Folk Horror: Descending into the Uncanny.
Genre Genealogy Series
This week at The Ink-Stained Desk, I’m continuing to trudge through the murky waters of my final developmental edit of the Trillmore Project. To allow me to get this done (because I want nothing more than to be able to say it is finished), I am reposting the first instalment of the Genre Genealogy Series. This is relevant for me at this time as the Trillmore Project leans into Cozy Folk Horror. This post is from late January of this year, and I feel like my subscriber number has increased since then. I’m rather proud of this deep dive into Folk Horror and think that many of my new subscribers will enjoy it.
If you just want to get to the Folk horror book reviews and recommendations, website links, and academic texts, feel free to scroll down, I won’t be offended. In fact, I won’t even know!
I’ll be back next week with a new instalment of the series, this time diving deep into Magical Realism.
Have a great week, see you next Friday.
C M Reid at The Ink-Stained Desk.
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome!
This marks the inaugural entry in The Ink-Stained Desk's Genre Genealogy series, where we trace the roots and influences of different genres. Selecting a starting point proved challenging. Where do you start in the great genre sandpit? It was important to me that I didn’t limit this series to the basic genres, instead going deeper into more nuanced subsections, choosing something more specific like grimdark, rather than just ‘fantasy’ as a whole. Considering my recent reading and the pile of books waiting on my nightstand (you will find recommendations at the end of this post), folk horror emerged as the inescapable choice for this article. Part of my weekly routine involves examining the contemporary fiction landscape. Folk horror appears to have surged recently, a trend seemingly intertwined with the current global political, social, and environmental situation. But more about that in a minute.
The Anatomy of Folk Horror.
To enable us to follow notable works of folk horror through history, we first need to be able to detect and identify these works. How do we distinguish folk horror from other types of horror? (This can sometimes get murky.)
Every one of the many references I’ve read in preparing to write this genealogy has pointed to something that Adam Scovell has named the ‘folk horror chain’. Each of the four links in this chain is logically intertwined with the next and highlights the four essential characteristics of folk horror that we need to look for.
Landscape. Our main character (M.C.) will typically find themselves in a rural or semi-rural landscape. Often, this will involve forests or woods. The natural world is often described in Walden-esque terms. It is breathtakingly beautiful, clean in itself, and cleansing to its inhabitants. However, it is also a source of fear and foreboding. Our M.C. is warned, ‘don’t go in the woods’, with a silent ‘or else’.
Isolation. Linked to landscape. The setting exists in isolation, such as a remote village in the middle of the woods. In this, we can also take into account that the M.C. is being isolated from their friends and family, removing their support system.
Skewed morality and belief systems. Connecting to isolation, due to their isolation, the community the M.C. has entered has skewed morality. Folk horror will involve communities that maintain beliefs that seem strange and sometimes archaic to the M.C. (and ourselves). This might look like a lack of trust in the modern medical system, the leaving of sacrifices for otherworldly beings, or dancing naked under the full moon. Scovell points out that if these stories were written at earlier points in history the beliefs of the communities would not seem so shocking.
The culminating ‘summoning or happening’. The final link in the chain, the skewed beliefs or morality gradually builds and tensions escalate leading to some sort of violent or supernatural climax.
Folk Horror Roots and Influences.
Early Roots.
It would be impossible to discuss folk horror without noting that folklore and mythology may be considered the first horror narratives. Whether we consider Greek, Norse, or Celtic traditional stories, each has its own deities and supernatural beings that warn followers not to transgress away from their community, lest they or their community suffer.
18th and 19th Century Gothic Literature.
In essence, Gothic literature provided a blueprint for many of the key elements found in contemporary folk horror: atmospheric, isolated settings, a skewed belief system, supernatural elements, and a focus on the unsettling power of the unknown. If we consider a gothic classic like Dracula (1897) we can see all of these elements. A man isolated in a strange castle. The rural superstitions and skewed belief systems of the people of the villages surrounding Dracula’s castle —
“They are very, very superstitious. In the first house where we stopped, when the woman who served us saw the scar on my forehead, she crossed herself and put out two fingers towards me, to keep off the evil eye.” (p.347)
We find the supernatural in Dracula himself, the way he is seen to crawl up and down the outer walls of the castle and exist solely on the nourishment of blood. And then there is this beautiful contemplation about the unknown by Van Helsing —
“Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are; that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men's eyes, because they know - or think they know - some things which other men have told them.” (184-5)
19th and 20th Century Weird/ Wyrd Fiction.
