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I can think of two types of experiences where I’ve felt like an observer in my own life. One is when I’ve suffered bouts of sleep paralysis. Feeling aware of what’s happening (with heightened paranoia to make it more fun!) while simultaneously being completely unable to move your body is an experience I wish on no one.
Anyone who’s read Edgar Allan Poe knows that he was fascinated—alongside many others of his era—by the prospect of premature burial. It’s not hard to imagine why: prior to modern imaging equipment, and particularly in Western traditions where corpses were buried intact, a person could, at the hand of their own well-meaning family, end up interred and helpless.
There’s a special kind of darkness in each of this issue’s pieces that is made out of both our struggle to understand each other and our failures to be what other people want us to be. It’s art that feels like sunshine on what the meteorologist predicted would be the worst day of the year—or vice versa.
I played around with several ways of portraying what the VHS tape actually contained. And while this might be an unsatisfying answer, most of the images in this sequence were pulled from my subconscious. I tried to let that scene unfold like a dream.
There are no other filmmakers in the world of indie horror who are even remotely like the Adams Family. Based out of rural New York, these DIY wizards have produced four of the most interesting horror features of the last five years. Comprised of dad John Adams, mom Toby Poser, and daughters Lulu and Zelda, the family members do everything themselves.
I’m originally Turkish and Iranian but I didn’t really grow up with stories about any demons from my side of the world. It was kind of a delight and surprise to find this family of demons that had Turkic origins, especially one that could be related to a universal one—a sort of cousin to sleep paralysis demons in a way.
Fashion is, and always has been, about expression; what you wear can send a message about who you are. For entertainment like film and television, it’s a way to explain to the audience who your characters are immediately and without subterfuge. It’s the “show, not tell” of characterization and this is especially true for films in the horror genre.
None of us are free agents—every last one of us is bound at some point, or many points, in a social web that can be as sticky and as unbudging as any spider’s. The stories in this issue are about these bonds—bonds we choose, bonds we outgrow, bonds we are forced into.
I wrote this story over Christmas at my childhood home. The house is from the 1800s and has the type of basement that you can’t bear to spend more than a few seconds in. When I was little, if I had to get something from the basement, I would run down the stairs holding my breath and try to make it back up the stairs before I had to breathe again.
This month Adam-Troy Castro dives into two upcoming novels—one by horror legend Robert McCammon (Leviathan, the final volume in his Matthew Corbett series), one by legend-in-the-making Clay McLeod Chapman (Wake Up and Open Your Eyes). Find out why you’ll want to read ’em!
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