Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology

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Hogy ennek mi köze a folk horrorhoz? Az, hogy a folk horror – ha jól értelmezem – pont ennek a felfogásnak ad egy piszkos nagy pofont, de úgy, hogy a fal adja a másikat. És még csak nem is nyers erőből adja, hanem ügyesen és kiszámítottan.

And yes some of the stories where indeed good, but these where all stories I had read before so this anthology was not bringing me anything new and exciting. EXCEPT for the story where they kill a child and sow it’s ground up bones into the soil to provide a good harvest. I enjoyed that one. Un libro fantástico y la primera gran recopilación de horror rural que he tenido el placer de leer.And while the hustle and bustle of modern life means we often think ourselves far removed from a world haunted by pixies and ghouls… Are we really that far from horror? Trolls have come out from under their bridges and now hide behind keyboards, a merciless plague darkens all of our doorways, and there is senseless division, terror and cruelty occurring all over the world in the name of belief… perhaps sadly, we are the same monsters we have always been.

Relatos ambientados en aldeas remotas, castillos abandonados e islas perdidas donde habitan extraños personajes, cultos paganos y dioses malévolos. Historias que nos recuerdan al hombre de mimbre y es que aquí se hayan probablemente todos los cuentos que dieron lugar al subgénero del folk horror. Loved the image of the witch turning into rabbit to escape when caught stealing potion supplies, and another of the witch themed stories where the horror comes from the mob that is trying to kill a child (sadly historically accurate) for supposed witchcraft. As with any anthology, the stories are of mixed quality. There are 23 short stories in this volume, and each is accompanied by its own newly commissioned woodcut style lino print at the beginning of each tale. 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. There was nothing unexplained and just down right creepy. Blood on Satans Claw these stories ain’t.

The Withered Arm was also a very interesting story, with almost a time travel/sensing the future paradox of the two main characters harming each other unintentionally, in ways that depend on the actions of the other... And the idea of someone having magical powers beyond their control, that others are more aware of than they are, was really well done The collection will feature classic stories from masters of supernatural fiction including M.R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu, and Arthur Machen, alongside lesser known voices in the field including Eleanor Scott and Margery Lawrence and popular writers less bound to the horror genre, such as Thomas Hardy and E.F. Benson. The Music on the Hill" - Saki. "She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you encouraged it overmuch." Ha!

Man-Size in Marble" - Edith Nesbit. A young couple new to the country learns why they can't "keep good help"! This is a great story, and one of the oldest in the collection- Nesbit was writing at the same time as Arthur Conan Doyle! While her contemporaries were cranking out Victoriana Nesbit delivers her tale in a strikingly modern style that reminded me of Bernard Taylor's best. Overall a disappointing collection, just because something is set in the wilderness and maybe has a wee bit of devil worship (hail Satan) does not make it Folk Horror. A fabulous opportunity wasted. But as this collection shows, writers of uncanny fiction were dabbling in the dark side of folklore long before those films. These 22 stories take the reader beyond the safety and familiarity of the town into the isolated and untamed wilderness. Unholy rites, witches’ curses, sinister village traditions and ancient horrors that lurk within the landscape all combine to remind us that the shiny modern, urban world might not have all the answers… the most memorable part of this story is that the narrator kept calling his wife "p***y" and that made me laughThe subtitle says ‘A Folk Horror Analogy’, and that description is kind of loose, since some of the tales are more folky than others, and a few are dubiously horrific at all. Egyébként meg úgy tűnik, csináltak egy horrorműfajt direkt nekem. Illetve ha valaki az eddigi ajánlóim alapján úgy gondolja, hogy az enyémhez hasonló az ízlése, akkor neki is. The stories date from 1872 right up to 1964. They cover witch persecution, hauntings, the pagan gods of old, and the true horror of what humans can inflict on each other as a result of fear. It is a sensational read for dark nights. The tale of ‘Thrawn Janet’ by Robert Louis Stevenson is genuinely terrifying!