Folk Horror in Literature

Something ancient has been awakened in the woods…. This premise encapsulates the essence of many folk horror stories. I have briefly touched on folk horror before in my review of the YA folk horror anthology The Gathering Dark, but as this deeply rooted subgenre of horror experiences another wave of popularity, I figured it was time to dive into it more deeply and give you a few recommendations through which to explore the genre.

In my earlier post, I defined folk horror as “any horror tale that draws on regional folklore,” but this is a bit of a simplification. As with the Gothic, folk horror is difficult to nail down and define. Works in this category tend to deal not just with folklore but also with folk religion, customs, and rituals. In Western literature, this often involves elements of some pre-Christian pagan practice that has persisted in isolated communities despite the pressure to Christianize. Works of folk horror may draw on real life folklore, beliefs, and practices from a particular culture or region, or they may feature a fictional community with lore of the author’s own creation. Common themes and tropes in works of folk horror include a rural setting, a supernatural entity associated with the natural environment, and worship of or sacrifice to this entity.

The term “folk horror” was brought into common parlance by the 2010 BBC documentary series A History of Horror, in which writer and actor Mark Gatiss used it to refer to three iconic British horror films: The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), Witchfinder General (1968), and The Wicker Man (1973). More recently, the term has seen a resurgence due to the popularity of films such as The Witch (2015) and Midsommar (2019). But folk horror as a literary genre goes back much further. It has its roots in early weird fiction and the nineteenth-century fascination with nature, the occult, and pre-Christian cultures. These interests can be seen in the supernatural fiction of Arthur Machen, best known for his novella The Great God Pan (1894), which hints at a hidden world populated by pagan deities. Another author in this tradition is Algernon Blackwood, who borrows from Anishinaabe folklore in his most famous story “The Wendigo” (1910) and draws horror from Britain’s pre-Christian past in tales like “The Tarn of Sacrifice” (1921). Lovecraft also brushes up against the edges of folk horror with his themes of pagan cults and malevolent entities hidden in the depths of the natural world. Even Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948) has been discussed as a work of folk horror. Though it lacks any direct reference to the supernatural, it does feature a rural community participating in an ancient tradition of ritual sacrifice.

If you’ve enjoyed any of the films or classic works of literature mentioned, you may want to explore some of the more recent literary additions to the folk horror subgenre. Here are just a few to get you started:

The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy

I’ve been thinking about this novella since I read it several years ago and am definitely due for a reread. The story takes place at an anarchist compound called Freedom, Iowa. Punk drifter Danielle Cain arrives at the reinvigorated ghost town looking for answers about her best friend Clay’s mysterious suicide. Instead she finds undead animals roaming the town and a mutated, three-antlered deer that seems to feast on blood. The year before his death, Clay had participated in a ritual to summon the deer as a guardian spirit when Freedom was faced with a tyrannical ruler. But the deer spirit apparently was not satisfied with just one victim. Creepy deer-things in the woods are a hallmark of the folk horror subgenre, but this particular deer spirit is one of the most disturbing I have encountered. Perhaps because it represents real flaws in our society and ourselves….

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

I haven’t read this one yet, but I absolutely loved T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead. In The Twisted Ones, Melissa—nicknamed Mouse—arrives in rural North Carolina to clean out her hoarder grandmother’s house. As she sorts through the useless rubbish, Mouse comes across a journal filled with the seemingly insane ramblings of her step-grandfather. But before long Mouse encounters impossible terrors in the woods herself, and old Cotgrave’s talk of the “twisted ones” who lurk there might not be nonsense after all. In the same way that What Moves the Dead was inspired by Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” The Twisted Ones builds on a short story by Arthur Machen called “The White People” (1904), a classic work of supernatural horror that influenced H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.

Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley

Since folk horror is so well-suited to film, it will come as no surprise to hear of newer works in the subgenre being adapted for the screen. The novel Starve Acre was originally published in 2019 but is being freshly re-issued later this summer to go along with the announcement that a film adaptation starring Matt Smith and Morfydd Clark is currently in production. The novel centers on a grieving father who struggles to cope with the recent loss of his young son at his family’s rural estate in the English moors. The estate’s ominous moniker Starve Acre alludes to local legends about why nothing will grow on the barren property. Richard dismisses all suggestion of a supernatural curse, but as a history professor he is fascinated by legends about the Stythwaite Oak, which once stood on the property and served as the town’s hanging tree. The oak also seems to be tied to a malevolent entity known as Jack Gray, whom young Ewan claimed was whispering disturbing things to him in the months before his death. As Richard attempts to dig up evidence of the oak, he unearths something far more disturbing in the soil of Starve Acre. 

Have you seen any of the films or read any of the books mentioned here? What other works of folk horror literature have you read? Let me know in the comments!