If the Addams Family, Lewis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe, Lemony Snicket and Edward Gorey got together and threw a party, it'd be the Edwardian Ball and World's Faire.

Fantastical, eerie, time-warped and a touch macabre, the ball and fair is an annual spectacle of theater, performance, exhibition and dance unlike any other event in San Francisco. At the Regency Ballroom on January 16 and 17, 2015, about 3,500 Bay Area folks in corsets, top hats and tails, velvet, Goth looks and stylishly eccentric outfits will converge to revel in dark humor, burlesque, taxidermy, ballroom dancing, chanteuses, games and carnival rides, acrobats, tea and absinthe, curiosities and steam-powered contraptions.

Marking its 15^th year in 2015, the ball began in 1999 as a tribute to the ominous, prolific American writer and illustrator Edward St. John Gorey (1925-2000), an aficionado of cats, fur, ballet, Batman and soap operas. Often starring creepy grown-ups, naughty children, odd creatures and Victorian and Edwardian settings, Gorey’s tales are twisted and mischievous; his ABC book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies, has 26 tykes meeting their demise in colorful ways. Gorey also produced pen-and-ink drawings for The New Yorker and for books by authors ranging from Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf to H.G. Wells and John Updike. He designed theater sets and costumes (he won a Tony for his costumes for Dracula on Broadway), drew the animated credits for the PBS Mystery! series and was an inspiration to artists such as director Tim Burton, Nine Inch Nails and The Tiger Lillies.

Each year the Edwardian Ball features a theatrical and musical enactment of a Gorey story; this year's is The Beastly Baby, which Gorey published under one of his anagram pen names, Ogdred Weary.

“Beastly” is perhaps an understatement for Gorey’s creation, who has the shape of an over-stuffed potato, two left hands, a beak of a nose and unequal numbers of toes on its two feet. “Since no one cared to talk about it,” it remains nameless, and it cries a lot out of self pity, ”which in this case was perfectly justified.” It shrieks like fingernail scratches on a chalkboard and decapitates cats. Although “dangerous objects were left about in the hope that it could do itself an injury, preferably fatal,” the baby seems indestructible—and proceeds to stab and burn acid holes in furniture and carpets.

One day, though, the baby is taken on a picnic and put on a remote ledge. It’s carried off by an eagle, and meets its demise in a “wet sort of explosion audible for several miles.”

Expect to see Gorey- and Beastly-Baby-inspired garb and accouterments at the 2015 Edwardian Ball and World's Faire. Over the years, because the "Edwardian" in the name has been widely misconstrued to refer not to Gorey but to King Edward VII, there's also a prevalence of top hats, bodices, long skirts and other fashions of the early-1900s era (think Downton Abbey). That's fine, because the dress code is more about creativity than historical or literary accuracy. (Should you be stumped for a costume, a vendor bazaar offers jackets, vests, skirts, gowns, millinery ranging from dainty to daring, pocket watches, feathered and fur-trimmed accessories and jewelry). If you like to gawk at the get-ups at Halloween in the Castro and at Bay to Breakers, you’ll have a ball during the Edwardian weekend.

Besides The Beastly Baby performance by Rosin Covin and the Vau de Vire Society, Saturday's ball features dancing, a fashion show and a tea garden. The Friday night fair is a carnival of bicycle-powered rides and zoetropes, games and steam-powered machinery. 

Friday and Saturday alike abound with entertainment and side shows including cancan dancers, Fou Fou Ha!, Shovelman (playing his shovel-turned-guitar), puppets, DJs, a pipe organist and burlesque acts. On both nights you can also roam among a piano saloon, the Grand Artique Trading Post (a general store featuring banter and barter), the vendor bazaar, a gaming parlor, a photo booth and the "Museum of Wonders,” an assemblage of strange and natural artifacts, live human "statues" and prognosticators.

The Edwardian World's Faire and Edwardian Ball
At the Regency Ballroom, 1300 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco  94109. All ages welcome.
January 16, at 8 pm-2 am: The Edwardian World's Faire. Tickets $48, 95.
January 17, at 12-5 pm: The Edwardian Vendor Bazaar. Tickets $5.
January 17, at 8 pm-2 am: The Edwardian Ball. Tickets $55, 100.