MATT CARDIN (Teeming Brain founder and editor) is a writer and editor living in North Arkansas. With a Ph.D. in leadership and a master’s degree in religious studies, he writes frequently about the intersections and mutual implications of religion, horror, creativity, and the supernatural. He is the author of the weird and cosmic horror fiction collections To Rouse Leviathan (2019), praised by Thomas Ligotti as “a breviary of gruesome mysteries” that is “a worthy descendant of a distinguished line of supernatural horror”; Dark Awakenings (2010), which Publishers Weekly praised as a “thinking-man’s book of the macabre” with “unusual philosophic depth”; Divinations of the Deep (print edition 2002; ebook 2011), which launched the New Century Macabre fiction imprint for Ash-Tree Press; and A Course in Demonic Creativity: A Writer’s Guide to the Inner Genius (2011). His editorial projects include Horror Literature through History: An Encyclopedia of the Stories That Speak to Our Deepest Fears (2017), Ghosts, Spirits, and Psychics: The Paranormal from Alchemy to Zombies (2015), and Mummies around the World: An Encyclopedia of Mummies in Religion, History, and Popular Culture (2014). In 2015 he received a World Fantasy Award nomination for editing Born to Fear: Interviews with Thomas Ligotti. He is also co-editor of the journal Vastarien. He has appeared as a panel expert at the World Fantasy Convention, the World Horror Convention, MythosCon, and ArmadilloCon. He was an invited panelist at Baylor University’s Faith and Film symposium, and he has been a guest on Expanding Mind, Weird Studies, This Is Horror, Darkness Radio, Spiritually Raw, the Mancow Muller Show, and other radio shows and podcasts to talk about his experiences with sleep paralysis and nocturnal assault, and to discuss their implications for our collective understanding of creativity, psychology, and reality. In 2008 he was a guest of honor at MoCon III: The Intersection of Art, Spirituality, and Gender. A long-time pianist, keyboardist, and composer, he published an original album of dark instrumental music in 2009 titled Daemonyx: Curse of the Daimon. Former careers include college vice president, professor of English and religion, high school teacher, piano salesman, corporate communications specialist, media producer for a large state university, and video director for country and pop music legend Glen Campbell. He’s on Twitter. His author site is MattCardin.com.
JASON V. BROCK is an award-winning writer, editor, filmmaker, composer, and artist whose work has been published in Butcher Knives & Body Counts, Simulacrum and Other Possible Realities, Fungi, Fangoria, S. T. Joshi’s Black Wings series, and elsewhere. He is the author of The Dark Sea Within: Tales and Poems and Disorders of Magnitude: A Survey of Dark Fantasy. He was Art Director/Managing Editor for Dark Discoveries magazine for more than four years, and he edits the biannual pro digest [NAMEL3SS], dedicated to “the macabre, esoteric and intellectual,” which can be found on Twitter at @NamelessMag and on the Interwebs at www.NamelessMag.com. He and his wife, Sunni, also run Cycatrix Press. As a filmmaker, Jason’s work includes the documentaries Charles Beaumont: The Short Life of Twilight Zone’s Magic Man, The Ackermonster Chronicles!, and Image, Reflection, Shadow: Artists of the Fantastic. He is the primary composer and instrumentalist/singer for his band, ChiaroscurO. Jason loves his wife, their family of reptiles/amphibians, travel, and vegan/vegetarianism. He is active on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter (@JaSunni_JasonVB) and at his and Sunni’s personal website/blog, www.JaSunni.com.
RICHARD GAVIN is an author of numinous horror fiction in the tradition of Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, and H. P. Lovecraft. He has also published criticism and essays on Nightside arcana. His tales are widely anthologized and have been collected in the books Charnel Wine, Omens, The Darkly Splendid Realm, At Fear’s Altar, and Sylvan Dread: Tales of Pastoral Darkness. He also authored the nonfiction works The Moribund Portal: Spectral Resonance and the Numen of the Gallows and The Benighted Path: Primeval Gnosis & The Monstrous Soul. He has been praised by Publishers Weekly and described by S. T. Joshi as “one of the bright new stars of contemporary weird fiction.” Richard lives in Ontario, Canada with his beloved wife and their brood. He is online at www.RichardGavin.net.
T.E. GRAU is an author of Weird, Lovecraftian, and Dark Fiction. His books include the novella They Don’t Come Home Anymore, the fiction collection The Nameless Dark (nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award), and the novel I Am the River (nominated for the Bram Stoker Award). In addition to fiction writing, he is an essayist and contributor to We Love Monsters and the Esoteric Order of Dagon Amateur Press Association (edited by S. T. Joshi). He also formerly served as Fiction Editor of Strange Aeons magazine. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife (writer, editor, and artist Ives Hovanessian), daughter, and bunny named Cthulhu. He often blogs about beautiful and terrifying things at The Cosmicomicon.
