Old Tomes & Teapots: Guest Author Halloween Q&A
I'd like to welcome historical and fantasy author and poet, Shannon Barnsley, to my Halloween-themed Author Q&A.
Thanks for having me!
What's the scariest novel or story you've ever read?
I think I have to say Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale for scariest novel. I once made the mistake of reading a good chunk of it, going to see Get Out, and then immediately falling asleep, all interspersed with emergency alerts about the current administration. Holy Nightmare Fuel, Batman. Do not recommend. As for short stories, while it may not be proper horror, “Gestella” by Susan Palwick is downright terrifying and really shook me. It’s like “The Yellow Wallpaper” meets Gone Girl but with werewolves. If domestic psychological dramas are your thing, you can find it in Peter S. Beagle’s The Urban Fantasy Anthology.
Who is your favorite horror novelist, if you have one?
Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, or Shirley Jackson, probably. I really like Shannon Celebi’s short stories too. They’re just the right amount of unsettling.
Are you a fan of the horror genre (books or film) or does it scare you too much?
Depends. I’m not a fan of slasher type horror or gratuitous gore and sadism for the sake of gore and sadism. And there are definitely horror movies I can’t watch at night or while home alone. However, the genre and its history fascinate me. I studied Creative Writing/Mythology & Religion in college and write primarily fantasy and both fantasy and mythology bleed into horror and cross-pollinate one another.
We tend to think of things like fairies, leprechauns, elves, selkies, and mermaids as romanticized, benevolent, and even cutesy, but they can be quite scary and dangerous in folklore. Fairytales have been horror fodder as much as fantasy fodder, long before the gritty reboot trend. Horror, be it an oral tradition of ghost stories, penny dreadfuls, or Hollywood blockbusters, is a fascinating mirror for the anxieties, fears, and values of our times and cultures, which is why all the best horror figures (vampires, werewolves, etc) are so endlessly adaptable. They change as we change and what we fear changes. I actually once wrote an academic paper on werewolves, so I could talk about this all day, but I’ll stop rambling.
Do you plan to visit a haunted attraction or pumpkin patch this year?
Not this year, I’m afraid. I’m a small town New Englander at heart, so pumpkin patches and apple orchards in fall are my happy place. I even used to work at a haunted 18th century village museum so I got more than my fill of ghostly tales there. I currently live in New York City, though, and won’t be able to visit my homestate until Thanksgiving. Perhaps I can find some haunts or pumpkins here, but I have no current plans.
Have you ever seen a ghost or spirit, lived in a haunted house, or had another supernatural experience you feel comfortable sharing?
I’m a skeptical person by nature, but I have had my share of experiences, some positive, some terrifying, some in-between. I also currently live in an apartment building originally built in the mid-19th century and it can get eerie. The more intense experiences I’d rather not share, but, as I said before, I used to work in an 18th century Shaker village museum, with 200+ years of ghost stories to its name. Even the most skeptical tour guides would say good night or good morning to certain notable Shakers when they turned on or off the lights in the rooms they were believed to haunt. Certainly no one envied me closing up the infirmary after dark (which has one light switch for the whole building upstairs adjacent a coffin) or having to be completely alone in the dark there for three hours several nights in a row for the rehearsals of our Halloween ghost tours. It was just me in the pitch black old creaky building on those windy late October nights, with the Sweeney Todd style dentist chair and the bonesaw a room away and the coffin upstairs. Oh, occupational hazards.
On the upside, though, another building in the village was formerly home to a Shaker Brother known for being an avid reader with a particular love of swashbuckling pirate novels. Sometimes when I was alone in the building and there were no tourists to answer questions for or show around, I would read a book. Whenever I did, I had this very strong feeling that I was not alone, like someone was right behind me. It was a calm, happy sort of presence, though, not a creepy one. I think Elder Henry was perhaps reading over my shoulder. And who can blame him? What a way to spend the afterlife. I could finally get through my TBR list.
Long before I worked at the Shaker village, my mom grew up in a house in California that was widely believed to be haunted and had quite the storied history to it, including a double amputee sea captain and a young woman’s affair with a world leader. I’ve always wanted to write a story based on that house and its history, but, despite the fact that its former occupants‘ colorful goings-on are documented in the local papers from the time, no one would believe it. Reality really is stranger than fiction.
What's your favorite scary movie? (Fun ones are okay.)
An American Werewolf in London, hands down. I love dark humor and this movie is the perfect blend of witty, off-beat comedy and genuine thrills. Apparently, it took a long time to get greenlit because it was believed to be too funny for horror fans and too scary for comedy audiences. It also has one of the best soundtracks of any movie out there and still has some of the best werewolf effects/transformation scenes decades later. Oh, and Sister Julienne from Call the Midwife plays a sexy nurse in it, so I choose to believe the characters are related and exist in the same universe because who doesn’t look at Call the Midwife and think, hey, this could use some werewolves?
