Nightmare Magazine Issue 25, Women Destroy Horror! Special Issue

by Nightmare Magazine

  That is not to say women writers of the macabre have lacked for partisans; indeed, women’s dominion over the ghost story of Victorian England has been widely acknowledged, and though few seem to have noticed it, this was true in the United States as well. What might without denigration be aptly termed “gentlewomen’s” ghost story anthologies have appeared from time to time, nearly always edited by men who may have genuinely loved the genre but who lacked feminist concerns or view-point. “Gentlewomen” was the term of choice among the Victorian ghost story writers themselves, and has been adopted by modern anthologists as designating this veritable subgenre of ghost story. The most recent examples of the gentlewomen’s ghost story anthology formula are Richard Dalby’s commendable The Virago Book of Ghost Stories (1987) and The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (1988). Together, this pair of volumes presents an impressive overview chiefly of British authors, which tends to be the case with gentlewomen selections. Of broader scope are the young adult volumes from the sister team of Sean Manley and Gogo Lewis, who delight in such subtitles as “Spectral Stories by the Gentle Sex.” I recommend their Ladies of Horror (1971), Ladies of Fantasy (1975), Ladies of the Gothics (1975), Sisters of Sorcery (1976), and Ghostly Gentlewomen (1977). The stories, both British and U.S., tend to be randomly chosen, which has the benefit of showing an extremely wide range of writings that just happen to be by women. Unfortunately, all of these books were only briefly marketed and none were easily obtained. Some lesser but still worthwhile examples of gentlewomen anthologies include Peter Haining’s British Gentle-women of Evil (1969) and A Circle of Witches (1971), Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini’s Witch’s Brew (1984), Alan Ryan’s Haunting Women (1988), both of which include both British and American authors, and Alex Hamilton’s British The Cold Embrace (1967), this last issued only in England.

  None of these volumes could be construed as feminist per se. But a feminist anthology did appear while my own anthology, What Did Miss Darrington See? (1989), was seeking a publisher. This is Alfred Bendixen’s splendid Haunted Women: The Best Supernatural Tales by American Women Writers (1985), which is exemplary in its choices and theoretical discussions, even if it does lack guidance to further reading. Much more remains to be done before the true scope of women’s feminist contribution to supernatural literature is adequately presented to modern readers.

  More typical of the representation and availability of women’s work is the so-called “definitive” anthology, Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis M. Fraser’s Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (1944). This volume remains influential because it is perpetually in print; however, in more than one thousand pages room has been found for only four women. More recently Jack Sullivan’s Lost Souls (1983)—a selection of British ghost stories by an American editor—also nearly excludes women.

  Among British anthologists the exclusion is slightly less severe, perhaps because a larger number of the anthologists are women. The tradition of women editing ghost story anthologies, dating back to the 1920s, has provided a significant legacy of stories by women that would not otherwise have been commissioned or published. The anthologies of Lady Cynthia Asquith, Mary Danby, Christine Thompson, and Rosemary Timperley would by themselves fill an eight-foot shelf. Only from England’s women anthologists have I occasionally encountered a general volume of supernatural stories (as opposed to a gentlewomen’s ghost story selection) in which women just “happened” to outnumber men, as in Mary Danby’s selections for children, though the heavily weighted ratios shown above are never reversed.

  Women’s literary endeavors have been overlooked by many means, as Joanna Russ has described in her brilliant How to Suppress Women’s Writing (1983). The history of women’s supernatural and horrific writings could provide textbook cases for all of Russ’s points. A few years ago at one of the annual World Fantasy Convention gatherings, for example, I had the unpleasantly comic experience of viewing from the audience a panel exclusively of men addressing the problem of “Why Women Don’t Write Horror.” The possibility that these men might decline to publish women’s stories if given the chance was not discussed. The likelihood that their limited world-views left them incapable of recognizing excellence in women’s horrific imaginings was not discussed. The possibility that the misogynist nature of their own writing and editing tastes had turned many talented women to other arenas was not thought part of the trouble. The fact that women do manage to publish a good deal of excellent horror in spite of the obstacles was not mentioned. That none of these panelists’ own works sold as well as those of Anne Rice or Shirley Jackson was outside the realm of the discussion. At the heart of their combined belief, though poorly expressed, was the idea that the exceptions proved the rule and women basically had nothing horrible to express.

  Yet these stories by women abound, languishing in old magazines, forgotten in out-of-print single-author collections or the rare good anthology. The problem has not been so much getting published as staying in print. Women’s writings, much more so than those of men, simply vanish. This is not to say that all these women were feminists, but conservative women have fared no better in having their work kept before the public eye.

  No complete understanding of supernatural fiction is possible without an understanding of women’s central importance to its development. Nor is a full understanding of women’s fiction in general possible without an awareness of the supernatural stories that have been an important aspect of women’s creative expression, beginning with the instructive fairy tales of oral tradition.

  © 1989 by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.

  Originally published in slightly different form as the preface to What Did Miss Darrington See?: An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction,

  edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.