Exploring the unsettling and the forces that lie beyond human understanding, weird fiction focuses on themes that resonate in folk horror, in particular the unsettling power of the unknown within the context of isolated communities and forgotten traditions. Where the genres differ is in the culminating happening or summoning stage. Weird Fiction often leans towards the cosmic and existential, while Folk Horror focuses on cultural anxieties and the friction between tradition and modernity.
If we consider a wyrd fiction classic such as Edgar Allan Poe’s, The Fall of the House of Usher, the links in the folk horror chain are there. The rural landscape with the isolated House of Usher within it, the strange beliefs that Roderick holds about the sentience of vegetable matter and of the house itself—
“The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stones—in the order of their arrangement, as well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed trees which stood around—above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn.”
Why Folk Horror Now?
So why is Folk Horror having a resurgence?
Coming of age of a generation.
When I think of the books that I was raised on they all have folk horror-ey type vibes; Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Dr Dolittle, and even Grimm’s Fairy Tales. These are books I look back on with huge amounts of nostalgia. So, when I’m perusing the bookshop shelves and I see an adult fiction novel that includes woods and forest settings, anthropomorphized animals, running away from home, or some sort of supernatural summoning (all of which make up Scovell’s previously mentioned folk-horror chain) I immediately pick it up for the nostalgia it sparks in me.
If you’re enjoying The Genre Genealogy Series, please consider buying me a coffee.
Global Socio-political Environment.
Another reason for the recent rise in folk horror is the global socio-political environment we find ourselves living in. We are all well aware of the issues in the news at this time. This in itself is a huge topic and would require an in-depth article to really hash it out. But let’s take a quick look—
Environmental anxiety: Fears about climate change and ecological destruction resonate with folk horror's themes of nature's power and humanity's transgression against it.
Rural decline and isolation: The decline of rural communities and the growing divide between urban and rural areas create a fertile ground for anxieties about isolation, abandonment, and the loss of traditional ways of life, all of which are common themes in folk horror.
Resurgence of interest in folklore and mythology: A renewed interest in folklore, mythology, and paganism provides rich material for folk horror stories, drawing on ancient fears and beliefs.
Nostalgia for the past: A romanticized view of the past, often contrasted with a bleak present, fuels a fascination with folklore and tradition, which folk horror exploits.
Loss of community: The erosion of traditional communities and social bonds creates a sense of alienation and vulnerability, which folk horror can exploit.
William Baillie-Grohman’s Sport in Art (1913). Source. Whew, if you’re still with me, as promised, please find all my folk horror fiction and non-fiction recommendations below.
Contemporary Folk Horror Book Recommendations.
I have read the following folk horror books recently.
For reviews on each, please look for my Goodreads here or click on the links to visit HauntedMTL.com and read my full reviews.
Withered Hill by David Barnett (Find my extended review of this book on Substack here)
The Unmothers by Leslie J. Anderson
Smothermoss by Alisa Alering
Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley
Don’t Eat the Pie by Monique Asher
Classic Folk Horror Texts.
The Great God Pan, Arthur Machan (1890)
The Willows, Algernon Blackwood (1907)
The Lair of the White Worm, Bram Stoker (1911)
Folk Horror Websites Worth Visiting.
The Revenant Journal https://www.revenantjournal.com/
Hookland https://hookland.wordpress.com/
Folk Horror Revival & Urban Wryd Press https://folkhorrorrevival.com/
Hellebore-zine https://helleborezine.bigcartel.com/
Works Cited.
Keetley, D., & Heholt, R. (Eds.). Folk Horror: New Global Pathways (1st ed.). 2023. University of Wales Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.20705652
Scovell, A. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange. 2017. Liverpool University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv13841x8
Stoker, B. Dracula. 2012. Canterbury Classics edition.
Thanks so much for reading to the end.
Hope you have a great weekend
See you next Friday
C M Reid at The Ink-Stained Desk.
Love this. I feel we're starting to see more and more eco themes in all sorts of genres and it's only on the rise.
So late to this article, but this makes me think about wanting to do a deep dive into folk horror. I'm in a big fairy tale/didactic storytelling mood right now, and this seems up my alley.