Category: CQAF2024 Special

TAKE A WALK ON THE DARK SIDE!

Dare you stalk the streets of old Belfast and uncover the horrors that lurk in her grisly past?

The Black Belfast Walking Tour with Alternative Uls-Tours

Dates and times: Sunday 5th May, 11:00am & Sunday 12th May, 11:00am

• Belfast’s former red-light district and its connection to an infamous serial killer

• The forgotten medieval graveyard beneath Belfast shoppers’ feet

• How a Victorian wig shop brought Halloween back to Belfast

• The tragic tale of Belfast’s ‘lost boys’ and the ‘Satanic panic’ of the 1970s

• Belfast’s little-known Jack the Ripper suspect

• The bizarre haunting of a Belfast bridge

• Belfast’s body snatchers and the story of Burke and Hare

• Bram Stoker’s Belfast visit and the true inspiration for Dracula

• The curse of the Titanic mummy

• The killing of the last wild wolf in Ulster

• Northern Ireland’s own Dr Harold Shipman and a chilling personal link

Please note:

• The walking tour starts at the Albert Memorial Clock on Queen’s Square in the Cathedral Quarter of Belfast city centre, where your guide will be waiting for you

• Please arrive 10 minutes before the scheduled start time

• The tour will end outside the Dock Cafe on Queen’s Road in the Titanic Quarter

• The tour will last two and a half hours and cover around two miles

• The tour will go ahead in all weathers, so please dress accordingly

• There are public toilets near the start and end points

• The route is fully accessible, but please inform us in advance of any mobility issues

• Well-behaved dogs are welcome on the tour

• Your guide is a fully qualified Level 4 (blue badge) tour guide with a lifelong interest in the monstrous and the macabre

• The tour is fully insured through Tour Guides NI

Very important:

• The tour is open to all ages, but parental guidance is strongly advised due to the graphic and disturbing nature of some of the stories. You have been warned!

The American Bar presents a very special screening and live DJ set from John Shepherd, beamed live to the bar after the screening.

A rural electronics whiz broadcasts radio signals into space and monitors for signs of aliens, but makes a more important connection here on Earth.

John Was Trying to Contact Aliens introduces us to John in a room where, wedged between a couch and a giant bookshelf of LPs (and a record player), two tall shelf towers stand, filled with archaic electronic devices that resemble the sort of gear featured in old NASA movies.

“My interest is in finding out the unknown. And the unknown is just that—unknown. And you search, and you continue searching, because of your desire. Because you know that something’s there.”

Through a concise blend of new footage, archival photographs, and commentary from John, Killip’s short elucidates that, from an early age, John became consumed with trying to communicate with otherworldly beings. To do this, he invented and constructed a wide array of complex contraptions that beamed “non-commercial music”—jazz, reggae, Afropop, Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream—and which soon took over his grandparents’ residence, where he lived.

A testament to the spirit of exploration and innovation. Moreover, it’s a sweet and subtly profound portrait of the universal desire for something more.

Despite its short length, there’s a lot packed into this thoughtful little film- not so much about aliens, but about a very earthly desire for connection.

Decider
A little sliver of humanity that’ll give you a lot of hope.
John Serba