  Reprinted by permission of the author.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jessica Amanda Salmonson likes rats, reptiles, and Chihuahuas. She’s a recipient of the World Fantasy Award, Lambda Award, and ReaderCon Certificate. Her novels include The Swordswoman, Thousand Shrine Warrior, and Anthony Shriek. Her short story collections include A Silver Thread of Madness, John Collier and Fredric Brown Went Quarrelling Through My Head, The Deep Museum: Ghost Stories of a Melancholic, and Mystic Women: Their Ancient Tales and Legends Recounted by a Woman Inmate of the Calcutta Insane Asylum.

  AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

  Author Spotlight: Gemma Files

  Erika Holt

  Horror stories often build tension by way of a slow reveal, but in “This is Not for You,” the horror begins right up front. What made you choose this structure?

  When I showed it to my writing group, the second section was the lead-in and we didn’t get to the “meat” of the story until much later, i.e. when it would have occurred in linear time. They all agreed that because there was a lot of exposition involved with Gorgo and the cult’s intro, it made sense to flip things so that the visceral thrills of the hunt were first. I took their advice, and now I really can’t see it working any other way—it’s like it overwhelms you with a sensual rush, hopefully hooking you deep enough to render you more open to and cooperative with the slightly “head”ier second section, because you already know there’s bad/fun stuff a-comin’. In retrospect, it also reminds me of the bracketing flash-forward at the start of Hannibal Season Two, which shows us that no matter where the rest of the season goes, there’s eventually going to be a knock-down drag-out between Dr. Lecter and Jack Crawford which will hurt just as badly for both of them.

  Rather than worshipping Dionysus, as the maenads do in The Bachaae, the women in your story worship Persephone. What was the impetus for this change? Do you enjoy incorporating mythology into your work?

  Mythology is something that’s fascinated me since childhood, especially the ways in which societal power-shifts can cause myths to mutate. The worship of Persephone, for example, was a mystery religion long before Dionysus came on the scene, one reserved specifically for women, and if you trace the Perseph
onean myth back far enough, you’ll find that she transmutes into a sort of “death queen” goddess who actually pre-dates both her supposed husband, Hades, and the sacrificial son-lover figure of Dionysus or Attis, whose priest-avatars tore off their own testicles to fertilize the earth for their mother-goddess Cybele. In other words, her earlier phase was more reminiscent of goddesses like Ereshkigal, Tiamat, and Cerridwen, an overpowering mother-goddess figure who embraces both death and life, the generative and destructive powers. (We see a similar pattern with the evolution—or possibly de-evolution—of Hera, now mainly known as “Zeus’s jealous wife,” but who once encompassed all the apparently conflicting traits later parcelled out to subsidiary sister-wife and daughter goddesses like Artemis, Demeter, and Athena.) It made sense to me that under someone like Aglaia, who I think may be a well-respected academic in her non-cult life, the cult would try to revive this earlier version of Persephone and reclaim her full spectrum of powers, the true branching, antlered “crown of terror” that fuels their hunting ecstasy.

  Does the intervention of the goddess relieve the women of responsibility for their acts? What about the fact that their victims are morally blameworthy to some degree?

  Well, obviously not. I mean, even if you personally believed in the goddess and you genuinely thought that by turning up uninvited these guys had broken a sacred code, the guys in question palpably do not believe in the goddess—why would they?—so any question of their guilt is rendered specious. They don’t know the rules. This is not part of their world. This is an artificially-created situation, a party they have been literally enticed to. Should they maybe be wary? Yes, and if they were female, society would have trained them to be . . . to not rush blind into unknown situations just because they hear it might be fun, and also to not encroach on other people’s privacy because it elates them to do so. But society has trained them differently, and in this situation, following their own predatory instincts makes them into prey. Which is sort of mordantly amusing, but come on: even Gorgo would admit that murder’s murder, no matter the context.

  You touch on a number of important issues including feminism, intersectionality, cults, religion, and gender identity, to name but a few. Do you often seek to include or tackle important issues? Do you think courage (i.e. the willingness to “go there”) is an important quality for a writer to possess?

  My friend Claire Humphrey points out that writing any story is inherently political, especially when you’re a woman writing horror, which is a position I admire, though I rarely think of myself assuming it. When I heard about this opportunity, however—the Women Destroy Science Fiction/Horror call for submissions—I made a very conscious decision to reach for/pursue the most extreme thing that immediately occurred to me. Maybe I’ll regret that decision once reactions start coming back, but I really hope not because once I started writing this story, I kind of fell in love with it; I’m proud to have written it, and that part’s not going to change, no matter what. Fingers crossed.

  In “This is Not for You,” you flip the well worn horror trope of male-aggressor-on-female-victim on its head, showcasing not just one but a group of violent and predatory women attacking men. Why?

