We would like to invite you to a meeting whose main theme will be the terrifying tales of ghosts in the lands of the former Republic of Poland, where cases of 'vampirism' were first reported.

Before the word "vampire" had even reached Western Europe, Polish living corpses were discussed by Paduan medics and Parisian erudite scholars, while clergymen pondered whether the devil and witches were responsible for the mass rising of the dead from the grave.

During our meeting, we will talk about the shudder-inducing ethnographers' accounts of the dead and the ghostly folk beliefs associated with the dead. In between the legends, there will also be court materials and newspaper reports that electrified readers of the time, as well as the Phantom, who can be found on the pages of the works of many Romantic authors. Finally, we will try to discover what is left of vampires in today's world!

The expert and guide to the world of vampires will be Łukasz Kozak - medievalist, technology and media expert and lecturer. Creator of the most popular overviews of digitised collections on the web (including Discarding Images and Old Images with Animals). Author of the promotional success of Polona from 2013-2015 (nomination for the "Gwarancje Kultury" 2015 award), curator of the digitisation department at the Digital Cultures conference. Collaborated with numerous cultural and scientific institutions in the field of new media, technology and use of digital resources.

In Programme II of the Polish Radio, he co-hosts the first Polish medievalist programme "Midlife Crisis". Author of numerous scientific and popularising works, this year his two books are published: "Upiór" and "With Stake and Spade" dedicated to beliefs in living corpses in old Poland.