Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology

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Wicked witches, bad fairies, and the restless dead be damned, for those who are looking to fill up their folk horror fiction shelves, Damnable Tales is a must-have. I'm quite surprised to see other reviews mentioning small typeface or other issues with clarity, as to me this looks great, a really attractive book with clear care and attention to layout, font, font size and so on. I will not dally on the tales which sat less well with me because there is nothing constructive in doing so: my taste is not necessarily your taste, and I didn’t actually dislike any of the tales selected – there were just some I liked more than others, as is the way with anthologies. Saki, Walter de la Mare) through the obligatory for this subject matter (MR James, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Shirley Jackson) to names unfamiliar (at least, to me).

He is also the creator of the Folk Horror Revival and Urban Wyrd Projects and the associated publishing arm Wyrd Harvest Press. as with all horror, I find the reasons why it is seen as scary always so interesting, and with folk horror I think this is so deeply a fear of post-industrial revolution humans, of conquering humans, of hegemonic humans, of consumer humans, that they truly lack control over the world and its functionings and that 'civility' as it has been established is under threat or was even futile in its establishment. A lot of the stories picked up the theme of Christianity coming into conflict with the pagan gods, and I enjoyed how sometimes they came to an easy truce. But even if some are repetetive, it's usually easy to see why they were included, and this is a perfect gift for anyone who enjoys horror or dark fantasy.They stalk the moors at night, the deep forests, cornered fields and dusky churchyards, the narrow lanes and old ways of these ancient places, drawing upon the haunted landscapes of folk-horror – a now widely used term first applied to a series of British films from the late 1960s and 1970s: Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). Also interesting seeing past centuries' perception of Halloween, and some folklore/practices I was not aware of such as sin eating. While her contemporaries were cranking out Victoriana Nesbit delivers her tale in a strikingly modern style that reminded me of Bernard Taylor's best.

The subtle touch of adding an earthy red to some of the chapter openings is just a little thing, but I found it nice attention to detail. Benson can be a pious bore, but though his tale has a strong Christian flavour, it still manages a couple of disturbing moments. If we accept that it often means isolated, often rural communities with their own rites, rituals and folklore, and often a malign relationship with nature, then that gives you some idea of the kinds of stories collected here.If you're unfamiliar with Wells' work, think late medieval woodcut crossed with more modern horror tropes: he has a way of drawing a dead, unseeing eye (often required in these stories) which is genuinely mortifying. Van az a pár ezer éves gondolat, hogy az ember annál boldogabb életet él, minél közelebb élhet a természethez. R. Wakefield, and Shirley Jackson ("The Summer People," which I had somehow never managed to read before); classic authors like Thomas Hardy ("The Withered Arm," good enough to make me want to read more Hardy); and obscurities ("A Witch-Burning," by Mrs. Outside of his television work, he makes and sells his own darkly folkloric artwork, often lino cut and hand-printed.

This is a book that demands to be read aloud--perhaps on a darkening winter evening before a roaring fire. Primarily working in the television industry, he has provided graphic props for the likes of Poldark, Sherlock, Doctor Who, and the BBC adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

The collection of stories is pulled from the classics to the modern, and gives the reader a wonderful selection of Folk Horror. Lots of the stories were completely new to me, which is great: a personal favourite now has to be Man-Size in Marble by Edith Nesbit, a ferociously economical, chilling little tale of history intruding upon newcomers who don't know how to play by the rules. Damnable Tales is an illustrated collection of classic short stories drawing upon the haunted landscapes of ‘Folk Horror’, a now widely-used term originally applied to a series of British films from the late 1960s and 1970s: Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). Should his name have somehow escaped attention, then his work (film posters for The Wicker Man and A Field in England, his lino-cut prints of folkloric entities, his cover for Edward Parnell’s atmospheric and resonant book Ghostland, and pieces featuring film and TV (most notably Ben Wheatley’s film In The Earth)) will very likely not have passed unnoticed. This is a great story, and one of the oldest in the collection- Nesbit was writing at the same time as Arthur Conan Doyle!

There was none of that eerie foreboding that you get from communities just outside the modern world going balls deep into some old school religion much to the horror of the modern watchers on. Relatos ambientados en aldeas remotas, castillos abandonados e islas perdidas donde habitan extraños personajes, cultos paganos y dioses malévolos. Outside of his television work, he makes and sells his own darkly folkloric artwork, often lino cut and printed by hand (slipperyjack.In his Introduction to Damnable Tales, the novelist Benjamin Myers offers a clue: ‘They take place in worlds we recognise as once-removed from our realities. It is not of any detriment to the book but should further volumes follow (which I hope they will), then my curiosity would again be piqued to see stories selected from a variety of nations – certainly, Eastern Europe and Asia could provide a wealth of possible content, and it would be intriguing to see how Wells would visually approach the writings of Gogol, Meyrink, and Kafka, for instance, or the translations made by Lafcadio Hearn of Japan’s haunted heritage. So wicked witches, bad fairies, and the restless dead be damned, for those who are looking to fill up their folk horror fiction shelves, Damnable Tales is a must-have.