  Because I think predation is a human quality, not a sex-linked one, and because I wanted to explore the use of religion as one way in which people—women here, people in general—give themselves permission to other and destroy, ostensibly in the service of something larger than themselves, but possibly in the service of their own impulses. Telling yourself a fairy story about the Goddess demanding sacrifice is very much like telling yourself a fairy story about God wanting a crusade, after all, just as there’s often a visceral sort of metaphorical link between sexual attraction and the impulse to rend, to deconstruct, to consume: I’ll eat you up, I love you so! Even if you take that away, however, living under patriarchy guarantees that there’s always going to be a lot of toxic resentment built up between men and women, and while you hear about one facet of that dynamic all the time—the Youtube Manifesto shooting spree, Not All Men, etc.—you rarely hear about the others. These are the currents Aglaia taps into with her cult: blind yearning for faith in an increasingly secular world, Gorgo’s personal murder fetishism, this constant struggle to define what “feminine” qualities are/mean in terms of shaping our identities.

  On some level, I also think I might have been hearkening back to Robert R. McCammon’s Bethany’s Sin, a highly influential (to me) 1980s novel in which the intrusive monsters poisoning a small community from within turn out to be the ghosts of Amazons possessing otherwise “normal” women and throwing off the established gender balance, which McCammon’s narrative structure—whether or not he was aware of what he was doing at the time—treats as the true horror of the situation: cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria. The book’s “hero” has issues with misogyny that eventually become the superpower he uses to save his wife and daughter, so I guess I thought it would be funny to play with that idea from a different angle, though that’s really only occurred to me in hindsight.

  What does your year ahead look like, writing-wise?

  I’ve spent the last seven months writing a hell of a lot of short fiction, “This is Not For You” included, which has been great, but now I really have to knuckle down and get the pedal to the metal in terms of my next novel, Experimental Film, which is due for early 2015. It’s my first real stand-alone, a contemporary-set ghost story about female creativity, a lost goddess, and the secret history of Canadian film. I also have a new book coming out as of August nineteenth, We Will All Go Down Together: Stories of the Five-Family Coven, a linked story-cycle that’s half previously-published material finally put in context and half brand-new stuff, involving a 400-year blood vendetta between supernaturally-powerful Toronto-based clans, witchcraft, psychic investigation, the Fae, evil angels, and monster-killing nuns.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Erika Holt lives in the cold, white North (i.e. Calgary, Canada), where she writes and edits speculative fiction. Her stories have appeared in a number of anthologies including Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, and What Fates Impose. She has also co-edited two anthologies: Rigor Amortis, about sexy, amorous zombies, and Broken Time Blues, featuring 1920s alien burlesque dancers and bootlegging chickens.

  Author Spotlight: Catherine MacLeod

  Erika Holt

  Would you say most of your writing is horror or dark, or do you write in other genres as well?

  Most of my writing is dark. But I’ve also written magazine articles (I have a degree in journalism), and I’ve dabbled in mystery. Horror is my first love, though. I tell people I’m a professional coward.

  What do you find most appealing about incorporating mythology into a story? Have you always been interested in the Greek myths?

  My oldest book of myths has little bite marks on the cover—my mother caught me chewing on it when I was a baby. So I can honestly say I cut my teeth on them.

  This isn’t the first story I’ve written around a myth. (That would be “Skulling Medusa.”) To me it feels like working on home ground.

  Your protagonist, Rumer, has been through a lot. How does she cope? Why does she choose to return to the maze?

  I can’t even imagine how anybody would cope with what she’s been through. Thank God I don’t have to write that story. I think she goes back to the maze because she doesn’t want to deal with the media circus. The Labyrinth is the part of the sideshow where she’s least likely to be attacked.

  Who are some authors that have inspired you?

  Rod Serling. Ray Bradbury. Harlan Ellison. Stephen King. Alice Hoffman.

  What are you working on now?

  I have half-a-dozen short stories in various stages of done-ness. One of them, yes, is written around a myth. I also have a novel in the works, tentatively titled The Goblin’s Primer. I resisted starting it for a long time, but finally it just wore me down.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Erika H
olt lives in the cold, white North (i.e. Calgary, Canada), where she writes and edits speculative fiction. Her stories have appeared in a number of anthologies including Evolve Two: Vampire Stories of the Future Undead, and What Fates Impose. She has also co-edited two anthologies: Rigor Amortis, about sexy, amorous zombies, and Broken Time Blues, featuring 1920s alien burlesque dancers and bootlegging chickens.

  Author Spotlight: Katherine Crighton

  Lisa Nohealani Morton

  Tell us a little bit about “The Inside and the Outside.” How did you come to write it?

  Well, to start with, I wanted to participate in the entire “Women Destroy” phenomenon to the greatest extent possible because it’s just such an amazing project and an issue I firmly believe needs to be brought to the wider attention of the SF/F-and-beyond community. So I submitted something to every special issue (and will continue to do so for every one I’m eligible for). With the horror special, when I found out Ellen Datlow, an editor whose work I’ve admired for years, was going to be guest editing, I really went all out trying to write a story I thought could maybe make it to her inbox.

  As for the story itself: I’d been planning for a while to write something about teeth, although I didn’t quite know what yet. I already had it on the brain. I played around with a couple of different scenarios, and what really ended up sticking was just that first line—“There’s a bear on the other side of the lake.” Based on a real bear, across a real lake, on a real Girl Scout camping trip. I liked the rhythm of the words, and it just went on from there.