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We each have our own preferred genres of choice. Kate loves horrors and thrillers, really anything that will keep her up at night! And Serena enjoys escaping through hidden doors into realms of magic and adventure. We also read mysteries, historical fiction, graphic novels, etc. etc. And that’s not even counting the multitude of sub-genres contained within each greater genre. In this series, one of us will present a list of our favorites from within a given sub-genre of one of our greater preferred genres.
Interestingly enough, while I have decided to focus on the sub-genre of Folk Horror for this edition of ‘Diving Into Sub-Genres’, it’s a sub-genre that I tend to have complicated feelings about. That isn’t to say that I dislike folk horror; on the contrary, if I love a piece of folk horror, I REALLY love a piece of folk horror. The perfect example of this is the film “The Wicker Man”, one of the earlier examples in the sub-genre in which a Scottish policeman goes to the strange and pagan island of Summerisle in search of a missing girl, and finds a community of odd, quirky, and ultimately devious townsfolk who mess with the outsider before pulling one of the greatest twists in horror history. It’s one of my favorite horror films, and my Terror Tuesday friends and I have watched it about three times in our years of movies. There’s also “The Witch”, which brings a Puritan family to the unforgiving wilderness as a witch lurks in the woods tormenting them, though the bigger threat may be the way the family Others their daughter Thomasin. This is a favorite movie of mine, period. But for every “Wicker Man” and “The Witch” there are probably five or so “Midsommar”s, in which I find the final product lacking, underwhelming, or overly pretentious (sacrilege I know, but I really hated “Midsommar”). But it’s absolutely a sub-genre that has a lot of teeth and a lot of potential, so I wanted to highlight some of the stories within.
Folk Horror is generally a kind of horror tale that involves an outsider finding themselves caught up in an unfamiliar place that has ties to folklore or ‘old ways’, and finds themselves in danger at the hands of the people or things they encounter. Superstition, ritualistic practices, nature and the dangers that come with it, and people with hidden motives are usually involved. And while there are occasionally some supernatural elements to be had, usually involving creatures from folklore and Pagan religions, it’s more likely the the threat is going to just be people in one way or another. In terms of books, one of the earlier examples is the novel “Harvest Home”, where a family movies into an isolated rural/agricultural community that adheres to some old timey superstitions about how to make their crops grow. The list I put together has some newer titles, and are mostly books that I’ve enjoyed. Or at least appreciated.
Book: “The Twisted Ones” by T. Kingfisher
I’m starting with a T. Kingfisher book because I really like the easy breezy and sometimes ‘cozy’ horror tone she brings to her novels, and that same tone comes with “The Twisted Ones”. When a woman named Mouse has to clean out her deceased grandmother’s cabin in the wooded wilderness in North Carolina, she thinks it will be a time consuming, but generally easy task. But she soon hears strange noises at night, and sees glimpses of odd beings through the corners of her eyes in the clearing around the cabin. And she soon finds diary entries her stepgrandfather left, describing strange and terrifying beings that stalk the woods, and a mysterious man named Ambrose. As Mouse starts to dig deeper into the mysteries and the strange things she’s encountering, she finds things that are beyond imagination. Kingfisher is always a fun read, and this one has some weird folksy scares to go along with her affable main character.
Book: “The Ritual” by Adam Nevill
This one is a bit more of a straight up folk horror nightmare, and “The Ritual” had enough cinematic horror elements to it that it did get adapted into a film a few years ago, which I found to be fun and creepy as hell. It definitely solidified my fears of camping, I can tell you that much, and the book beforehand had a similar effect. Four old friends are hoping to reconnect their bond that time and shifting priorities has eroded away, and go for a camping trip in the north of Sweden, in a wooded area nestled in the Arctic Circle. When they start to get discombobulated and lost, tensions start to reach a new high. But it’s when they stumble upon an old seemingly abandoned house, which has odd altars, scattered bones, and Pagan symbols, they realize that they aren’t really alone in these woods. There’s a nice build of tension with this one, and some interesting modernization of outsiders meeting old world sensibilities.
