SANTA CRUZ >> Every October, you can expect to see a resurgence of monsters. It is not just the ghosts, vampires, witches and zombies in people’s front yards; the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History is also hosting its annual Festival of Monsters, presented by UC Santa Cruz’s Center for Monster Studies, to dive deeper into the various cultural villains who have become staples of Halloween and horror movies.

The frightful festivities kick off Friday and Saturday, with a free public festival, and continue the following week, Oct. 16-18, with an academic conference culminating in the annual Monsters Ball.

The Center for Monster Studies is a collective of artists and scholars who study monsters and how they are defined throughout history and culture. It began in 2019, in the wake of events coinciding with the 201st anniversary of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” and featured a play by UC Santa Cruz theater arts professor Kirsten Brandt called “The Frankenstein Project,” as well as a three-day conference titled FrankenCon, where university professors discussed the Frankenstein legend. The first festival in 2022 featured a screening of the 1920 film “Der Golem,” and the following year offered keynote addresses by authors Mallory O’Meara and Jess Zimmerman discussing their respective books “The Lady from the Black Lagoon” and “Women and Other Monsters.”

Friday will kick off at 5 p.m. with a reading by author Kiersten White, who has written several best-selling novels, including the young adult series “Paranormalcy” and standalone adult novels “Mister Magic,” “Hide” and “The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein.” White will be reading from her newest book “Lucy Undying,” which sees Lucy Westenra — Dracula’s first English victim in Bram Stoker’s original novel — become a vampire herself, no longer under the thrall of Dracula, and embarks on a journey of self-discovery when she meets Iris, the heiress of a health empire also yearning to be free.

Michael Chemers, director of the Center for Monster Studies, said this will mark a return for White who was part of FrankenCon in 2019.

“We’re delighted to have her back,” he said.

Chemers said White focuses on the female perspective of classic monster stories.

“They’re usually very feminist retellings that are really great,” he said.

The first day will also feature a discussion and display of iconic horror masks by Chris Zephro of Santa Cruz’s very own Trick or Treat Studios. The company makes and sells replicas of masks, costumes and props associated with well-known horror franchises like “Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Friday the 13th,” “The Exorcist,” “Halloween,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “Beetlejuice” and “Goosebumps.”

“They’re gonna set up a bunch of masks and props and things like that in the MAH for people to look at,” said Chemers. “It gives a backdrop for what we’re doing.”

Friday will close with a performance of “Pluto’s Labyrinth” by local company Circus of the Moon, which will perform aerial and acrobatic stunts amid a backdrop of shadows and demons.

Chemers said he became acquainted with the group because one of the performers is UC Santa Cruz sociology professor Camilla Hawthorne.

“She’s also a brilliant accordion player and acrobat,” he said. “When I realized I’d made that connection, I thought, ‘We’ve got to get these guys into the Festival of Monsters, to be a part of it.’ They’re really, really great. I’ve seen them multiple times in town.”

All of Friday’s events are at the Museum of Art & History, 705 Front St.

On Saturday at 7 p.m., the festival will host a screening of “Nosferatu” on the upper lawn of UC Santa Cruz’s Oakes College. Directed by F.W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck, the 1922 Expressionist silent film is a retelling of “Dracula” that predated the classic Universal film by nearly a decade and set the stage for subsequent vampire films, even introducing the trope of vampires being killed by sunlight. The screening will feature commentary by H.M. Leicester, UC Santa Cruz literature professor emeritus.

“He just wrote a wonderful book about ‘Nosferatu’ and other horror films,” said Chemers. “He’s gonna give us his expert view.”

The screening is timely, as this Christmas will see the release of a remake of “Nosferatu” directed by Robert Eggers, who also helmed “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” and starring Bill Skarsgård — who played Pennywise in the most recent two-part adaptation of Stephen King’s “It” — as Count Orlok.

Oakes College is located at 231 Oakes Road. The free public gathering operates on a first-come, first served basis.

The festival will continue Oct. 16-18 with the academic conference at the Center for Monster Studies. This year will feature panels on topics such as monstrous ecologies, zombies and body horror, as well as keynote addresses by independent video game designer and UCSC critical race and ethnic studies professor Mattie Brice, and former Palomar College English professor Dr. Jerry Rafiki Jenkins, author of “Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction.”

“These are scholars and artists from all over the world who are gonna descend on Santa Cruz with all their research and art and do some amazing things,” said Chemers.

The conference will also feature a staged reading of Melanie Stewart’s play “Monster” and a live recording of the center’s in-house podcast “The Show Where They Talk About Monsters.” It will all culminate in the Monsters Ball masquerade party.

“We close off the conference by celebrating monstrosity in all of its forms,” said Chemers. “Everybody comes dressed as their favorite monster, so it’s a great way to gear up for Halloween.”

The conference is free for current UC Santa Cruz students and faculty. For those not affiliated with the university, prices range from $185 to $235. All events will take place at the Digital Arts Research Center at 407 McHenry Road.

Chemers stated that the festival is all about celebrating the monsters that have been a major part of pop culture for so long.

“Santa Cruz is a community that has loved monsters for a long time, hundreds of years really,” he said. “We honor that by celebrating and bringing out the inner monsters of Santa Cruzians and all the different folks that we welcome into our community from all over the world.”

The director of the Center for Monster Studies also noted that studying monsters will allow people to learn about empathy.

“We’re living in a time right now where we’re experiencing a lot of political chaos and environmental degradation, and in times like these, monsters become pretty prevalent in our culture,” Chemers said. “We start to see them everywhere, and we also fall into the trap of ‘monsterizing’ people that maybe we don’t necessarily agree with every time. We start thinking of those people as monsters and not as humans, and that is an extremely dangerous thing to do, and we are hopeful that the study of monsters and the embrace of monstrosity that we are trying to advocate here will actually lead us to a better understanding of our own humanity.”

For more information on this year’s festival, go to Monsterstudies.ucsc.edu/2024fest.