The following article is not a review as such to avoid accusation of bias as I (Andy Paciorek) have essays in the books (‘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’) – but instead is a spotlight of some tomes that may be of interest and/or use to students, lecturers and aficionados of folk horror and its associated fields.

The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror

Edited By Robert Edgar, Wayne Johnson (Routledge. 2023)

“The Routledge Companion to Folk Horror offers a comprehensive guide to this popular genre. It explores its origins, canonical texts and thinkers, the crucial underlying themes of nostalgia and hauntology, and identifies new trends in the field.

Divided into five parts, the first focuses on the history of Folk Horror from medieval texts to the present day. It considers the first wave of contemporary Folk Horror through the films of the ‘unholy trinity’, as well as discussing the influence of ancient gods and early Folk Horror. Part 2 looks at the spaces, landscapes, and cultural relics, which form a central focus for Folk Horror. In Part 3, the contributors examine the rich history of the use of folklore in children’s fiction. The next part discusses recent examples of Folk Horror-infused music and image. Chapters consider the relationship between different genres of music to Folk Horror (such as folk music, black metal, and new wave), sound and performance, comic books, and the Dark Web. Often regarded as British in origin, the final part analyses texts which break this link, as the contributors reveal the larger realms of regional, national, international, and transnational Folk Horror.

Featuring 40 contributions, this authoritative collection brings together leading voices in the field. It is an invaluable resource for students and scholars interested in this vibrant genre and its enduring influence on literature, film, music, and culture.”

Table of Contents –

General Introduction – Robert Edgar and Wayne Johnson

Part I: Origins and Histories

1. Christopher Flavin Fear of the World: Folk Horror in Early British Literature
2. Brendan Walsh The Early Modern Popular Demonic and the Foundations of Twentieth Century British Folk Horror
3. Katy Soar “Banished to woods and a sickly moon”: The Old Gods in Folk Horror
4. Craig Thomson “I am the writing on the wall, the whisper in the classroom”: The Changing Conception of the ‘Folk’ in the Western Folk Horror Tradition
5. Darryl Jones M. R. James and Folk Horror
6. Miranda Corcoran “Leave Something Witchy”: Evolving Representations of Cults and New Religious Movements in Folk Horror
7. Alan Smith The spectacle of the uncanny revel: Thomas Hardy’s Mephistophelian Visitants and ‘Folk Provenance’.
8. Charlotte Runcie ‘We’re not in the Middle Ages’: Alan Garner’s Folk Horror Medievalism
9. Peter Bell Terror in the Landscape: Folk Horror in the Stories of M.R. James
10. John Miller Folk Horror, HS2 and the Disenchanted Woods
11. David Evans-Powell Mind the Doors! Characterising the London Underground on Screen as a Folk Horror Space
12. Beth Kattelman Queer Folk: The Danger of Being Different
13. David Sweeney “Out of the dust”: Folk Horror and the Urban Wyrd in Too Old to Die Young and Other Works by Nicolas Winding Refn
14. Catherine Spooner Meeting the Gorse Mother: Feminist Approaches to Folk Horror in Contemporary British Fiction
15. Ruth Heholt Handicrafts of Evil: Nostalgia and the Make-Culture of Folk Horror
16. Lauren Stephenson Restoring Relics – (Re)-releasing Antrum (2018) and film as Folk Horror
17. Andy Paciorek Yesterday’s Memories of Tomorrow: Nostalgia, Hauntology & Folk Horror
18. Diane A. Rodgers Ghosts in the Machine: Folklore and technology onscreen in Ghostwatch (1992) and Host (2020)
19. Douglas McNaughton The Pattern Under the Plough: Folk Horror in 1970s British Children’s Television
20. Jez Conolly ‘This calm, serene orb’: a personal recollection of the comforting strangeness found in the worlds of Smallfilms
21. Jon Towlson ‘To Traumatise Kids for Life’: The Influence of Folk Horror on 1970s Children’s Television
22. Bob Fischer That Haunted Feeling: Analogue Memories
23. Stephen Brotherstone “Don’t Be Frightened. I Told You We Were Privileged”: The British Class System in the Televised Folk Horror of the 1970s
24. Dave Lawrence The 4:45 Club: Folk Horror Before Teatime in the 1970s and 1980s
25. Julianne Regan The Idyllic Horrific– Field, Farm, Garden, Forest and Machine
26. Richard D. Craig “And the devil he came to the farmer at plough” – November, Folk Horror and folk music
27. Julian Holloway Sounding Folk Horror and the Strange Rural
28. Jason D. Brawn Sounds of Our Past: The electronic music that links Folk Horror and Hauntology
29. Joseph S. Norman Even in death: The ‘Folk Horror Chain’ in Black Metal
30. Ben Halligan Towards ‘Squire Horror’: Genesis 1972-3
31. Barbara Chamberlin Patterns beneath the grid: the haunted spaces of Folk Horror comics
32. Max Jokschus From the Fibers, from the Forums, from the Fringe – Folk Horror from the Deep, Dark Web
33. Dawn Keetley ‘The dark is here’: The Third Day and Folk Horror’s Anxiety about Birth-rates, Immigration, and Race
34. Robert Edgar Hinterlands and SPAs: Folk Horror and Neoliberal Desolation
35. Andrew M. Butler “Why Don’t You Go Home?”: The Folk Horror Revival in Contemporary Cornish Gothic Films
36. Adam Smith Satire and the British Folk Horror Revival
37. Matthew Cheeseman English Nationalism, Folklore and Pagans
38. Keith McDonald Bound by Elusiveness: Transnational Cinema and Folk Horror
39. James Thurgill Strange Permutations, Eerie Dis/locations: On the cultural and geographic specificity of Japanese Folk Horror
40. Adam Spellicy “All the little devils are proud of Hell”: The First Wave of Australian Folk Horror