Book: “The Loney” by Andrew Michael Hurley
Folk horror doesn’t always have to be in your face with its action and themes while still achieving an overarching sense of dread, and I think that “The Loney” is a good example of this BECAUSE of how quiet it is, until it has you in a stranglehold in the last few moments. This one was a bit of a slow read for awhile, but then when it sped up MAN did it speed up and create an atmopsheric Gothic oddity. In the 1970s a family consisting of a deeply Catholic mother and her two sons, one of whom is developmentally disabled, take a week long retreat to a remote seaside hamlet, with the mother hoping that fervent prayer and visitation to a local shrine can create a miracle to cure her son. During one of these trips, the younger brother Smith, our narrator, encounters a genial but odd group, consisting of some adults and a heavily pregnant teenage girl, as well as hostile locals who don’t adhere to the Catholic dogma that the visitors do. This one not only has the clash of new sensibilities vs old (though a bit subverted as Smith’s mother is VERY antagonistic in her faith), it also has a really twisted conclusion.
Book: “The Hunger” by Alma Katsu
Feel like combining some historical fiction in with your folk horror? Alma Katsu has you covered with her Donner Party horror story “The Hunger”. Because what could make an already true story about getting trapped in the wilderness in the dead of winter and resorting to cannibalism MORE horrifying? BRING IN SOME SUPERNATURAL TERRORS ALSO MAKING PROBLEMS. As the Donner Party moves west in hopes of finding a new life out west, they go on a bad route and get stuck in the Sierras right when winter is about to hit. As their survival becomes less and less likely and they have to start eating the dead to survive, something else and otherworldly is watching and waiting from the unforgiving wilderness. This folk horror trope is definitely along the lines of outsiders moving into an area unfamiliar to them and finding something terrible and unexpected, but it’s also an interesting meditation on the hubris of men, and the way that manifest destiny made settlers think that they were deserving of a new life, when in actuality they had NO idea what they were getting into.
Book: “Pet Sematary” by Stephen King
This is probably the least obvious of folk horror novels on this list, but thinking about it really made me think about the broad swath that folk horror can reach. And “Pet Sematary” TOTALLY has folk horror elements! It follows the Creed family as they move into a new small town and new house near a forest, leaving big city life behind. When the family cat is hit by a car on the busy road, Dr. Louis Creed is led to a backwoods ‘pet cemetery’ by his neighbor Judd, who says that you can bury an animal there and it comes back to life… Though admittedly a little wrong. It works for the cat, though yes, it’s not the same cat it once was. And when horrific tragedy strikes the family, Louis decides to use the burial spot one more time out of desperation and grief. I’m sure you can imagine how it goes. This one is very much in the realm of ‘unrelenting mysteries and horrors of nature’ trope that is found in the sub-genre, as we don’t know WHY the ground can bring things back to life, or why they always come back wrong. It’s a terrifying story not only because of the reanimation, but also the ambiguity.
Book: “Slewfoot” by Brom
This was a favorite read of mine from a couple years ago, and I still find myself going back and skimming through different parts of it. And MAN, does it really fit a folk horror mold, specifically if your kind of folk horror is very much “The Witch” (which, as we all know, is the case for me). After all, Puritans clashing with a supposedly malevolent force in the forest is always going to be up my alley, and in this book nature and forest spirts play a HUGE role in all of it. Abitha is a reluctant Puritan widow who is trying to keep her farm away from her vicious brother in law now that her husband has passed away. When she meets a strange demonic figure in the forest she calls Slewfoot, who has no memory of his past life but has guidance from forest spirits about his role as a vengeful being, they slowly grow a friendship as outsiders. And when the Puritans start to target Abitha, they don’t realize that messing with her is messing with him. I LOVE THIS BOOK, and it combines nature, zealousness, outsiders, and folklore to create a fantastic addition to this list.
What folk horror novels are your favorites? Let us know in the comments!
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