1. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    Folk Horror?

    Discussion in 'Fantasy' started by Harmonices, Jan 23, 2019.

    Hi, just curious, anyone else here interested in writing in the folk horror genre? I tapped the keywords into the search bar but no results. Perhaps if I'm missing something (new here) someone could direct me? Meanwhile, if you're writing folk horror, do tell.
     
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  2. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Can you define what you mean by 'folk horror?' It's a category I never heard of, but it might be interesting.
     
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  3. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    Folk horror is based in this world, usually rural Britain (coastal villages, ancient forests, the moors) - though no doubt there are US equivalents. And features elements of the supernatural to be found in traditional lore and superstition: ghosts, archaic rites, the moon, local legends. Very much rooted in mood and place. It was popular in the seventies but is seeing a reemergence more recently. I must confess I've not actually read any, but I love the films: think Werewolf in London, The Wicker Man, Blood on Satan's Claw, The Witchfinder General. All good fun!
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2019
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  4. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Including Steeleye Span tour bus over cliff at Beachy Head?
     
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  5. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    Not sure I get the reference, but a Maddy Prior album playing in the background would fit in nicely. Macrame owl optional.
     
  6. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    I don't think there was much of a reference. Maybe Sussex & Lewes centre of the folk universe?

    ...

    Good settings for folk horror tho.' All that barley munching vocabulary and long man and smuggling..
     
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  7. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Manly Wade Wellman (yes, that's a real name) wrote a serious of books about John the Balladeer. The only one I can remember offhand is Who Fears the Devil, which was short stories, but I know there were a couple other novel-length ones. David Drake was inspired by them to write Old Nathan, which is somewhat similar, but didn't really play to his strengths as an author, IMO.

    ETA: Both Wellman and Drake were writing in an American Appalachian setting, I don't know of any UK folk horror stories. I also read a book a year or so ago called Redneck Eldritch, which brought elements of the Cthulhu mythos to a Southern US setting. Don't remember any specifics, but I was amused by it.
     
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  8. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    Eh, I hadn't had enough coffee this morning..

    Noted, though I think Lewes is probably a tad too posh for folk horror, in fact the whole seventies folk revival itself is probably a tad too posh for folk horror (I have met the lawyers and social workers singing about dying in a mining disaster - or just generally dying as they tend to do in folk ballads). I'd be more inclined to set my folk horror in a shitty council estate on the outskirts of some no-where town: where the sacrificial fields meet working-class suburbia.
     
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  9. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    Interesting. I thought Appalachia would definitely suit the genre. Also anywhere there's an historic link with the blues.

    I thought the first series of True Detective was a good example too. Not the second series, but definitely the first, and maybe the current one if it continues to go that way.
     
  10. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Well then...

    Who Put Bella In The Wytch Elm it must be.

    However, I must disagree in the strongest terms re poshos and Sussex. I am going through a Sussex phase, granted.

    Firstly - the history's great.
    Secondly - drive 5 minutes out of Lewes - and you shall find the yokels of [y]our nightmares.

    ...

    So you'd want 'folk horror' to be contemporary?
     
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  11. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    Contemporary setting? To write, yeah, I think so for me. Though I'd also like to intersect timelines and dig up some of those skeletons buried deep down. I think folk horror ideally taps into something older, feral and instinctive, or atavistic, in the human consciousness. So the past and its stories, must feature in there as a repository for all that stuff. Off to write about that sacrificial council estate now. I have just the fields in mind (they do say write what you know).
     
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  12. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    gryla.png gryla 2.png gryla 3.png
    Ah. I did a bit of looking after I asked that question. Yeah, it's a thing here, I reckon. Horror in general is not my 'thing' though, so I don't know much about it. I do love the notion of folk tales and superstitions though.

    You could write a ream of stories based on folk 'horror' that surrounds old Christmas beliefs, though. I study old Christmas beliefs—usually having to do with the solstice period, but lots of them around Christmas Eve, Day and New Year as well. Scary stuff, about what happens to you if you are caught out alone during these times. Especially midnight. Or if you've been 'bad.'

    You want to really scare yourself about Christmas ...check out the history behind the Yule Lads of Iceland and their horrible parents. I mean, seriously awful stuff. This, for starters: https://www.iceland.is/the-big-picture/news/celebrating-christmas-with-13-trolls/7916/

    And these pictures are all of Gryla, the Yule Lads' mummy dearest, in action:



     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2019
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  13. The Dapper Hooligan

    The Dapper Hooligan (V) ( ;,,;) (v) Contributor

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    When I read the term 'folk horror' my first thought was the movie Wrong Turn. But, yeah, North America has tonnes of fodder for folk horror, all the way from Crossroads Demons to The Wendigo.

