It’s morning. The sky is clear blue, piercing even. The sun is bright warming everything it settles on. Gentle breezes blow tree branches, twist leaves that will soon change from green, to red, to brown before falling into piles to the ground. They will scatter at the first hint of rain. Form slick patches that cover slugs and snails and secrets. It is Autumn, and things are changing day by day but for now the stream flows, the birds sing, and the smoke gently curls up into the sky. Somewhere, a rooster crows, an alarm clock sings, an engine roars. Neighbours wake up to the smell of rain, the cloudless sky, the chattering of squirrels. Windows are open, doors unlocked, guards down. By nightfall, fox scream, crows call. Doors lock. In a small town, everyone knows everyone else’s secrets. They know who harbours them, who is filled with guilt, and more than anything, they know better than to keep their doors unlocked.
There’s nothing like a good place where bad things happen. Rural towns, big cities, suburbs, villages, and places in between, have inspired writers around the world to write about some truly sinister things. No space is safe from ghosts, murders, secrets, injustice, corruption, and other hauntings. Writers of literary horror have proven that there’s something deliciously unsettling about the places we call home.
Some of the scariest literary horror is set in places, real or imagined, that we recognize. These might be sleepy towns tucked away in the middle of nowhere, places with their own form of law and their own way of holding grudges. Or, metropolitan hubs with modern shopping malls, crumbling houses, and overflowing cemeteries. They could be seaside towns, buried cities, or places with miles and miles full of nothing but green grass and shallow graves. We recognize these places because they are a lot like home. There are schools, churches, police stations, cemeteries, office buildings, abandoned warehouses, and busy thoroughfares. They are places characters go to remember, places characters go to forget, and places where everyday characters discover something unsettling beneath the surface.
Monsters under the bed, skeletons in closets, ghosts in attics, evil in plain sight, literary horror can be inspired by the stuff of nightmares. But it can also be inspired by fear, prejudice, and injustice. News and history make compelling fictions. Literary horror takes us deeper into the places we’re afraid of. It unpeels travesties of the past and forces a sort of reckoning. One person’s history is another one’s horror. In literary horror, places like haunted houses can pop up anywhere and across any time.
Literary horror reminds us that no place is without secrets—no place like home. Let’s hope they’re right.
If you’d like to read about some interesting places of literary horror, here’s a sample to dig into:
Shirley Jackson, “The Lottery”
Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” is set in an un-named, rural American town stuck in the middle of nowhere and seemingly stuck in the past. They have no technology to speak of and seemingly no use for it. They are cut off from the world around them and if you ask them, that suits them just fine. This small town smack-dab in the middle of nowhere has some unsettling traditions. Each year, amidst much fanfare, the town holds a lottery. Everyone over a certain age must draw. Families draw together, wives with their husband’s families. Children old enough to draw for their family when the father is otherwise predisposed. Everyone has a job to fill. It’s an obligation that doesn’t seem to bother anyone until their name is called. The citizens may not remember all of the rules, but they never forget the stones that mark the tradition. The story reminds me of the ways people turn against one another when fortunes change.
Tananarive Due, Ghost Summer: Stories
Tananarive Due’s Ghost Summer Short Stories is set in the rural town of Gracetown, Florida where ordinary and extraordinary horrors await visitors and town folks alike. This collection weaves through the community in chilling detail with stories as wide, rich and haunting as horror itself. One of my favorite stories in the collection includes a possessed toddler, a local myth, and a twist. The lush setting of Gracetown is deeply disturbing, complex, and brimming with secrets, skeletons, and the occasional ghost.
Tananarive Due, The Reformatory
Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory is set in the Dozier School for Boys, an American reformatory school, where boys are sent to be “reformed” and many never make it home. This award-winning book is a testament to the children forced into a system that was designed to crush their spirits and their souls. It is a reminder of America’s violent past and the systems it birthed. Twelve-year old Robert Stephens Jr is like any other little boy. He wants shoes that fit, to protect his sister, and although he tries to keep it to himself, he really misses his mother. Robert just wants to Set in the Jim Crow Era, this heartbreaking literary horror weaves historical terrors with contemporary ones creating a vivid, compelling story set in a truly horrifying location.
Sarah Moss, Summerwater
Sarah Moss’ Summerwater, is not quite horror but this novel is certainly disturbing. It all takes place in a lush, vivid setting where evil comes in an unexpected form. A variety of strangers find themselves at a holiday park in Scotland. They are each stuck in the rain that keeps on falling and to some extent, in their own relationships. Summerwater encourages readers to consider who we are when we are in the woods, when the terror starts, and who is responsible for it.
Out There Screaming, edited by Jordan Peele
Out There Screaming, edited by Jordan Peele: this anthology features a variety of imaginative terrors inspired by the “Sunken Places” (a personalized place filled with bespoke horrors) as imagined by 19 Black American authors. The stories are “raw imaginings of our deepest dreads and desires.” Whether about violent police, murdering husbands, grandmothers, siblings, cousins, strangers, or other monsters, each piece, regardless of where or when it is set, immerses readers into a chilling landscape that is so close to the world we live in that the things that go bump in the night are not the only things to worry about.
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