Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology

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This makes the book a good choice for those new to the folk horror ways, whilst still being of appeal to those already acquainted with the strange goings-on behind the old hedges and the standing stones. Though there are intricate illustrations I found the first couple of stories had so much archaic old English that they were difficult to follow, others needed the dictionary by my side, there were so many words that needed looking up, thereby breaking up the story IMO.

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Throughout, the general themes are of ‘modern/town/Christian’ folk deposited in a rural setting, stumbling out of the comfortable, predictable, but perhaps somewhat unexciting worlds of the familiar into other, older, weirder goings-on that alternately attract, bamboozle, or terrify them. A rakish cad gets his just deserts when he’s bewitched by a mysterious young woman whilst out on a country stroll. Sometimes (more often in the older stories) these lead to a denouement in which the protagonist either witnesses or is drawn into a specific bizarre happening, but in others the point seems to be more to leave the reader with a general sense of foreboding or unease without any specific event at the conclusion. I had never seen a Folk Horror anthology before, and especially one that was so beautifully illustrated.

on another note, it was so interesting to me how pagan beliefs or superstitions ran in line with Christian beliefs on the whole throughout the stories in the anthology, when in modern-day evangelicalism they are presented as polar opposites. And yes some of the stories where indeed good, but these where all stories I had read before so this anthology was not bringing me anything new and exciting. The subject matter of this tome unexpectedly caused my ears to prick up with curiosity – considering my own involvement with this whole folk horror thing – and as I am a little bit of a collector of weird short stories, I was very intrigued to see which tales he would select. His most recent work includes a series of illustrations for the novelisation of the folk horror film classic, Blood on Satan's Claw (2022)) and the bestsellign folk horror anthology, Damnable Tales (2021). They stalk the moors at night, the deep forests, cornered fields and dusky churchyards, the narrow lanes and old ways of these ancient places, drawing upon the haunted landscapes of folk-horror – a now widely used term first applied to a series of British films from the late 1960s and 1970s: Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973).

Damnable Tales - Richard Wells - The Bookery Damnable Tales - Richard Wells - The Bookery

Outside of his television work, he makes and sells his own darkly folkloric artwork, often lino cut and hand-printed. She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you encouraged it overmuch. Last weekend, I gathered together all 23 of my completed lino blocks, and printed a fresh set onto plain white paper (all of my prints til now have been on the lovely textured handmade 'lokta' paper, this isthe paper that all of the pledge reward lino prints will be printed onto).

Unholy rites, witches’ curses, sinister village traditions and ancient horrors that lurk within the landscape all combine to remind us that the shiny modern, urban world might not have all the answers. Also, the print in the paperback is quite small, with wide left hand margins, which push the writing into the crack of the page. A couple were written in such thick dialect they were difficult to read and a couple just seemed to meander off and not go anywhere.

Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology a book by Richard Wells.

EXCEPT for the story where they kill a child and sow it’s ground up bones into the soil to provide a good harvest. These 22 stories take the reader beyond the safety and familiarity of the town into the isolated and untamed wilderness.The subtitle says ‘A Folk Horror Analogy’, and that description is kind of loose, since some of the tales are more folky than others, and a few are dubiously horrific at all. Her Nights of the Round Table collection is a cracker, with several tales that could be deemed Folk Horror.

Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology by Richard Wells Damnable Tales: A Folk Horror Anthology by Richard Wells

While her contemporaries were cranking out Victoriana Nesbit delivers her tale in a strikingly modern style that reminded me of Bernard Taylor's best.They stalk the moors at night, the deep forests, cornered fields and dusky churchyards, the narrow lanes and old ways of these ancient places, drawing upon the haunted landscapes of folk-horror - a now widely used term first applied to a series of British films from the late 1960s and 1970s: Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). And what wonders could be dug from the soil of Africa, Australasia, and Scandinavia and rendered with the imagery of Richard Wells?