Horror Joy

Brian and Jeff return from a July hiatus for a Horror Joy series on summer camp slashers, beginning with Friday the 13th (1980).

Their discussion focuses on sexuality, gender roles, and moral judgment, the absence of adult authority and supervision, and how the camp functions as a microcosm for late-1970s/early-1980s anxiety around Reagan-era politics and youth economic prospects, drawing on Kara M. Kvaran’s socioeconomic analysis and related scholarship.

They end by sharing joys of slasher nostalgia, pre-cellphone disconnection, practical effects, and invite listeners to email about a possible Discord.

Brian and Jeff return from a July hiatus for a Horror Joy series on summer camp slashers, beginning with Friday the 13th (1980).

Their discussion focuses on sexuality, gender roles, and moral judgment, the absence of adult authority and supervision, and how the camp functions as a microcosm for late-1970s/early-1980s anxiety around Reagan-era politics and youth economic prospects, drawing on Kara M. Kvaran’s socioeconomic analysis and related scholarship.

They end by sharing joys of slasher nostalgia, pre-cellphone disconnection, practical effects, and invite listeners to email about a possible Discord.

Haints and Hollers Apothecary

Kvaran - “You're All Doomed!” A Socioeconomic Analysis of Slasher Films

Brian and Jeff are joined for a special episode of Meet Your Maker by Spider One and Krsy Fox to discuss their upcoming film Big Baby (VOD August 7) and the relationship between joy and horror.

Spider and Krsy trace their creative paths from small-town upbringings through music, acting, and songwriting into filmmaking, emphasizing that making your own work overcomes industry gatekeeping.

They explain how Big Baby’s writer protagonist reflects frustrations with disposable modern criticism and explores storytelling’s power and responsibility, including a meta take on the author/filmmaker as a kind of slasher.

They detail designing the original Big Baby mask with Little Shop of Gore, balancing gore with psychological thriller elements, and maintaining safety and a supportive “family” set culture.

They tease possible Big Baby 2 and cite revisiting the Evil Dead series with their horror-loving daughter as current joy.

On Horror Joy, Jeff is joined by author Michael Boulerice about his novella Inhalation (released June 16).

Boulerice shares his origin story—writing nonfiction essays online before shifting to horror 4–5 years ago with help from developmental editor Alex Woodrow—leading to short-story sales and publishing with Dead Sky (including Feeding the Wheel).

Michael and Jeff discuss why haunted house stories endure as fears of a corrupted safe space, then talk spoiler-light about Inhalation’s decaying home, Catholic family dynamics, weaponized belief, and Alice in Wonderland’s Caterpillar as cosmic-horror inspiration tied to Boulerice’s late father-in-law, whom the book tributes.

Boulerice previews a themed collection, Ether’s Wood Elementary Primer (summer 2027), plus novels in progress, and cites recent joys like Widow’s Bay, Beyond the Walls, The Backrooms, and the film Human Lanterns.

Jeff hosts a solo episode of Horror Joy: Meet Your Maker with author Amy Jane Stewart, who grew up in Edinburgh, lives in the Scottish Borders, and whose debut novel Hex House (Titan Books) is a feminist horror fairy tale released spring 2026. She is also completing a University of Sheffield PhD on winged women and received Creative Scotland funding in 2023.

Stewart describes horror’s connection to joy through nostalgia for boundary-pushing media, the welcoming horror community, and horror as a safe space to explore big feelings and loss of control. She recounts deciding at 26 to pursue publication, facing rejections, finding her voice in creepy short fiction during an MA at York St John, and ultimately signing with an agent and a 2024 book deal, with Hex House blending fantasy and gothic horror.

They discuss genre boundaries, haunted houses as subversions of home and trauma, Hex House’s dual perspectives (Ellie and Siobhan), and Stewart’s next dark-academia horror novel, plus recommendations including The Lamb, The Brides, and The Memory Tree.

Jeff interviews horror author Josh Hanson (King’s Hill, The Woodcutters, Fortress, Marshbank, Minotaur Stories) about the relationship between horror and joy, which Hanson links to story-driven pleasure, safe transgression, and chasing the intensity of childhood fear.

Hanson recounts discovering writing in college, burning out after an MFA at the University of Montana amid anti-genre attitudes and market-focused training, then returning to fiction around age 50 and establishing a daily routine that led to his debut.

