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Following on in the footsteps of Strange Lands: A Field Guide to the Celtic Otherworld, Black Earth guides the curious on a fully illustrated journey into the strange Otherworld of the Slavic nations. Ever wondered whose eyes are glaring at you in the bathhouse or who is lurking in the deep dark birch woods and following you through the golden grain fields? What lies beneath the damp black earth? Wonder no more, let Andrew L. Paciorek guide you into the worlds beyond.
Safe return not guaranteed ….
Fully illustrated throughout – 206 pages
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The Snow Witch is both a haunted and haunting book. Though not a ghost story as such, it is swarming with ghosts – the ghosts of the past, the ghosts of winter, breath ghosts. From the bleak frosty shore to the black, black sea, Wingett tells the tale of a lonely, insular refugee from the east of Europe who finds herself in the cold season days of a British seaside town. There she encounters strange kindness but also becomes the victim of a harrowing experience.
The tale is infused with humanity at its rawest, its nastiness but also its generosity. Like a favourite author of mine – Ray Bradbury, Wingett skilfully paints a scene in words with painterly strokes; in my mind when reading I could see the twinkling of the model village lights in the darkness of the drawn in evenings and feel the bite of frost upon my fingers. I found myself immersed with the events playing out in my mind like images upon a cinema screen; for me that is the mark of a skilled writer. Also adept and engaging are the characterisations of the figures prevelant in the narrative – from the enigmatic otherworldliness of Donzita, the enduring grief of Celia, the shy awkwardness of Eddy, the wilful desperation of Vee and the low, selfish cruelty of Riley.
At times The Snow Witch is raw, unafraid to confront the unkindness of life but it also shines the beacon of hope and illuminates magic and maintains its air of cold, ethereal beauty throughout.
The Snow Witch is available to pre-order from here and here
Review by Andy Paciorek
“What exactly is Folk Horror? Is it the writing of M.R. James and Alan Garner? Is it the television scripts of Nigel Kneale, John Bowen and David Rudkin, the films of David Gladwell and The Blood On Satan s Claw? Or could it be the paranoid Public Information Films of the 1970s; the Season Of The Witch ; The Advisory Circle reminding us to Mind how you go! ; or perhaps a contemporary story of two hit-men caught unknowingly in a class-saturated ritual of violence? Interest in the ancient, the occult, and the wyrd is on the rise. The furrows of Robin Hardy, Piers Haggard and Michael Reeves have arisen again, as has the Spirit of Dark of Lonely Water, Juganets, cursed Saxon crowns, spaceships hidden under ancient barrows, owls and flowers, time-warping stone circles, wicker men, the goat of Mendes, and malicious stone tapes. Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful And Things Strange charts the summoning of these esoteric arts within the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, using theories of Psychogeography, Hauntology and Topography to delve into the genre s output in film, television and multimedia as its sacred demon of ungovernableness rises yet again in the twenty-first century.”
It may seem biased that Adam Scovell’s book be reviewed here as he is part of the Folk Horror Revival cabal but let me state that Adam was invited into the circle because of the high quality of his work and his passion for his interests. Also I won’t review anything I dislike (I am not paid to be a critic so do not do negativity for free) so this book is entirely here on its own merit. So here we go …
It is a hard line that Adam treads here, producing a work that is suitable both for academic film and cultural studies and a book accessible for those first entering into the sub genre. And it is an extremely difficult sub genre to define, not is it only extremely sinuous but it is currently evolving into new and different directions. If anyone therefore is qualified to take on this task and to tread that line, it is certainly Adam Scovell. He approaches the subject both with a curiosity and a cunning insight of themes that are at times ineffable. He does not resort to the tact of the usual film / book critic and simply express his opinion but delves to understand the subject under his microscope in great detail and not only catalogue their relevance as art and narrative but also the social, political and anthropological significance.
For all fans and scholars of folk horror and related sub-genres this book is indispensable. Scovell proves himself an excellent writer as the level of research and consideration in this book is impeccable yet it is not at all dry and is a captivating, flowing read for every body interested in the subject matter, not only those involved in academic field studies.
Many examples of folk horror are investigated and discussed (as such beware of spoilers for films and Tv plays you may not have seen yet) and also their relation to akin subjects such as the Urban Wyrd, Hauntology, Backwoods Horror, Ruralism and Southern Gothic.
This book investigates its subject matter with a contagious passion and does extremely well to explain a subject that is nebulous and still evolving. Whilst concentrating mostly on film the book also explores such matter as Public Information Films and the design and music of the Ghost Box label.
As well as being a very worthy addition to Auteur’s film study publication oeuvre it is an essential read for all fans of folk horror and the sinuous other company it keeps.
