The best books on hauntology, folk horror, and all things wyrd and eerie

The Scarred for Life series (Volumes 1-3) is the most in-depth and expansive overviews of hauntological culture yet to be printed.

Covering Britain's popular (and unpopular) culture from 1970-1989, Scarred for Life leaves no stone unturned in its quest to discuss all the strangest TV, film, music, fiction, and other cultural ephemera that made these years the central influences on the “haunted generation.”

My favorite is Volume One, which covers the 1970s, when it seemed that the mission of the British media was to scare children into total passive submission. Although not exactly my childhood experience, I still loved every terrifying description and the authors’ “traumatic” memories.

Hopefully, some brave soul will write the American equivalent.

Although the title of this list mentions the “wyrd and eerie,” I didn’t choose Mark Fisher’s brilliant The Weird and the Eerie, but rather his wonderfully insightful Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures.

Fisher didn’t “create” hauntology (that would be Jacques Derrida), but he was its most innovative and deepest thinker. Able to take complex theoretical concepts and explain them using creative analysis of cultural media, Fisher combined philosophical, political, social, and artistic analyses into the corpus of what we now recognize as the core tenets of hauntology.

Ghosts of My Life displays Fisher’s personal investment in his ideas and critiques: this was not just an intellectual exercise for him; he felt these assessments of life in late 20th century/early 21st century to the core of his being.

His examinations of Joy Division, Ghost Box Records, Stanley Kubrick, The Fall, and genre TV shows were the single biggest inspiration for me to write my hauntological book. I wish I had the pleasure of meeting him because I feel that we were kindred souls.

I dedicated my book to his memory. 

While there is a great biography of writer Nigel Kneale (Andy Murray’s Into The Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale), I chose Andrew Screen’s comprehensive The Book of Beasts to represent Kneale’s essential contributions to hauntology and folk horror.

Beasts was a folk horror anthology television series broadcast in 1976, and Screen’s book covers all six episodes from idea to finished product in the most minute detail. I certainly enjoyed the production minutia, but what I feel puts this book in rarefied air is Screen’s unprecedented access to Kneale’s archives, uncovering unseen drafts of scripts as well as rejected ideas for other episodes. Screen also traces the folkloric/paranormal inspirations behind the show.

I wish all books on television would be as thorough and eye opening as The Book of Beasts.

People often ask me why folk horror has returned with such a vengeance in the 21st century.

I tried to address this resurgence in my book, but one of the strongest foundations for making such conjectures appears in Howard David Ingham’s extensive, wide ranging survey of the folk horror film genre We Don’t Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror and Pagan Film. 

Both informative and critically engaging, this book is my favorite book on the subject in a field that has vastly expanded over the last five years. Ingham’s vision encompasses not only the canonical British folk horror entries but casts a wide net, pulling in fascinating examples from across the world.

I love books that educate me, but I especially appreciate books that give me new works to hunt down. We Don’t Go Back had me writing lists and jumping on the internet searching for new treasures to appreciate. 

I am a movie, book, and culture fanatic, but the ultimate medium for me is music.

Hauntology and folk horror are both greatly informed by music and have subsequently resulted in music that is informed by the concepts of hauntology and folk horror. I focus a lot on this reciprocal relationship in my book, but no one has explored the connections between the music of the past and the music of the future in greater detail than Rob Young in Electric Eden.

Starting with the revival of folk music in England, this book ranges through psychedelic and acid folk, touching on rock, prog, classical, experimental, and electronic music in a dizzying but exhilarating tour of the weirdos, outcasts, and visionaries that ushered in a new age of music with one foot in rural heritage and the other in futuristic utopian dreams.

From The Incredible String Band to Current 93 to Coil to Ghost Box Records, this 600+ page book is a must for the adventurous music epicurean. The discography/timeline is indispensable to tracing the evolution of folk horror and hauntological music.

Just be aware that this book will cost you more money than the cover price, because, if you are like me, you will have to own the vast majority of the music heralded in Electric Eden.