https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Folk-Horror/Edgar-Johnson/p/book/9781032042831

Folk Horror On Film: Return of the British Repressed.

Edited by Kevin J. Donnelly and Louis Bayman (Manchester University Press. 2023)

“What is folk horror and how culturally significant is it? This collection is the first study to address these questions while considering the special importance of British cinema to the genre’s development.

The book presents political and aesthetic analyses of folk horror’s uncanny landscapes and frightful folk. It places canonical films like Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and The Wicker Man (1973) in a new light and expands the canon to include films like the sci-fi horror Doomwatch (1970-72) and the horror documentary Requiem for a Village (1975) alongside filmmakers Ken Russell and Ben Wheatley.

A series of engrossing chapters by established scholars and new writers argue for the uniqueness of folk horror from perspectives that include the fragmented national history of pagan heresies and Celtic cultures, of peasant lifestyles, folkloric rediscoveries and postcolonial decline.”

Foreword by John Das
Introduction: what makes the folk horrific? – Louis Bayman and K.J. Donnelly
Part I: Debating The Wicker Man (1973)
1 The context of The Wicker Man – Ronald Hutton
2 A deeply religious people: The Wicker Man, contemporary paganism, and Dracula reversed- Laurel Zwissler
3 Folk horror: a discursive approach, with application to Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) and Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves (1984) – Mikel J. Koven
Part II: Return of the British repressed
4 The folk of folk horror – Derek Johnston
5 Doomwatch: sacrifice zones and folk horror – Dawn Keetley
6 My ancestors died here: Requiem for a Village and the rural English horror of modernity and socio-cultural change – Paul Newland
7 Outsider history, or outside of history – K. J. Donnelly
8 Anglo creep and Celtic resistance in Apostle – Beth Carroll
9 Women’s folk horror in Britain: history, industry, style – Amy Harris
Part III: Folk horror’s cultural landscapes
10 Ritualistic rhythms: exploring the sensory effect of drums in British folk horror cinema – Lyndsay Townsend
11 ‘Nature came before man’: human as subject and object within the folk horror anti-landscape – David Evans-Powell
12 Hieroglyphics: Arthur Machen on screen – Mark Goodall
13 Albion unearthed: social, political and cultural influences on British folk horror, urban wyrd and backwoods cinema – Andy Paciorek
14 ‘Isn’t folk horror all horror?’: a wyrd genre – Diane A. Rodgers
https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526164926/