The one issue which is not down to Scovell, is that the book would certainly benefit from illustration throughout. Something Auteur may consider as I am sure a more visual tome would do well, but for text alone Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange is welcomed as the first book of its type to broach the subject and is highly recommended.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Folk-Horror-Dreadful-Things-Strange/dp/1911325221
‘Spirits of Place’ is an anthology journeying into the minds, places and memories of 
twelve writers as they attempt to put into words the emotional and cultural residue implied by a location dear to them. It’s not merely the hard geography of a location but its evolution though folk history which is of interest here. This isn’t another book of psychogeography essays where the landscape is explored and meaning extrapolated from the usual tired rambles of London and Paris, ‘Spirits of Place’ puts a human face onto local mythology and shows that the devil (and assorted other spirits) is almost certainly in the detail as it’s often the little stories that provide the biggest connections to a place. In all cases careful research goes hand in hand with the writer’s emotions and experiences providing the reader with more than enough information to spark further investigation.
This project, derived from a day of lectures in Liverpool in 2016, has been carefully curated by John Reppion to include a refreshing diversity of writers with the essays contained covering a lot of ground both physically and metaphorically. From Bryndís Björgvinsdóttir’s background in Icelandic Elf-lore and how its interfering with modern road and building construction, to Vajra Chandrasekera’s personal account how Sri Lankan spirit folklore evolves to retain its relevance in a rapidly changing socio-political landscape, to Maria J. Perez Cuervo’s piece on the moving of King Philip II of Spain’s Spanish Capital to a mountain local myth says contains the caves that the Devil lived in after his fall from Heaven, the span is ambitiously global telling very human tales which derive (as all things do) from the land.
Of the writers included, the three most known to me, Warren Ellis, Iain Sinclair and Alan Moore don’t disappoint in their submissions. In ‘A Compendium of Tides’ Ellis paints a vivid picture of strange frequencies plucked throughout time from the aether of the Thames Estuary, with the wreck of the SS Richard Montgomery and its dangerously deteriorating stockpile of wartime bombs hanging, like a Damoclean sword, threatening turn the area and its history back into atoms and background static. Sinclair leaves behind his beloved London to travel to Palermo, weaving an almost a film noir narrative about his visit to the Capuchin Catacombs, with the journey full of stories that lead him on a deep meditation into its place in the Sicilian psyche. And, having been fortunate enough to see Moore perform the piece his essay ‘Coal Dreams’ was based on at the Sage in Gateshead back in 2010, it’s great to see it finally documented as his contribution. First leading the reader through his own previous personal involvement with Newcastle and the mental and physical journey it has taken to get him there, then setting about re-imagining Newcastle and its environment by reframing its history using it’s pre Christian backdrop in an enthralling riposte to J B Priestley’s damning of Newcastle in ‘English Journey’, invoking Antenociticus (a Roman flavoured variant of Caernunnos) in his temple in Wallsend by way of brimstone-fired visions of the painter John Martin, Mary Shelly and Bovril.
None of the essays in this tight packed anthology overstay their welcome and the high level of writing prowess across the book makes it a joy to read, even if you manage to find an essay topic which doesn’t immediately float your boat. The general tone and connection to the theme does remain even throughout which goes to show that no matter where you are, if you concentrate on any place long enough, you can start to see the ghosts infused within the brickwork and the angels in the architecture. This book fits wonderfully into the growing movement towards the re-enchantment of location and will be of great interest to those fostering a deeper connection with the landscape.
Spirits of Place is published by Daily Grail Publishing
For more details, visit www.spiritsofplace.com
Review by S.: of the Psychogeographical Commission.
Fans of folk horror, hauntology, psychogeography, visionary ruralism, the urban wyrd and other such strange edges will proably be no stranger to the name of Adam Scovell or perhaps his thorough and impressive website Celluloid Wicker Man
Adam is a writer and filmmaker currently based between Liverpool and London He has produced film and art criticism for over twenty publications including The Times and The Guardian, runs the Celluloid Wicker Man website and has had work screened and given lectures at places as esteemed as Cambridge University, The British Museum, The BFI, The Everyman Playhouse, Queen’s University – Belfast, Hackney Picturehouse and Manchester Art Gallery.
Within his first book for film and media publishing house Auteur , Scovell wanders forests and fields to unearth answers to the thorny question “What is Folk Horror?” It is quite a task for folk horror is not simply a subgenre of horror but is a subgenre of various other genres and subgenres and it is also conversely unique in itself.
