STEVE CARROLL WRITES

When I was in 8 th  grade I picked up and read a book with cover art   depicting a werewolf coming toward the viewer through tall grass at night. It   is   illuminated by a single handheld torch. As a lifelong lover of all things   monster-related, my 13-year old self couldn’t resist and I bought and read the   book   within the span of a single week. That book was Moon of the Wolf , by   Leslie H. Whitten and I immediately set about trying to locate and read   anything I   could by the author. The holy grail book at the time was Progeny of   the Adder , which I eventually found decades later at a used book store. So, what was so special about Progeny of the Adder ? I learned that many   consider it to have had a very distinct influence on Jeff Rice’s The Night   Stalker , and on the surface alone, I can see merit in those claims. First published   in 1965, a full 5 years before Rice wrote it and 7 years before it would   see   publication, they both share a lot of similar ideas, thoug

My father, God rest his soul, had a long and storied history of allowing me to watch age-inappropriate movies, and I loved him for it. Such was the case when in January of 1972, Dad excitedly told me we were going to watch a TV movie about a vampire. That movie was  The Night Stalker  and I was 6 months shy of my 10th birthday. Just a few months later he took me to see  The Godfather  and the next year,  Enter the Dragon  and  The Exorcist . Dad was cool like that. I vividly remember the movie, which was a smash hit, garnering the highest ratings of any TV movie at the time. It starred the charismatic Darren McGavin as investigative newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak and was produced by veteran TV producer Dan Curtis, best known for being the driving creative force behind the hit horror soap opera,  Dark Shadows .  Its teleplay was written by none other than veteran  Twilight Zone  writer and renowned author, Richard Matheson, whose work was based on an unpublished novel by Jeff Rice, ent

I have been on a bit of a folk horror kick recently . I have found it   to be a rich and fertile subgenre worthy of a deep dive. For anyone curious as   to what   this genre entails, I found the Wikipedia description to be   surprisingly on point (slightly edited by me): Folk horror  is a subgenre of horror ... that   uses elements of folklore to invoke fear in its audience. Typical elements   include a rural setting and   themes of isolation, religion, the power of nature,   and the potential darkness of rural landscapes. Many derive their horror from   the actions and   beliefs of people rather than explicitly supernatural elements;   the primary focus of the stories is often upon naïve outsiders coming up   against   these forces. I found out about  Revelator   through some online research into modern folk horror where it was near the top   of many lists. I was unfamiliar with Daryl Gregory, but   bought and downloaded   the book to my Kindle with the intention to read it after I fi