They discuss why haunted houses resonate as violations of domestic safety, and Hanson’s upcoming novel Calliope Street (out July 29), a triptych about Jack and Avery, a fixer-upper with a basement collage “altar” that functions as a portal, identity misrecognition and threat, and suspicion after Avery’s disappearance.

Hanson cites Dario Argento’s vibe-first approach as inspiration and discusses recent horror that is bringing him joy.

Josh Hanson

Brian and Jeff welcome Shane Hawk, a Cheyenne and Arapaho horror writer and editor, creator of the Native Horror Index, and contributing editor at Counterpoint Press acquiring and editing Indigenous North American writers.

Hawk explains how horror can produce joy through safe distance, catharsis, and the chance to rewrite grim histories by letting Native characters survive and resist stereotypes.

He recounts early influences (Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark, a childhood Halloween scare), returning to intense reading in adulthood, and self-publishing Anoka in 2020 before COVID led him to spearhead Never Whistle at Night with co-editor Ted Van Alst, evolving from a Discord/Twitter idea to a Vintage deal and major sales.

He discusses horror community support, the anthology’s themes of revenge and community, his comfort centering Native perspectives, co-writing the stage audio-drama The Land Has Spoken, launching the directory-style Native Horror Index.

The sequel to Never Whistle at Night, titled Back for Blood, is set for August 18, 2026.

ShaneHawk.com

Native Horror Index

Jeff welcomes Damir Debanic, owner of InterHuman Games, to discuss his upcoming board game Jure Grando, a Croatia-based, vampire-adjacent folklore horror title on GameFound.

Debanic describes horror’s cathartic link to joy, his path from organizing events in 1990s Croatia to 15 years at sea, and why board games are “programming with paper” and a vehicle for story. He explains that horror board games mainly appeal to board gamers drawn in by theme, then outlines Croatian vampire/štrigoi lore, krsnik monster-fighters, and how Slavic mythology informed Dracula’s supernatural elements.

Jure Grando emphasizes simple folk protections, no dice, minimal combat, and a two-phase race against encroaching darkness, a demonic cat, and the endgame arrival of Jure Grando, with multiple scenarios and endings.

Debanic also summarizes prior games (Within Walls, Propuh, and Fear of the Dark) and previews future folklore projects and a possible Jure Grando sequel.

InterHuman Games

On Horror Joy’s Meet Your Maker, Brian is joined by Undertone writer-director Ian Tuason. They discuss the relationship between joy and horror, distinguishing joy as a sustainable state from fleeting happiness and describing horror as a creative outlet that can offer safe thrills and catharsis, especially for people shaped by trauma.

Tuason recounts his path from writing poetry, stories, and short films to making a low-budget feature designed around sound, which he chose out of necessity and because audiences’ imaginations make the unseen scarier than visuals.

They discuss Undertone’s reliance on silence, noise-canceling headphones, and off-screen space, as well as its religious imagery rooted in Tuason’s Catholic upbringing, where guilt functions like an antagonist and Mary and Abzu represent opposing sides of a maternal archetype.

Tuason shares that he is rebooting Paranormal Activity, drawing on the first three films’ unseen terror while exploring the male gaze as a nemesis.

In this episode of Horror Joy, Brian and Jeff make an unplanned stop on their “haunted house tour” by traveling from U.S.-centered hauntings (slavery, Jim Crow, Reagan-era policies, conquest) to Japan, discussing Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 cult film Hausu and Junji Ito’s Fragments of Horror story “Wooden Spirit.”

They compare how both texts present “haunting houses” animated by spirits and brought out through women, linking them to gender roles, eroticism, and the fetishization of culture and material heritage.

They analyze Hausu’s deliberately camp, self-aware style, the named archetypes of its seven schoolgirl protagonists, its comedic-horrific deaths, and themes of girlhood’s end, queerness, postwar trauma, and consumption.

They read Wooden Spirit as eco-horror and cultural fetish, emphasizing wood’s “eyes,” seduction, and men’s uselessness, and close by finding joy in horror’s weirdness, comedy, and formal experimentation.

Breaking the Mirror: Hausu and Bad Love Objects by Erin Nunoda

Hausu of the Rising Sun: Death of the Girl by Georgia Thomas-Parr

Beyond the Panel: Cinematism and Affective Responses in Itō Junji's Tomie by Ivan Darío Jaramillo Chávez