways in which it helped ordinary people navigate, adapt to and resist aspects of modern urbanization. Drawing on perspectives from cultural anthropology, sociology, folklore and urban studies, this is a major contribution to our understanding of modern popular magic and the lived experience of modernization and urbanization.

Fantasy and belief: alternative religions, popular narratives and digital cultures

Culture and Religion, 2013

theological, insider ‘raw materials’ to analyse and interrogate. The participating Pagan or magic... more theological, insider ‘raw materials’ to analyse and interrogate. The participating Pagan or magical practitioner will find validating narratives of their worldview, and reinforcement of their identity through what Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) called ‘elective affinity’. To those ends, then, this contribution to the field of Pagan Studies, whatever its shortcomings, may be deemed worthwhile although methodologically limited.

The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England, 1780-1914

Magic is difficult to historicize. There are many reasons for this. To begin with, it has long be... more Magic is difficult to historicize. There are many reasons for this. To begin with, it has long been scorned by both rationalists and the religious, so that people are often reluctant to confess to believing in it. Indeed in the period of this study many of its forms were illegal, at least as soon as they were used to make money. At the very least, it tended to possess a negative value as cultural capital. As a consequence, those interested in ferreting it out were often baffled.

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The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures

This book uses the nineteenth-century legend of Spring-Heeled Jack to analyse and challenge curre... more This book uses the nineteenth-century legend of Spring-Heeled Jack to analyse and challenge current notions of Victorian popular cultures. Starting as oral rumours, this supposedly supernatural entity moved from rural folklore to metropolitan press sensation, co-existing in literary and theatrical forms before finally degenerating into a nursery lore bogeyman to frighten children. A mercurial and unfixed cultural phenomenon, Spring-Heeled Jack found purchase in both older folkloric traditions and emerging forms of entertainment. Through this intriguing study of a unique and unsettling figure, Karl Bell complicates our appreciation of the differences, interactions and similarities between various types of popular culture between 1837 and 1904. The book draws upon a rich variety of primary source material including folklorist accounts, street ballads, several series of 'penny dreadful' stories (and illustrations), journals, magazines, newspapers, comics, court accounts, autobiographies and published reminiscences. The Legend of Spring-Heeled Jack is impressively researched social history and provides a fascinating insight into Victorian cultures. It will appeal to anyone with an interest in nineteenth-century English social and cultural history, folklore or literature. Karl Bell is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Portsmouth.

OGOM & Supernatural Cities present: The Urban Weird: Full Programme

The conference will explore the image of the supernatural city as expressed in narrative media fr... more The conference will explore the image of the supernatural city as expressed in narrative media from a variety of epochs and cultures. It will provide an interdisciplinary forum for the development of innovative and creative research and examine the cultural significance of these themes in all their various manifestations. As with previous OGOM conferences, from which emerged books and special issue journals, there will be the opportunity for delegates' presentations to be published.

Exquisite Corpse: The Urban Gothic Mindscape in China Miéville’s The Last Days of New Paris

Palgrave Gothic, 2020

(Un)knotting time: imagining past futures in early Victorian street ballads

What is a memory of the future? Is it a myth, a fiction of a severed arm, a post-human debate or ... more What is a memory of the future? Is it a myth, a fiction of a severed arm, a post-human debate or a broken time machine? In an increasingly insecure future-world there is an urgency to consider and debate these questions. Memories of the Future : On Countervision addresses these concerns by speculating on the connections between memory and futurity in fields such as counter-histories, women's studies, science fiction, art and design, technology, philosophy and politics. Structured by three topics--'The Basis of Memories', 'The Re-conditioning of Time' and 'The Mechanical Future'--this book reveals how these subjects regenerate at the intersections of vision, counter-cultural production and the former present. The volume links the re-imaginings of memory into the present with topics such as the fever dream allegory of the adolescent social experience, soft technologies of future dress, reinventions of monetary exchange, rekindled subjectivities of school da...

From Victorian demons to the Beijing night bus: why we tell each other urban legends

Phantasmal cities: the construction and function of haunted landscapes in Victorian English cities

This chapter explores how a haunted landscape was articulated and experienced in Victorian Englis... more This chapter explores how a haunted landscape was articulated and experienced in Victorian English cities. The ubiquitous nature of Victorian urban ghosts tacitly undermines contemporary hegemonic narratives about the materialistic, progressive, spectacular but disenchanted nature of the modernising nineteenth-century city. Firstly, the chapter considers how the urban environment differed from the rural in the ways it influenced the imagination of its inhabitants. It will suggest that the nature of the urban environment informed the type of supernatural entities which came to haunt it. In doing so it examines how the construction of haunted urban geographies arose from the unsettling nature of city life, experiences that generated both genuine unease and the fantasised titillation of urban gothic imaginings. Secondly, it builds upon these distinctions to consider differing ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’ perceptions of fantasised urban space. Informed by theorists such as Michel De Certeau...

Breaking Modernity's Spell – Magic and Modern History

Cultural and Social History, 2007

(2007). Breaking Modernity's Spell – Magic and Modern History. Cultural and Social History: V... more

The witch. A history of fear, from ancient times to the present. By Ronald Hutton. Pp. xvi + 360 incl. 16 ills. New Haven–London: Yale University Press, 2017. £25. 978 0 300 22904 2

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2018

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Supernatural Cities: Enchantment, Anxiety, Spectrality

Timothy Baycroft and David Hopkin, eds, Folklore and Nationalism in Europe During the Long Nineteenth Century

European History Quarterly, 2014

Inheriting phantasmal cities: urban ghost lore as intangible heritage

The first half of this paper focuses on the communal function of urban ghost stories as a form of... more The first half of this paper focuses on the communal function of urban ghost stories as a form of intangible heritage. Although highly unreliable as collective memory, ghost stories induce a subtle transformation in locals’ engagement with their built environment, charging specific locations with supernatural significance that renders them different from their surroundings. These storytelling practices enable elements of tacit ownership and subversion. This alternative folkloric geography destabilizes the ‘official’ readable surfaces of urban spaces while communally appropriating their meaning. This has particular potency in the modern(ising) city for as a temporal anachronism the ghost represents an implicit challenge to the ideological assertions that are made manifest in the city’s rapidly changing architecture. These subversive dimensions give rise to questions about subaltern heritage and whose city is remembered or forgotten. While civic/national narratives seek to fashion the...

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The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England 1780–1914

Cultural and Social History, 2014

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“She was full of evil spirits”: Occult Influence, Free Will, and Medical Authority in the Old Bailey, circa 1860–1910

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural, 2017

This article explores how occult and medical epistemologies intersected in late Victorian and Edw... more This article explores how occult and medical epistemologies intersected in late Victorian and Edwardian courtroom narratives in the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court. Rather than delineating the preternatural, I argue that this meeting of the occult and medical science resulted in a blurring of the boundaries between external and internal influences, between notions of prisoner and patient, the psychical and the insane. Considering the role of the accused, victims, medical authorities, lawyers, and jurors, I examine how this epistemological shift developed and how it was presented, manipulated, or hindered. Through investigating this attempt by medical “experts” to pathologize the occult, I offer fresh insights into how medical testimony interpreted and employed accounts of witchcraft, mesmerism, and hypnotism in courtroom narratives. I conclude by briefly drawing attention to the resonances between the operation of occult, legal, and medical influences over the mind a...

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Port Towns and Urban Cultures

The Legend of Spring-heeled Jack: Victorian Urban Folklore and Popular Cultures