Philip A. Suggars charts the four phase decline of horror franchise monsters, from the pure terror of Alien: Earth and Michael Myers to the merch shelf and the leash. Drawing on Freud, Robin Wood, and Mark Fisher, he asks why The Thing and It Follows stay frightening while everything else gets a Funko Pop. The domestication of horror monsters, it turns out, is exactly what the culture industry does best.
A.J. Vane argues that ambiguous horror is not a cop-out but the hardest thing the genre can do. Drawing on Robert Aickman, Shirley Jackson and Picnic at Hanging Rock, this guest essay defends the unexplained ending and the fear that keeps working long after the book is shut. From the author of The Night Fair.
A ranking of seven fictional vampires I could kill without breaking a sweat, from Nosferatu to Count Duckula. Yes, David from The Lost Boys makes the list, and yes, I have strong opinions about his hair. Proof that most vampire movies are style over substance.
Adrian Tchaikovsky has been writing cosmic horror and folk horror under a science fiction badge for years, and most horror readers missed it. His gothic horror novella Preaching to the Choir, out in August from Solaris, is the moment that excuse runs out. Here is why the Terrible Worlds: Transformations author belongs on your shelf.
Horror author headshots have quietly become their own genre, complete with a fixed set of clichés: the bare brick wall, the all-black wardrobe, the half-smile that hints at violence. This field guide roasts the lot, explains how Garth Marenghi turned the brooding-author pose into a punchline, then asks why the horror publishing boom has turned every author photo into a marketing asset. With a salute to Chuck Tingle for solving the problem with a pink bag.
Kristen J. Sollée, author of Witches, Sluts, Feminists, is launching FERAL EYE, a hybrid publisher of feminist horror and occult fiction. Her debut novel Nightcats—a feral vampire story about cats and cat ladies—leads the charge. Discover what this new press means for horror readers and writers.
Sam Neill has died aged 78. Most tributes will lead with Jurassic Park, but the horror world owes him a deeper debt. From Possession and Omen III to John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness and the cult favourite Event Horizon, Neill built one of the genre’s strangest and best CVs. Here is our farewell to horror’s quiet master.
Forget the shimmery monofins and the singing crab. Ava Morwood, author of Until We Drown, traces mermaid folklore through its strangest corners: Peak District drowning pools, Japanese ningyo, the Feejee Mermaid and a scholar who blamed the plague on rotting merfolk. Dark mermaid legends as you have never heard them.
“Gingerly” is supposed to mean cautious and frightened, but it has nothing to do with red hair and everything to do with bad faith. From Erik the Red and Elizabeth I to Shirley Manson and Ginger Wildheart, this is a celebration of the famous redheads who never once tiptoed, with one gloriously snarky paragraph about Mick Hucknall thrown in. Ginger Nuts of Horror goes to bat for its own kind.
C.N. Vair’s Fawn is one of 2026’s most talked-about folk horror debuts, built around Tess Wynne, an Appalachian witch who rescues a red-mouthed, full-toothed fawn with unnatural appetites, and must decide what she is willing to become to protect what is hers. If that book has already got its teeth into you, this reading list was made for you. We’ve put together ten books that share Fawn’s DNA — from Emilia Hart’s multi-century witch saga Weyward to Cassandra Khaw’s blood-soaked fairy tale The Salt Grows Heavy to Genevieve Gornichec’s Norse folk horror The Witch’s Heart — each with a full mini-review. This is the definitive reading list for fans of folk horror, powerful witches, and women who bite back.
Every reviewer lies about the horror books they didn’t finish. This is my DNF confessional, five abandoned novels, the page I quit on, and the daft personal reasons I never made it to the end. Folk horror, slashers, and one book that made me put the telly on.
“Liminal horror” has become a hipster buzzword, so here is what it actually means and where it actually lives: the back of the shop. From Skinamarink, The Exit 8 and Vivarium to Edinburgh’s Hunter’s Tryst and the council-house terror of Ghostwatch, this is the case that the Backrooms are just a British backshift, and that British working-class horror beats the American liminal void at its own game. The Americans get the empty void. We get the void plus a supervisor.
Puppets in horror work because someone built them to be loved first. Furry Puppet Studio, the NYC custom puppet maker behind work for Apple, Casper, and Missy Elliott, shows why practical-effects horror keeps reaching for handmade faces. From Puppet Master to Dead Silence to Longlegs, the craft that delights is the same craft that frightens.
When a true-crime blogger insisted the killings in Harmed and Dangerous were real, Jasper Bark watched his own fiction bleed into fact. The truth was an alternate reality game engineered by Crystal Lake Publishing’s Naching T. Kassa — Killer Sleuth, fake QR codes, recorded readings and all. This is how a piece of viral book marketing fooled even a seasoned hoaxer.
This week, Ginger Nuts of Horror is marking the release of his new novel, Bad Things Happen Here, with three consecutive days of Mark Morris. Today, we are running our Top Five Mark Morris novels, five books drawn from across his career that show what he does when he is operating at full power. On Wednesday, Jim McLeod sits down with Mark for an in-depth interview. On Thursday, we publish our full review of Bad Things Happen Here.