The Unholy Trinity of films, Blood on Satan’s Claw, Witchfinder General and The Wicker Man do of course get thorough necessary attention, but this book gives cause for any of the opinion that folk horror is a 3 movie phenomenon, much cause to think again. Scovell, the creator of Scovell’s Chain – a system of defining elements of folk horror succeeds in outlining and showcasing diverse examples of folk horror and related fields, but does not hammer its legs down with iron stakes in too rigid a definition allowing folk horror to continue to wander myriad paths and remain as an evolving entity.
Kwaidan, Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Ballad of Tam Lin,True Detective, Penda’s Fen, Quatermass, Children of the Stones and many many other films, tv shows are given the full (Owl) service and prove that folk horror is not limted to the British Isles as some folk would kid you believe. .
For all fans and scholars of folk horror and related sub-genres this book is indispensable. Scovell proves himself an excellent writer as the level of research and consideration in this book is impeccable yet it is not at all dry and is a captivating, flowing read for every body interested in the subject matter, not only those involved in academic field studies.
Many examples of folk horror are investigated and discussed (as such beware of spoilers for films and Tv plays you may not have seen yet) and also their relation to akin subjects such as the Urban Wyrd, Hauntology, Backwoods Horror, Ruralism and Southern Gothic.
This book investigates its subject matter with a contagious passion and does extremely well to explain a subject that is nebulous and still evolving. Whilst concentrating mostly on film the book also explores such matter as Public Information Films and the design and music of the Ghost Box label.
As well as being a very worthy addition to Auteur’s film study publication ouvre it is an essential read for all fans of folk horror and the sinuous other company it keeps.
Folk Horror Revival looks forward very much to reading further books and watching new films in future from Adam.
Hours Dreadful & Things Strange is available from Amazon and other book stores.
She is Time …
A giantess
A dwarf
A bear
A bird
Mother sister daughter all
Originator and child born
Wondrous
Awful
Tender
Harsh
Caressing – “You still have Time my love, my beloved one.”
“No Time left – Hurry you wicked child!”
I have avoided her presence.
I have acknowledged it too.
Youth or innocence or stupidity
Wisdom or just older and old age coming and then …
“I wasn’t really so ugly after all.”
Day after day and hour after hour of self criticism.
Now looking back
I beg you, “Let me make myself again!”
Help me form from clay instead of skin containing organs blood and bone.
Help me become an uncontaminated version of me
Instead of influence bombarding and impinging from all directions.
But Time will do what she wants and leaves me to learn.
Gives me precious gifts as well as throwaway baubles that will remain until infinity – Signs of me that were.
The passing of –
Who I am
Who we all are
What we learn
How to be.
Make the most of it.
Don’t waste time or do waste some time
Sometimes –
From time to time stop and
Feel and appreciate every moment of … but …
Best laid plans.
The past rises up in black and white or technicolour shards.
Puzzle together
Manufacture memory
Did it happen?
All a part of you.
Primordial – before time, before building began
Past, present, future – all times.
Hauntings, soaked and seeped into the walls the floors, the earth.
The words, the sighs, the emotions, the pleasures, the pains.
Mine mingle into the sediment of all others who came before me and those that will come.
Haunting me from the future as well as the past.
Thoughts, realities, fantasies, plans and ambitions unrealized, regretted, yearned for –
Unique and mine a part of everything that was and is.
Foolish, brave, meek, timid, strong.
All of these cycling
Who and what potential there was and is to be …
In the past in the present, in the future, in the “non” time
Just the “am” just “is” just “be” time
Would you live differently?
Reincarnation, what animal will you be?
Heaven, hell, purgatory?
Please let me –
Reclaim my self from time reclaim my fresh plump and tighter skin,
Like a lizard let me shed my tarnished and webbed self.
You are cruel but I understand.
My face, my body, my thought, is witness to evermore.
My life with others, everything I saw, everything I wanted, tasted, everything experienced – everything even wickedness.
Where in the ridges of lives does she settle?
Which cracks does she fall into?
Pressed under foot
Like leaves that begin to change colour, dry and wither while others remain under ice and snow, amber till spring when they will die, become part of what came before.
In the dew of the grass
The web of the spider
The speck of dust motes that float.
Day after day
Cycles of nature bring joy and sadness too, the end or fading of memories
Time so tied into every cell and twinge and hurt and joy.
Make way for her!
You can scurry out of the way and hide, for now, don’t think of her passing.
Hide your eyes!
Recoil from her!
But better to move toward her and welcome the shadow she throws down over you.
She is an unavoidable presence enveloping you with her wings.
A large bird is time with a wing span covering all and felt everywhere
Manufactured in factories
Forged in metal
Grown from the soil
Born from a tender nest and fed and nurtured
Created from mystery – the beginning of everything.
