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I can turn to my love of murder mystery television. What becomes apparent in this genre is that the past always returns to get its due—it might not always win, but it will wait, bide its time till you’ve forgotten, till you’re living your version of a charmed life, then it will remind you. I have been interested in, and writing about, karma and fate, so the meeting of obsessions came through in this story.
I’ve been jobless for two and a half months now, which has caused a spike in mostly-forgotten anxieties. I hate being broke, hate watching my savings dwindle, and hate knowing I’m one bad fall or car accident away from poverty. So like most anxious, broke people, I comfort myself by bingeing crap television. Luckily, Netflix’s algorithms got something right for once, and presented me with Haunted. Haunted is a 2018 Netflix original series, featuring non-actors telling true (or truth-y) stories about being haunted.
Be sure to read the editorial for a run-down of this month’s spine-tingling content. Plus that’s where we share all our news and updates, which you wouldn’t want to miss!
I find many Man on the Street interviews unsettling from the get-go. Interview random people on any subject, and you will find an extraordinary exposure to the state of the public mind, including inevitably some responses that are reactionary, ignorant, and more revelatory of the speaker’s character than they ever could have wanted.
This month, reviewer Adam-Troy Castro takes a look at the new novella “In the Tall Grass”—written by father and son horror giants Stephen King and Joe Hill. But first, he watched the Netflix film adaptation. So how do the two compare to each other?
I think of myself as a writer with feet in several different genres: science fiction, horror, literature, mystery (which I guess means I have about four feet), but the one that seems to exist as an underlayer of all I do is horror. It’s an extremely flexible genre, one that adapts easily to different generic environments, and is a mood as much as a genre. I love what it is capable of doing, and I find its possibility endless.
Picture a house. It’s an old house. Stately, with two quarter-moon windows perched above a balcony, or a rundown farmhouse far out in the countryside, overlooking a bent, ancient tree. It’s something with history to it, history that’s not your own, but that doesn’t matter: the keys are in your hand. You own it. You are going to build a life there. You bring your family inside, and fill it with what is yours, and claim every room, every hallway. Except the attic
Be sure to check out the editorial for a run-down of this month’s skin-crawling content—and to get all our news and updates.
I’ve seen my friends with disabilities and illnesses reap the benefits of being able to answer the door without getting out of bed, or make adjustments to lights and temperature settings by calling out to the hub or tapping the app on their phones. I find alarmist fiction about adaptive devices predictable and boring, and I was so inspired by the reverse “A Quiet Place” pulled on that. So I’ve been looking for ways to make the technology a tool again, instead of a lazy choice for a villain.
This month, Terence Taylor talks about the role of setting as he reviews the novella The Monster of Elendhaven, by Jennifer Giesbrecht, and the novel Genocide on the Infinite Express, by Kevin Sweeney.
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