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A Brief History of the Haunted House Novel by Joshua Chaplinsky

A Brief History of the Haunted House Novel by Joshua Chaplinsky

Joshua Chaplinsky charts the two hundred and fifty year history of the haunted house novel, from Pliny the Younger’s cursed Athens letter through Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, Stephen King’s The Shining and Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves. It lands as his own contribution to the subgenre, The Man in the Watch Still Visits Me at Night, arrives from CLASH Books.

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The Blair Witch Project Is Found Footage’s Jaws

The Blair Witch Project Is Found Footage’s Jaws

Michael C. Williams has a theory about The Blair Witch Project: every found footage film since 1999 gets judged against it, the way every shark movie gets judged against Jaws. With a reunion tour underway and Lionsgate’s 2027 reboot from Dylan Clark on the way, we look at who escaped that shadow, who got crushed by it, and what the new film needs to survive.

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The Woods by Jessica Hamilton: folk horror makes menopause the monster, mostly on its own terms

The Woods by Jessica Hamilton: folk horror makes menopause the monster, mostly on its own terms

Jessica Hamilton’s folk horror debut sends a grieving mother into a haunted wood that offers her family a second life, at a price only she has to pay. A true crime podcast framing device and a bold menopause-as-horror metaphor make this one of the more inventive femgore entries this year, even when it over-explains its own best idea.