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Media Reviews: March 2026

No, Adam-Troy Castro doesn’t recommend Primate. But he loved one particular performance in the film that he thinks you ought to check out. He also talks about some recent reads—so check out his book discussion, too.

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The H Word: Laughing to Swallow My Screams

I can pinpoint one of my earliest moments of existential unease. I was nine years old and, defying my religiously conservative parents, snuck into the local movie theater to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I didn’t understand the social politics of the movie at the time, and while faintly aroused by Jessica Rabbit I remained thoroughly confused by the idea of bestial human/toon marriage.

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Plumbing the Depths: Haunted Writers and Haunted Writings

Throughout its history, horror literature has frequently mediated its eponymous affect through an obsession with the act of writing. The field is replete with writer protagonists, with depictions of the writing act (through epistolary framing devices and metatextuality), and with written objects.

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The H Word: Snakes Beneath the Kudzu

Southern Gothic lingers impolitely in doorways. Forget theme; the genre itself is liminal, slouching somewhere between literary fiction and the h-word: lauded and discarded, high-brow and tawdry, praised and shamed. Tell about the South, right? But for all its liminality, Southern Gothic seems obsessed with physical location.

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Interview: Johnny Compton

Johnny Compton is a Stoker Award nominated author whose short stories have appeared in Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, The No Sleep Podcast and several other publications. He is the author of The Spite House, Devils Kill Devils, and Dead First, as well as the short story collection Midnight Somewhere.

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The H Word: The Merry Macabre of the Renaissance Faire

The Faire gates swing wide to the tune of a jester and fairy blowing bubbles the size of beach balls. People laugh. Music drifts from every direction. Kids wave foam swords as the tantalizing smell of turkey legs and garlic mushrooms wafts through the walkway. Laughter echoes from the mud pit; a juggler drops a flaming torch and the crowd cheers as if it were intentional

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Media & Book Review: December 2025

We’re not too cool to admit we love Stephen King. Adam-Troy Castro checks out a new King film adaptation and an anthology inspired by The Stand. Find out why he’s recommending them both!

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The H Word: Double Dog Dare You

An important feature of childlore is that kids spread it to other kids, independent of adult instruction. Because as soon as parents got involved (or teachers, or adult authors of books marketed for children), that wasn’t really ours anymore, was it? That was somebody else’s lesson, written for us.

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Plumbing the Depths: When Scientists Go Mad—Ghost-Hunting and Horror

Lisa Morton literally wrote the book on seances and spiritualism (you should all check out her delightful book Calling the Spirits). Here’s a short reading guide from her compiling great fiction about ghost hunters.

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The H Word: The Forest’s Quiet Hunger for Your Soul

It is something that is just accepted: forests are places where things become lost. There is a dark, entangled history that grows in the shadows of the woods, weaving through myth and legend—through stories we have told and warnings we have whispered into the night. The forest is the void of the unknown, a ravenous mouth that picks clean the bones of trespassers because the forest has a stomach, and that stomach has never been full.

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