folk horror revival

2025 December 21, 2024 fertilitycult Season’s Greetings to All ~To mark the Winter Solstice, Wyrd Harvest Press & Folk Horror Revival are again making a charity donation of our book sales profits to a Wildlife Trusts’ environmental and conservation project –This year we have donated £300 to Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Species Recovery Appeal. Protect and restore Yorkshire’s rarest…

As the number of books about Folk Horror and Hauntology is considerably increasing, focus falls now upon a quest for a unique selling point – the tone, the angle, which cultural examples will be concentrated upon. With Ghost of an Idea the aspect of Nostalgia is a point of interest. There is only so much that can be said about the ‘Unholy Trinity’ of folk horror films or Jacques Derrida’s origin…

Wyrd Harvest Press are thrilled to present 21st Century Ghost Stories: Volume III the latest in our spooky anthology series. Featuring a host of new stories by a wealth of talented writers, edited by Paul Guernsey, illustrated by Andy Paciorek and created with great thanks to Richard Hing and Grey Malkin; sales profits from this book will be charitably donated to The Wildlife Trusts ‘ nature…

September 15, 2024 The Watkins Book of Urban Legends by Gail De Vos: Book Review Before I get to the book, indulge me in a little waffle about the subject matter … I first became aware of Urban Legends … Friend of a Friend Tales … Whale Tumour Stories … Contemporary Legends … call them what you will at a very young age. I was a monster kid into horror films and scary stories (think Mark from…

Sunken Lands, the new book by Gareth E. Rees may be one of those that forms a quandary for bookshop staff – just what shelf should it be placed on? For within its pages it covers a wealth of terrain (mostly of the moist or entirely saturated variety). Is it a folklore and legend book? A travel and history book? Psychogeographical philosophy? Natural History/Conservation? Occulture and Mystery?…

The following article is not a review as such to avoid accusation of bias as I (Andy Paciorek) have essays in the books (those being ‘Yesterday’s Memories of Tomorrow: Nostalgia, Hauntology and Folk Horror’ in The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror, and ‘Albion Unearthed: social, political and cultural influences on British Folk Horror, Urban Wyrd and Backwoods Cinema’ in Folk Horror on Film’ –…

Having written and/or illustrating several myself it is fair to say that I have a soft spot for encyclopedias / guides to folkloric entities and beasts, especially the darker beings. Folklore is such a vast and diverse field and unless you are multilingual so much of it still remains hidden from many readers. Therefore it is a welcome treasure for me when English language tomes covering creatures…

Watkins publishing have added to the world of Fortean travel-guides with 2 titles aimed to whet the wanderlust of wyrd voyagers. From the pen of Andy Sharp – musician, wordsmith and designator of the English Heretic black plaques (awarded to the strange denizens and dwellings that English Heritage overlooked) comes The Astral Geographic. On my first encounter with reference books, I often flip…

Perhaps of all the literary, cinematic and stylistic manifestations of the ‘dark arts’, only Film/Roman Noir may rival folk horror in the quantity of deliberation, discussion, debate and disagreement. Indeed in converse of the latter subject on social media oft asked is the question “But is it Folk Horror?” in regards to a particular movie, book or image.  Sometimes this elicits the response of…

I am of that age (Generation X aka The Haunted Generation) whereby a significant part of my childhood was enveloped in the Cold War fears of an impending nuclear apocalypse. A terror adequately catered for by the less than a handful of terrestrial channels emitting their cathode rays into British living rooms. Dystopian dramas such as Threads, When the Wind Blows, the eventual broadcast of the…

Over a half-century of waiting but finally that brooding member of the classic Folk Horror unhallowed triumvirate of British films, The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) has its own tie-in novel accompanying on the shelves the book partners of Witchfinder General (1968) and The Wicker Man (1973). Only in the case of Witchfinder General did the book precede the film (written by Ronald Bassett and…

The Beckoning Fair One: Film Review

Following 2017’s Holy Terrors (review here) the excellent film adaptation of various tales by the mystical author Arthur Machen, the directorial duo of Julian Butler and Mark Goodall return with a tale from another past master of the mysterious and macabre – Oliver Onions* and an adaptation of his short tale ‘The Beckoning Fair One’. The premise of the story follows a writer as he moves into a…

High John The Conqueror by Tariq Goddard: Book Review

High John the Conqueror, the latest novel by Tariq Goddard – author, founder of Zero Books and Publisher at Repeater Books, is a strange brew – in large part a gritty British police procedural, partfolk horror / urban wyrd, political commentary and psychedelic trip-literature.Set in Wessex in 2016, the book follows a team of detectives as they investigate a series of teenagers going missing from…

Forests Damned and Furrows Cursed: Book Review

Forests Damned and Furrows Cursed is a new anthology of classic Folk Horror novellas harvested by the author William P. Simmons of Shadow House Publishing. We say ‘Folk Horror’ but all of the contained novellas were written in the late 19th/early 20th Century before the term Folk Horror was widely applied as a sub-genre or mode, therefore all are written with a purity of independence, free from…

Dark Folklore: Book Review

Upon hearing of the release of Dark Folklore by Mark and Tracey Norman, I was beguiled as to what Chthonic treasures the book would contain, for there is certainly darkness a ‘plenty to be found within the world of folklore. Upon opening the book and casting my eyes over the contents listing of the 5 chapters offering a bewitching array of lore with Fortean interest, the first chapter The Old…

Amazing Graze: Summer Solstice Charity Donation 2022 ☀️

Thank You to everybody who voted in our Solstice charity donation poll. The poll is now closed and we are pleased to say that Yorkshire Wildlife Trust will receive £500 from our book sales profits towards their grassland appeal. You can support more Wildlife Trusts projects by buying our folk horror and urban wyrd books at – https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/andypaciorek and/or donating directly…