    ETA: Algernon Blackwood was a rather prolific writer of this type of stuff. If you check him out, though, just be warned, he can be kinda racist. Like slightly more racist than Lovecracft racist.
     
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  14. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Judging by the pictures you're a fanatic...
     
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  15. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    LOL
     
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  16. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    Nope. I ran into this stuff while researching Christmas customs. Not exactly what I expected to find. I used to think a lump of coal from Santa was the worst that could happen to me, if I was a 'bad' child. Yikes.

    Christmas and end of year customs are fun. There is one in Austria that says if you cut a branch from an apricot tree on 29 November, force it into bloom, and carry it to church with you on Christmas Eve, you can tell which people in the church are witches—because while you're holding your branch and looking around, all the witches will have upended buckets on their heads instead of hats. As the author of the book where I read this put it: "I don't know about witches, but the practice must have been an effective means of identifying the parish busybodies."
     
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  17. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    Wonderful images! I adore all that stuff. Totally up my ally. There's so much strange folklore to plunder and draw from, it's really a fabulous rabbit hole to travel down. I like trawling through charity shops for books; there were a plethora pumped out in the sixties and seventies on this kind of thing, but now they're not so commonplace. I have a few on ghost stories and folk tales from various counties. Always worth a dip into. I also have a big old Reader's Digest volume called Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain; lots of lovely fragments of lore, B&W photos and old woodcuts in there. Yummy. I probably paid two quid for it if that. It's worth a few bob now, according to Amazon.
     
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  18. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    Don't worry, I've read Gone With the Wind. I trust being exposed to that will have toughened me up.

    I like Wrong Turn. Then there's it's grand pappy Deliverance of course.
     
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  19. Catrin Lewis

    Catrin Lewis Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2023 Community Volunteer

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    Now that you mention it, my stalled horror novel has a strong element of what you could call Folk Horror. It draws on the ancient Lenni Lenape telling of the Flood story, except in their version, after the waters drew back certain lakes remained infested with immortal hydra-like creatures/demons with a taste for livestock and especially for human blood. Not the sort of thing to enhance property values, no.
     
  20. EBohio

    EBohio Banned

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    Sounds like it is just horror in rural areas.
     
  21. The Dapper Hooligan

    The Dapper Hooligan (V) ( ;,,;) (v) Contributor

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    Yes, I too heard that London from A Werewolf in London was rather sparsely inhabited.
     
  22. Seven Crowns

    Seven Crowns Moderator Staff Supporter Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Over here in Colorado, Stephen Graham Jones does a lot of horror that has Native American roots. He's extremely good.
     
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  23. Seven Crowns

    Seven Crowns Moderator Staff Supporter Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Oh hell, this makes me weep. I should have enrolled! The last week was spent at the "Overlook."

    https://www.colorado.edu/winter/horror-fiction-writing

    I'm going to have a mojito.
     
  24. Harmonices

    Harmonices Senior Member

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    It's a tad more focused than that. Yes it's a sub-category of horror usually located in rural areas, but while horror can and does draw from all the same tropes (ghosts, ancient sacrificial rites, malevolent spirits of place, lycanthropy, witchcraft etc.), it doesn't have to and it can go anywhere it wants.

    Folk horror particularly homes in on oral traditions, folk memory, ancient sites, and the history of the landscape for its story telling. As said above, you could easily write something based in a concrete clad working class area, not filled with rustic yokels but chavs in hoodies (and there's An American Werewolf in London as Dapper notes).

    Every acre of this land has strange old tales to tell of blood and fear, even if it's buried deep down and covered in concrete. It's that very source material that makes me interested in writing this kind of thing.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2019
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  25. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    Bideford...

    or specifically Northam. 'Community as dark as any Merthyr valley...' quote from memory, birthplace of Rose West.

    “Stop Stranger Stop,

    Near this spot lies buried

    King Hubba the Dane,

    who was slayed in a bloody retreat,

    by King Alfred the Great”

    That plaque [at Bloody Corner] always used to spook me, and also my pal with the poltergeist in his house.

    The church on the hill built over a 1000 Viking corpses. Another hill - Humpty Dumpty hill flattened by developers and rechristened the 'Ocean Drive.' Ancestors seek revenge.

    Whilst Bideford has the last witchcraft trial...and I haven't even mentioned Hartland cannibals, or Hartland Quay - where the German tourist booked into the hotel, took his first evening constitutional and stepped over the cliff to the sea forever.
     
    Last edited: Jan 24, 2019
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