Canonically, the escaped mental hospital patient in the beginning of the movie is intended to be the main character from the 1941 film, The Wolf Man, which the later radio drama adaptation made more overt. To me, this is a great example of how horror constantly feeds on, reimagines, reanimates, and adds new layers to itself, like a literary/cinematic ouroboros or a centuries-long passalong story game. Horror is a big sandbox to play in and many things we think of as fixed mythic canon (werewolves transforming on the full moon, silver bullets, vampires being charismatic, vampires’ aversion to sunlight, a bite from a vampire/werewolf/zombie turning you, etc) are actually recent additions to the mythos that were canonized by 20th century books and movies. For more on this, I recommend Metamorphoses of the Werewolf: A Literary Study from Antiquity Through the Renaissance by Leslie A. Sconduto, The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature by Brian J. Frost, and The Werewolf in Lore and Legend by Montague Summers.
Do you celebrate Halloween or Samhain? If so, do you have your Halloween costume picked out?
I was raised pagan and both my parents are part Irish, so, from a young age, I was exposed to a wealth of folk beliefs and superstitions about this time of year. I also grew up in a small town that had trick-’r-treating on Gate Night (the night before Halloween). This allowed us to partake in our sugar hoarding revels on the 30th and keep the 31st free for Halloween parties, haunted hayrides, or attending the Samhain ritual at our local church.
These days I celebrate Gate Night, Halloween, Samhain, All Souls, All Saints, and Old Hallowmas as one big string of celebrations that bleed into and borrow from one another. My celebration is part secular nostalgia (watching Halloween movies of yore, costumed fun, leaf peeping, etc) and part religious/cultural ritual (lighting a candle for those who have passed, singing Samhain songs, embracing the dark half of the year, etc). Of course, the two bleed into each other as well, which is just as it should be for such a mythically and symbolically rich time of year with so many layers, influences, and ever-changing traditions. That’s one of the many reasons autumn is my favorite time of year. Decorative gourds, ho!
I don’t yet have a costume this year, alas. Some pressing personal and family matters have taken up most of my time and energy.
Have you ever written a story or novel with horror elements or spooky themes? Tell us about it.
Indeed I have! My first book, Beneath Blair Mountain, originally began as a short story for a horror anthology. The idea for the anthology was that ten writers would write ten stories, one for each decade of the 20th century. The stories would draw on the cultural anxieties, moral panics, and crises of the time for their horror elements. Unfortunately, the anthology fell through, but my horror short about the 1910s quickly became not so short and was later selected for publication by 1888.
Part Southern Gothic, part urban fantasy/mythic fiction, part historical fiction, Beneath Blair Mountain draws not only on American history and other events in the world at the time but also from Irish and Icelandic folklore, particularly Halloween superstitions, fairytales, and folk beliefs of Ireland and Yuletide superstitions, ghost stories, and folk beliefs of Iceland. The story itself takes place on Gate Night and All Hallow’s Eve, so it’s a perfect read for these crisp October nights.
In the last two years, I’ve also written two horror shorts. “East of the Midnight Sun, West of the Full Moon” is a deconstruction/reconstruction of the vampire v. werewolf trope that so dominated the genre in my formative years, as well as a loose retelling of Scandinavian fairytale “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”. Set on a winter’s night in a remote outpost in the arctic circle, this short was my attempt to put these monsters back in their oft-forgotten cultural contexts while using them to explore modern political anxieties.
Fun fact: I got the idea for this story from a throwaway line in a book I read while researching the aforementioned werewolf paper (The Werewolf in Lore and Legend, for those interested). The author was explaining the origin of the word “werewolf” and mentioned that the words for “werewolf” and “vampire” are interchangeable in many languages and sometimes flipped entirely. Who knew ten years later that random etymological factoid would lead to one of my favorite stories I’ve written?
My other horror short and most recently accepted story is “The Corn Wolf’s Tithe”, which is a retelling/reimagining of “Little Red Riding Hood” set in rural Germany in the 1930s. The story blends German folklore and history to explore issues of identity, belonging, and what we are or aren’t willing to sacrifice and for what. As you may have noticed, history and what real world humans do to other real world humans is at the heart of my horror and scares me far more than things that go bump in the night. As Stephen King put it, “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.”
“East of the Midnight Sun, West of the Full Moon” can be found in the wolf-themed anthology, Wolf Warriors IV. “The Corn Wolf’s Tithe” will be in the forthcoming Wolf Warriors V due out later this year.
And last, feel free to share your social/book links below.
Beneath Blair Mountain is available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Beneath-Blair-Mountain-1888-Novellas/dp/0692566775/ref=
Here are links to the rest of my published works, including all of the Wolf Warriors anthologies and a previous interview about the horror genre with a particular focus on women writers and readers of horror:
For updates, follow my blog, where I talk writing, mythology, and chronic illness, at the above link or find me on any of the following sites and social media platforms. I don’t bite, I swear. *grins wolfishly*
Twitter: @ShanBarnsley
Instagram @frejafolkvangar
Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/BardOfFolkvangar
Poets & Writers: https://www.pw.org/content/shannon_barnsley
Thanks for having me and happy Halloween!