RYAN HURD is founder of DreamStudies.org, a website dedicated to sleep, dreams, and consciousness research. He is also a frequent contributor to Business Insider and Reality Sandwich. His books include Lucid Immersion Guidebook: A Holistic Blueprint for Lucid Dreaming and Sleep Paralysis: A Guide to Hypnagogic Visions and Visitors of the Night. As an educator, Ryan has presented to a wide range of audiences, including invited lectures at Stanford University, the Institute of Buddhist Studies, and the Rhine Institute. As a qualitative researcher, he has presented and published papers on sleep paralysis, lucid nightmares, and the application of dreaming for uncovering researcher bias and novelty. He has a MA in Consciousness Studies from John F. Kennedy University, as well as a bachelor’s degree with a specialization in archaeology, and is a board member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. Other professional memberships include the American Anthropological Association and the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness.
DOMINIK IRTENKAUF is a freelance writer of fiction and nonfiction dealing with art, mythology, cultural philosophy, media theory, the occult, and avant-garde music. He also writes about the boundaries between art and science, and recently he has been combining his literary and documentary writing. He has published a number of books in German. For some of his writing in English, see the blog Bergmetal under the keyword “Stig Olsdal.” He studied German philology, philosophy, and comparative literature in Münster. In 2007 he spent three months in Georgia on a Musa Fellowship for Literature from the country’s Ministry of Education and Science.
DAVID METCALFE is an independent researcher, cultural historian, and artist who digs deep into the interstices of creativity, consciousness, narrative, and culture. His work explores how storytelling affects our day-to-day experiences and self perceptions. He is Editor-in-Chief for Threshold: Journal of Interdiscipinary Consciousness Studies and a contributor to skeletonsaint.com. He was formerly the Books Editor for The Revealer, the online journal for NYU’s Center for Religion and Media. He regularly contribute articles and reviews to Modern Mythology.net, Evolutionary Landscapes, Reality Sandwich, and Alarm Magazine. He also co-hosts an online study group, The Art of Transformations, for the International Alchemy Guild. With XNet Information Systems he helped develop the first TEDxNaperville event, and in collaboration with Planetshifter.com Magazine he co-developed the initial launch of the Open Myth Source initiative (sponsored by Red Wheel/Weiser) to foster conversation and collaboration with academics, business leaders, philosophers, artists, musicians, and the community at large, thus reactivating the traditions of myth and storytelling to develop sustainable philosophies for the 21st century. His current independent work revolves around anomalous and transpersonal experiences as they are codified, cultivated, and encultured through narrative, art, corporate governance, and popular culture. As an artist his interests include the use of mediumship, OBE, past life regression, incubation, lucid dreaming, and NDE to influence the creative process. He blogs.
MARK SAMUELS is a London-based writer of horror and fantastic fiction in the tradition of Arthur Machen and H. P. Lovecraft. His stories, which often detail a shadowy modern London in which the protagonists gradually discover a dark and terrifying reality behind the mundane urban world, have appeared in many prestigious weird fiction and horror anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Weird, A Mountain Walks, and The Red Brain. Ramsey Campbell has praised him as one of the modern masters of urban horror. Mark’s books include the fiction collections The White Hands and Other Weird Tales, Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes, The Man Who Collected Machen, and The Prozess Manifestations. He also authored the essay collection Prophecies and Dooms. He blogs runs a Patreon account.
DR. BARRY E. TAFF holds a doctorate in psychophysiology with a minor in biomedical engineering, and is a world-renowned parapsychologist who worked out of UCLA’s former parapsychology laboratory from 1969 through 1978 as a research associate. He is the author of the book Aliens Above, Ghosts Below: Explorations of the Unknown. During his 43-year career, Dr. Taff has investigated more than 4,500 cases of ghosts, hauntings, and poltergeists, and has conducted extensive studies in telepathy and precognition, which led to the development of the initial protocols and methodologies for what was later termed “remote viewing.” He has appeared on numerous television and radio programs and has consulted for government, business, and law enforcement, including the CIA, Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), National Security Agency (NSA), Defense Language Institute (DLI), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the FBI, Interpol, LAPD, California Highway Patrol, Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department, and the Westminster Police Department. He has served as a technical advisor or script doctor on the films Logan’s Run, Demon Seed, Altered States, Poltergeist, and The Entity. In the 1970s he was lead researcher on the paranormal disturbance case that was fictionalized in the Entity book and movie, where he was represented by the character “Gene Kraft.”
STUART YOUNG is a British Fantasy Award-winning author with three published short story collections: Spare Parts, Shards of Dreams and The Mask Behind the Face. His stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Estronomicon, Catastrophia, Alt-Dead, Alt-Zombie, Darker Minds and The Mammoth Book of Future Cops. He used to write a comics column, Words and Pictures, for the award-winning website The Alien Online, but there is no truth to the rumor that the site only shut down because the editor suffered a mental collapse after attempting to edit Stuart’s manuscripts. He keeps a blog at http://stuyoung.blogspot.co.uk.