Something stirs in the woods beyond the village. Old rituals, half-remembered and half-invented, resume under moonlight. Ancient stones stand sentinel over secrets best left buried. Folk horror, a subgenre experiencing significant literary resurgence, draws its terrors from the oldest human fears: the darkness beyond the firelight, the knowledge our ancestors possessed that we've forgotten, the suspicion that the old gods never really left.
Defining Folk Horror
Folk horror is notoriously difficult to pin down, which is part of its appeal. Unlike horror subgenres defined by specific monsters (vampires, zombies) or settings (haunted houses), folk horror is more about atmosphere and implication. Common elements include rural or isolated settings, pagan or pre-Christian beliefs, a clash between modern and ancient worldviews, and communities harboring dark secrets.
The terror in folk horror often emerges from alienation—protagonists who don't understand the rules of the place they've entered, whose rational worldview fails them against forces that predate and outlast modernity. The horror is frequently human in origin, making it somehow worse: these are people choosing these rituals, these sacrifices, these ancient allegiances.
The supernatural in folk horror tends toward the ambiguous. Are the old gods real, or has belief in them simply justified centuries of human cruelty? The best folk horror leaves this uncertain, allowing readers' imagination to fill the gaps with whatever frightens them most.
Roots and Influences
While folk horror as a named category is relatively recent—the term was coined in 2010 by film critic Mark Gatiss—its literary antecedents extend back centuries. Arthur Machen's late Victorian tales of ancient forces lurking in the Welsh hills pioneered many conventions. Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" captures the genre's sense of places that don't want humans present.
M.R. James's ghost stories, though often set in academic contexts, frequently involve the eruption of ancient malevolence into the present. His influence on folk horror is incalculable—the slow build, the suggestion over explicit horror, the sense of transgressing into forbidden territories.
The 1970s brought cinematic folk horror to prominence with films like The Wicker Man, The Blood on Satan's Claw, and Witchfinder General. This "unholy trinity" established visual and narrative templates that continue influencing literary folk horror today.
The Contemporary Resurgence
Folk horror's literary revival reflects various cultural anxieties. Environmental concerns make stories of neglected nature seeking revenge resonate differently now. Political polarization feeds narratives of communities closing ranks against outsiders. The decline of organized religion while spirituality persists creates space for stories about what people believe when traditional faiths no longer satisfy.
Authors like Andrew Michael Hurley have helped catalyze the revival. His debut, The Loney, won the Costa First Novel Award while trafficking in deeply unsettling folk horror territory—a desolate Lancashire coast, a cult-like religious community, a pilgrimage that may or may not involve genuine miracles. Literary establishment recognition proved folk horror could achieve critical respectability.
The genre's flexibility attracts diverse voices. Folk horror doesn't require British moors or New England forests—any culture's folklore provides material. Authors are exploring folk horror through Caribbean, African, Asian, and Indigenous American lenses, vastly expanding what the genre can encompass and whose terrors it can explore.
Landscape as Character
In folk horror, setting transcends backdrop to become almost adversarial. The land itself seems hostile, harboring memories and intentions that predate human habitation. Forests are not merely creepy—they're actively unwelcoming, possessing their own agency. Moors, fens, and isolated coastlines trap characters both physically and psychologically.
This landscape-as-character aspect connects folk horror to eco-horror and nature writing's darker expressions. The horror emerges from recognizing that the natural world has no interest in human well-being, that we've constructed civilization on territory that never stopped belonging to older forces.
The built environment in folk horror—standing stones, burial mounds, ancient churches built on pagan sites—represents layers of human history compressed and contaminating each other. Christian churches over Roman temples over Neolithic sacred sites: the palimpsest of belief systems, none quite erased, all contributing to present unease.
Community and Outsiders
Folk horror frequently structures its narratives around the outsider entering an insular community. This outsider may be a visitor, an investigator, or someone returning to their roots. Their perspective provides readers' entry point while their unfamiliarity generates tension.
The community's unity often proves more terrifying than any monster could. People who know things and share that knowledge form bonds that exclude and endanger outsiders. The horror comes from realizing the entire village participates, that there's no one to trust, that normal-seeming neighbors are all complicit.
This dynamic allows folk horror to comment on group psychology, cultish behavior, and the human capacity for collective evil. The monsters are us—our ancestors, our neighbors, potentially ourselves if circumstances differ slightly.
Reading Recommendations
For readers seeking entry points, The Loney remains an excellent starting place—literary enough for fiction readers who don't typically choose horror, atmospheric enough to satisfy genre fans. Adam Nevill's body of work offers more explicitly frightening takes on folk horror conventions.
Classic foundations shouldn't be neglected. Shirley Jackson's "The Summer People" and "The Lottery" are folk horror in miniature. Thomas Tryon's Harvest Home brought the subgenre to mainstream attention in the 1970s and remains devastatingly effective.
Short fiction anthologies offer efficient sampling. Collections focusing specifically on folk horror have proliferated, allowing readers to experience many authors' approaches before committing to novel-length works.
The Enduring Appeal
Folk horror persists because it speaks to primal uncertainties. We may live in cities, trust science, and dismiss superstition, but some part of us still looks nervously at the treeline, still wonders what our ancestors knew that we've forgotten, still senses that the old ways left traces that modernity hasn't erased.
As long as that unease persists—and it seems unlikely to fade—folk horror will have readers. The genre offers something unique: not the shock of gore or the puzzle of mystery, but a creeping dread that feels somehow ancestral, as if we inherited fear of these specific horrors along with our genes.
The village awaits. The stones still stand. Something ancient is remembering us.