She takes from me without my consent
Wild and powerful and strong Time.
I feel her shadow.
She is near.
She will take me
When she is ready.
Words and Picture (C) Carmit Kordov
Carmit is an administrator of the Folk Horror Revival Facebook group. Her poetry has appeared in Corpse Roads , a Wyrd Harvest Press book.
Please visit Carmit Kordov Words and Pictures for more poetry, photography, writing and cultural content that veers towards Magic Realism.
Stephen Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence’s Scarred For Life is not simply a book, it is a profound experience for members of Britain’s Generation X. It is a Ghost Train ride down memory lane (children – please do not play on the tracks). It is a bible for those late night drinking nostalgia sessions between siblings and old schoolfriends … “Why was Top Trump’s Godzilla wearing a velvet jacket and dicky bow tie?” … “Who else was in Tucker’s class in Grange Hill?”.
This book is epic and provides much reflection for both Folk Horror Revivalists and Speculative Horror fans of a certain age. It of course covers many of the wyrd favourites of the era, The Unholy Trinity of folk horror, Children of the Stones, Misty, The Owl Service, Saphire and Steel, Doctor Who, Nigel Kneale’s ouvre, Doomwatch, Phase IV, Pan Books of Horror, 2000AD, Ghost Stories for Christmas and much more besides. In its pages we revisit the trauma of our childhoods via the Public Information Films that remind us to beware of water, matches, farms, fireworks, pylons, strangers and much more besides.
I squealed a little with delight in its reverie of more obscure favourites of mine such as The Clifton House Mystery, Grimly Feendish, Monster Fun and an illustrator who was hugely influential on my own art, though at the time I did not know his name; hopefully through this book Ken Reid will finally get the wider acclaim and recognition he deserves.
There are moments of chills, thrills and raised eyebrows with the revisiting of Backwoods horrors and the Richard Allen Skinhead pulp novels (watch out kids, there is a gang of tooled up boneheads heading for your school!😲 ) and the questionable comedy of such evening treasures as Love Thy Neighbour and The Black & White Minstrel Show, and the star turns of Pan’s People ( <- very folk horror name), Hot Gossip and Legs & Co.
As well as fond memories, in this book I found things which had hidden away in my mind (I Vant to Bite Your Finger, The Green Cross Code Robot …) and things unfamiliar to me (1990, The Guardians).
Flicking through the pages invokes perfume ghosts; wafting to my nostrils were the scents of Dracula and Dalek ice lollies, Bones crisps and via The Sweeney the masculine scent of Brut 33 as another con gets nicked.
For all those Brits who experienced growing up in the 1970’s, Brotherstone and Lawrence have produced a brilliant time machine bound between these covers.
Best viewed from behind the sofa or throught the crystal eyes of Arthur C. Clarke’s mysterious skull.
Available now from ~ Lulu
For Folk Horror Revivalists who wish to further explore off the beaten track into the wyrder corners of literature, TV, film and music, you are invited to explore the rich, tangled undergrowth of ‘A Year In The Country’. A blog, website and music label, for the last few years AYITC has been quietly but ceaselessly documenting the edgelands of popular culture whilst adding their own unique contribution via such album releases as ‘The Quietened Village’ and ‘The Restless Field’ (featuring folk horror friendly artists such Sproatly Smith, Polypores and Keith Seatman); music which AYITC feels ‘draws from the above strands of inspiration – the patterns beneath the plough and pylons’.
Alongside their musical excursions, AYITC are keen curators of the unsettling and the bucolic. The scripts and writings of Nigel Kneale, the music of The Owl Service, hauntological favourites from TV past such as ‘The Changes’ or ‘Children of the Stones’, contemporary explorations such as Rob Young’s acid folk tome ‘Electric Eden’; just some of the otherworldly characters, programmes and emissions from which AYINC draws its inspiration and focus for its regular features and postings. The site’s curator describes his vision as;
’A set of year-long explorations of the undercurrents and flipside of bucolic dreams, the further reaches of folk music and culture, work that takes inspiration from the hidden and underlying tales of the land and where such things meet and intertwine with the lost futures, spectral histories and parallel worlds of what has come to be known as hauntology. The main website features writing about such work and themes, posts that are intended as a trail of cultural breadcrumbs, starting points for their readers’ own wanderings and pathways through related fields’.
A highly recommended excursion for all curious and avid Revivalists there is much to be found in AYITC’s darkened hedgerows and industrial borderlands. Find them here and wander freely;
article by Grey Malkin
Folk Horror Revival & Urban Wyrd Project ⨘ 