“‘This house is haunted,’ Claire says. ‘I know if is,’ the babysitter says. ‘I used to live here.'” – Kelly Link, “The Specialist’s Hat”
First of all, Brendan and I hope you’re enjoying Behind With Knife! I want to keep this space relatively spoiler-free, but there was some excitement on Monday, with Chapter 6. If you haven’t been reading? It’s never too late to catch up!
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 |
Don’t forget that TONIGHT, yes TONIGHT, October 8th, is our fall reading at Rivers & Roads Café. We’ve got readings from Brendan and me, then Lauren Bolger and Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr. It’s going to be a great time.
In poetry news, Bob and I have a new episode of The Line Break up that’s real fun (Apple | Spotify)
Also, the reading we threw back in June? That’s now on YouTube! Thanks to the brilliant and talented Adam Hinkle, who filmed and edited everything. We got readings from Micah Mabey, Sandra Marchetti, Adrian Sobol, Bob Sykora, and me. I’ll drop it here, too, just in case.
And now: HAUNTINGS
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Like last week, I’m going to give myself a narrow focus for this topic. I love hauntings. I could go on for days about hauntings. The second short story (and first non-flash, for whatever that’s worth) I ever published was a haunted house story. The spark for that story came from a 2014 episode of Radiolab that super stuck with me, and I’m not even that big of a Radiolab listener. So I’m gonna focus on hauntings through the lens of two Mike Flanagan shows I love, but have only watched once each: The Haunting Of Hill House and The Fall Of The House Of Usher. Nothing too detailed here, since I’ve only seen both shows once, but mild spoiler warnings. And yes, there will be book recs.
The first way to talk about hauntings is maybe the most classic. You’re trying to live your normal life, but there are ghosts around. Often, you’ve recently moved into a new-to-you home that is an already-old-to-the-ghosts home. One of the best examples of this is a TV show based on a Shirley Jackson novel that I haven’t read: Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of The Haunting Of Hill House. Have you watched it? It was everywhere when it came out, and it’s on Netflix. The story centers around a family who, years ago, experienced a pretty bad haunting in a house that they had bought and were renovating. There are layers of ghosts here: now-adult children reliving the events of their childhood, and the physical ghosts that attacked them in childhood. We heard you liked ghosts so we put ghosts on your ghosts, etc etc, yes please. More ghosts.
Because ghosts are always a metaphor for what you personally can’t bury, or what society can’t bury and you now have to deal with. Hill House is a personally can’t bury story. I saw a movie once—I’ll keep it nameless for spoilers’ sake— where a secret room in the basement turned out to be a child abuse torture chamber. That’s an example of society’s inability to bury something. The classic “Native American Burial Ground” trope is the settler-colonialists of the United States trying to handle their generational guilt. In these types of hauntings, ghosts are usually tied to a physical place. Ghosts want something, often for people to atone. Is there a lot that brushes up against this next category I’ve artificially created? Sure!
Book recs: The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (I guess! lol), Stranger Than Fiction by Kelly Link and The Two Sams by Glen Hirshberg (those two are short story collections that I haven’t read in a while but have ghost stories), kinda The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle.
The second way I want to talk about hauntings is as sin catching up with you. The person being haunted has done something in the past, and now the bill is due. In the excellent Fall Of The House Of Usher—which is less an adaptation and more of a remix of a bunch of Edgar Allan Poe stories into a contemporary fairy tale—a brother and sister’s pharmaceutical empire has been built upon sin. Not just the sin of getting millions of people lethally addicted to prescription drugs, either. I want to keep things vague, but suffice to say that there are simply some evils that can’t be outrun.
Because there are always consequences for your actions, at least in fiction. It sure feels like a lot of people don’t see real-life consequences lately—in the United States, you’ve always been able to buy your way out of any jam. In this new fascist United States, you can also ass-kiss your way out of a jam, or at least get enough fillers in your face that the botulism gets in your brain, They Live-style. We’re talking hauntings, though, and I can’t help but wonder about the erosion of these elite jagoffs’ souls. The Usher family is portrayed as the richest of the rich. While none of them seem to have much of anything resembling a conscience, there’s nagging struggle. They are deeply, deeply unwell people. And of course, they do pay for their sins, one by one, in thrilling ways. In these types of hauntings, ghosts are chasing a person or people. Ghosts are here to collect a debt, or make you pay for your sins. Is there a lot that brushes up against Faustian bargains in this category? Yes, but I would argue these types of hauntings are distinct from the Great Satan Hisself. It’s more like the ghosts are consequences.
How do I find watching Fall Of The House Of Usher in our new age of wealth inequality and impunity for elites at every turn no matter how evil they reveal themselves to be? Satisfying. Cathartic. Revelatory. Inspiring.
Who says hauntings can’t be positive?
Book recs: Extended Stay by Juan Martinez, Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez, The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones.
Hey, speaking of hauntings, go watch HAUNT SEASON, starring my dear friend Adam Hinkle and featuring/directed by Cool Guys Who Come To My Cookouts Sometimes, When Adam Invites Them, Tommy Martin and Jake Jarvi. It’s currently available on Amazon, Tubi, and Pluto TV. Here’s a trailer.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris