Tag: horror fiction

Strange Tales and Modern Legends

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

My zine Strange Tales and Modern Legends collects three illustrated short stories based on demonic Japanese folklore.

When I was an undergrad, I had the honor of taking a class called “Demonic Women in Japanese Fiction” with a professor I truly admire. This course was a foundational experience, and I ended up writing a lengthy senior thesis with the same title. The project served as an introduction to literary theory and feminist thought; but, more than anything, I really enjoyed stories about women behaving badly.

I taught my own “Demonic Women” class at the University of Pennsylvania for the first time in Spring 2024, and it was a resounding success. Everyone in this class was just as fascinated by the stories as I was, which was a minor miracle. In all fairness – demonic women are a lot of fun.

Though I teach and publish (and blog) about Japanese literature, and though I’ve spent a significant amount of time living in and around Tokyo, I generally don’t write original fiction set in Japan. Still, I love demonic folklore so much that I couldn’t help but be inspired by the literature in my “Demonic Women” class. I therefore put together a short zine that collects two previously published stories and one original piece of flash fiction, and I commissioned a coven of talented artists to create illustrations.

In the zine’s opening story, “The Smile of a Mountain Demon,” a 21st century yamauba entraps a YouTube influencer with Buddhist pretensions by using Airbnb and the language of New Age spirituality. The young man is looking for a scenic “spiritual retreat” to use as a source of content, and the yamauba is looking for a tasty snack. I was inspired by the medieval Adachigahara folktales in which a cunning yamauba entraps a less-than-devout Buddhist priest, as well as Minako Ohba’s beautiful and heartbreaking short story “The Smile of a Mountain Witch.”

The zine’s main story, “The Kumo Diary,” is set in the Meiji period, the era of Japan’s industrial revolution. As Japan established itself as a nation that could compete with Western powers, its intelligentsia were motivated to create a unified sense of “Japanese culture.” Scholars were therefore tasked with making The Tale of Genji a respectable classic to be held in esteem by a modern nation. While I was studying the history of The Tale of Genji, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the apocryphal chapters that never made it into the canonical version, and I created a few fragments of a medieval text to be discovered by a reader who dwells in the shadows cast by the light of modernity.

The final story, “Hanahaki,” is about a neglected cat who vows revenge on the small child that has monopolized his beloved human’s attention. The title comes from a trope in underground manga and fancomics of the late 2000s and early 2010s. In these stories, someone suffering from unrequited love painfully coughs up (haki) delicate flower petals (hana) in lieu of the words they can’t say. The cat in this story is unable to communicate in human language, but he still finds a way to make his displeasure clear. If nothing else, the child must go.

Strange Tales and Modern Legends explores themes that have fascinated me for years, specifically the intersections of folklore, feminism, and the unruly joy of problematic characters. I hope readers find these stories as delightfully unsettling as I did when I wrote them.

If you’re interested, you can order a paper copy of the zine from Etsy or download a free digital version from Itch.io.

👹 https://digitalterrarium.itch.io/strange-tales
👹 https://www.etsy.com/listing/4299187840/strange-tales-horror-fiction-zine

The art at the top of this post, which is one of the illustrations featured in the zine, was created by Le Soldat Mort, a dark fantasy artist who shares their work on Bluesky (here) and on Instagram (here).

Green Dreams: Tales of Botanical Fantasy

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to announce that I published a new zine! Green Dreams: Tales of Botanical Fantasy collects six illustrated stories about our relationships with plants and nature.

“Each turn of the seasons brings an end to lives both large and small, but new seeds sprout joyously from the ruins” is the zine’s tagline, and disaster is a major theme of the collection. One of the opening stories is about the gradual effects of climate change; and, in the closing story, environmental catastrophes have become so severe that humans have disappeared completely. The zine also features stories about a medical tragedy narrowly averted, the aftermath of a devastating war, and a porous biological quarantine.

I considered subtitling the zine “Tales of Botanical Dark Fantasy,” but the truth is that none of the stories are actually that “dark.” In fact, I’d say the main theme of the collection is a persistent hope for the future. At this particular moment in history, the state of the world seems very bleak, so it’s good to remember that the environment that surrounds us is much larger – but also much more personal – than whatever horrors are currently unfolding.

Precisely because are so many fires burning in the world, I think it’s important to spend time in thriving green spaces that suggest futures of shifting and changing growth. I believe that a mindful contemplation of our natural environment can also be useful in the uncomfortable but necessary process of decentering normative humanity while challenging the artificial divisions we impose on ourselves and each other.

The incredible cover art by Frankiesbugs captures the mood of these stories perfectly.

Frankie creates bold and imaginative botanical fantasy art, and I asked them to illustrate the pagan archetypes of the flower maiden and the horned god, who together represent the endless natural cycle of death and rebirth. In this zine, I wanted to play with symbols that convey the beauty and mystery of the natural world, and Frankie embraced this theme, tinging the painting with potent Christian motifs and a powerful sense of fertility.

It’s an extremely impressive piece of art, and you to check out more of the artist’s work on Instagram (here), on Bluesky (here), and on Redbubble (here).

In this collection, I did my best to share a sense of fertile “green dreams” for the future. Mostly, though, I just really wanted to write some fun ecofiction about plants and mushrooms.

If you’re interested, you can read a free digital version of the zine on Itch.io or order a print copy from Etsy.

🌿 https://digitalterrarium.itch.io/green-dreams
🌿 https://www.etsy.com/listing/4351990958/green-dreams-fantasy-fiction-zine

The Sleeping Princess

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

There is a legend in Hyrule that a sleeping princess lies behind the door of a locked room deep under the ruins of the North Castle. When the princess rises, so too will the ancient powers sealed within her dreams. Impa knows the legend is true, and she fears the fate that will befall the kingdom should the first Zelda wake. Yet when a shadow rises on the borders of Hyrule after the birth of a new princess, Impa must make a terrible choice.

I had the honor of contributing a story called “The Sleeping Princess” to Blood Moon Rising: A Zelda Horror Zine. I was interested in exploring the background of Princess Zelda in the original 1986 game, and I thought it might be fun to see her story through the eyes of Impa, who knew about the undead princess who was the first of Zelda’s line. In other words, I’m connecting some of the more disturbing threads between The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

“The Sleeping Princess” is a story about maternal love, political sacrifice, and the dark secrets hidden within the labyrinthine dungeons of Hyrule. I was strongly inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s novel At the Mountains of Madness, which dwells in the geometric terror of monumental architecture built by strange hands, and I did my best to create a sense of ruined grandeur similar to that of Dark Souls and Ico: Castle in the Mist.

For the story’s illustrations, I had the incredible pleasure of working with the devilishly talented Pumpkinsouppe, whose dark arts brought this ruined world to life.

You can find “The Sleeping Princess” on AO3 here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/62492182

Leftover sales of the zine are open until February 24 on BigCartel (here).

The Smile of the Mountain Demon

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Liam is a budding content creator who specializes in guided meditation videos. Seeking to grow his following, he jumps at an Airbnb listing for a spiritual retreat in the Adachigahara mountains of rural Japan. At the end of a long journey, the stylish cabin enclosed within a verdant forest is everything Liam could hope for. The beautiful young woman who manages the property offers a warm welcome, but there’s something strange about her smile…

I was extremely honored to contribute to this year’s 13 Days Advent horror anthology. My story, “The Smile of the Mountain Demon,” is about a 21st century yamauba who entraps a YouTube influencer with Buddhist pretensions by using Airbnb and the language of New Age spirituality. The young man is looking for a scenic “spiritual retreat” to use as a source of content, and the yamauba is looking for a tasty snack.

This story is based on the medieval Adachigahara folktales in which a cunning yamauba entraps a less-than-devout Buddhist priest, as well as Minako Ohba’s beautiful and heartbreaking short story “The Smile of a Mountain Witch.”

If you’re interested, I’ve posted my story on AO3 (here), and you can download a free digital copy of the anthology via its page on Itchio here:

🌟 https://13daysadvent.itch.io/13days-demons-divinity

The illustration that accompanies my story was created by the brilliant dark fantasy artist Maxyvert, who posts strange and ethereal paintings on Tumblr (here), on Instagram (here), and on Twitter (here). This artist takes commissions for both digital and physical watercolor portraits (here), and it was an amazing experience to work with them.

Ms. Weaver’s Halloween Candy

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I’m proud to see my story “Ms. Weaver’s Halloween Candy” in the newest issue of Suburban Witchcraft.

“Ms. Weaver’s Halloween Candy” is a magical realist suburban gothic fantasy about love, creativity, and the (human) sacrifices necessary to survive as an outsider in academia. The piece begins as a Stephen King style story about a kid on a bike investigating a local legend in a small college town, but it gradually unravels into a veiled reworking of the Ariadne myth as the protagonist learns that the ambitions of her mother extend far beyond the confines of her family.

Suburban Witchcraft Magazine is a gorgeous digital repository of weird writing with a literary bent, and each issue is free to read online. You can check out the issue with my story here:

📚 https://suburbanwitchcraft.com/issue6

変な家: A Mysterious Story of Real Estate

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

変な家 (Henna ie) is a collection of short horror stories about houses with strange and uncanny floorplans.

The book has four chapters, each of which takes the form of a series of conversations between the narrator, their architect friend, and various people who have seen the houses in person. The first three chapters explore three different houses with extra rooms and mystery spaces, and these explorations are liberally illustrated with diagrams in which certain sections of the floorplan are highlighted and annotated to clarify the text.

Each of these first three stories is like a locked room mystery, except the mystery starts with a floorplan from which the narrator gradually builds a story about what sort of upsetting behavior that type of strange space might enable. In the final chapter, it’s revealed that these houses (and, presumably, many more like them) are all connected to an old and wealthy family with a terrible secret.   

I flew through this book and loved every page. The conversations are easy to follow; and, thanks to the diagrams, the spaces are easy to visualize. I enjoyed the slow build of the overarching mystery, and the revelations about the bizarre family at the center of the strangeness were beyond anything I expected.

It’s worth noting that the first story in this book was originally written as a script for a twenty-minute video on YouTube, which you can find with English subtitles (here). There’s also a manga adaptation. The first three chapters, which form a complete story, have been scanlated and are available to read (here). And finally, I’d like to share a more substantial review posted on one of my favorite book blogs (here). I’ve got my fingers crossed that this strange little book (and its sequel, which is rumored to be even better) will somehow find its way into English translation.

Zelda Horror Zine Preorders Open

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

I’m excited to share a preview of my story for Blood Moon Rising, a Legend of Zelda horror fanzine.

I wrote about the undead princess of Zelda II, as well as the decision that Impa is forced to make in dooming the princess of the original Legend of Zelda to the same fate. The two NES Zelda games are deeply dystopian, and I enjoyed going full Dark Souls while exploring the decay of their horrifically postapocalyptic settings.

Preorders of the zine are open until March 15, and all proceeds will go to Medical Aid for Palestinians. There’s some truly frightful work in this zine, so please check out their social media if you’re interested!

🩸 https://bloodmoonzine.carrd.co
🩸 https://bloodmoonzine.tumblr.com
🩸 https://twitter.com/BloodMoonZine
🩸 https://bloodmoonrising.bigcartel.com

They Only Come Out at Night

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Grog has noticed a number of peculiarities in Kakariko Village. Eerie lights flicker in the mountain valley after dark. Murky black water fills the old stone well that no one uses. Golden spiders spin their webs under the eaves of abandoned buildings. Little does Grog know that the legendary Sheikah of Kakariko still live, and that they are watching.

I’m one of the many children of the 1990s who read Stephen King way too young. I think I must have been ten years old when I first encountered the IT, and I read the novel like it was Harry Potter. I was too young to understand a lot of what was going on, but what I took away from the story was a lifelong fascination with haunted towns.

This is one of the many reasons why I love Kakariko Village in Ocarina of Time. Like Derry, Kakariko seems pleasant and idyllic in the daytime, but all manner of horrors creep through its sewers. Over the course of his journey through Hyrule, Link learns that Kakariko is a Disneyland-style stage setting that covers an underground labyrinth of corpse-choked dungeons. Impa opened the depopulated village to the refugees from the civil war that left Link an orphan, which means many of the people living in Kakariko have no idea what their homes are standing on top of.

I’m curious about the perspective of normal people who live in fantastic worlds, and I’m particularly interested in Grog, the odd young man who greets Link at the entrance to Kakariko after dark. His dialog is iconic: “People are disgusting. My own father and mother are disgusting. You must be disgusting, too!”

When Link returns to Kakariko after seven years, Grog is nowhere in sight. No longer a surly teenager who resents his parents, Grog has gotten himself caught up in some truly strange business. It was only when I played Ocarina of Time as an adult that I was able to put together all the pieces of Grog’s story, which ends with his death (or perhaps suicide) in the Lost Woods.

I think Grog’s unfortunate fate is representative of what happens to people in Hyrule who see too much or ask too many questions. He’s therefore a fun character to use to look at Kakariko from an outsider’s perspective while speculating on what may have happened to the Sheikah. “They Only Come Out at Night” uses some of my favorite Stephen King tropes to tell a story about a deeply haunted village, and I really enjoyed writing it.

If you’re interested in peering into the shadows, the story is on AO3 here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/51149224

I wrote this piece for The Eyes of Hyrule, a Legend of Zelda fanzine about the mysterious Sheikah clan. The zine will hold leftover sales on Etsy (here) during November, and you can check out more of the work appearing in the zine on Twitter (here) and on Tumblr (here).

For the story illustration, I was fortunate to be able to join forces with Frankiesbugs, a true master of cute and creepy art. You can follow their work on Instagram (here) and on Tumblr (here). I also recommend checking out their current video game project in development, which is on Steam (here) and on Instagram (here).

The Kumo Diary

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

A professor’s assistant at Tokyo Imperial University uncovers a curious manuscript whose author weaves an elegant tale of the twilight years of the Heian court. As she reads between the gossamer lines of the narrator’s account of a moonlit assignation, the quiet and unassuming scholar reflects on what happens in the shadows cast by civilization and enlightenment.

This story is a play on The Tale of Genji that I contributed to Carpe Noctem: Vampires Through the Ages, an anthology of historical fantasy fiction, illustrations, and comics about vampires in historically specific settings.

I wouldn’t say I’m a “fan” of The Tale of Genji in the same way that I’m a fan of the Legend of Zelda series, but I’ve read multiple translations of the book and enjoyed them all. When you engage with a story so deeply, it’s difficult not to come up with fun theories. I certainly wouldn’t be the first person in Japanese literary history to make this suggestion, but please consider: Why are the characters in The Tale of Genji always described as being so pale, and why are many of them only active between dusk and dawn?

“The Kumo Diary” is set in the Meiji period (1868-1912), Japan’s industrial era of “civilization and enlightenment.” As Japan attempted to establish itself as a nation that could compete with Western powers, its intelligentsia were motivated to create a unified “Japanese culture.” The Tale of Genji occupied an interesting place in this movement. On one hand, it could easily be regarded as the quintessential work of classical Japanese literature. On the other hand, its plot is largely concerned with the love affairs of a rotating cast of beautiful but neurotic women. Japanese scholars were therefore tasked with making The Tale of Genji a respectable classic to be held in esteem by a modern nation.

Scholars had been compiling and revising the chapters of The Tale of Genji for centuries, so it was necessary to create a “definitive” version of the text. While I was studying the history of The Tale of Genji, I couldn’t help but wonder about all the apocryphal chapters that never made it into the canonical text.

It took me ten years, but finally I wrote one of these apocryphal chapters myself. I embedded the so-called “Kumo Diary” into a frame story about a woman who finds the manuscript and decides not to share it with the stodgy male professor who employs her. It’s interesting to imagine there being a secret history of The Tale of Genji, and I really enjoyed writing the ending of my story. After all, who’s to say there aren’t demonic women pulling the strings from the shadows? If they do their work correctly, we’d never know they were there at all.

I’ve posted the story on AO3, and you can read it here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/50802628

The illustration is by the darkly brilliant Paristandard, whose creepy and creative illustrations can be found (on Twitter), (on Tumblr), and (on Instagram). It was an amazing experience to work with them, and I can’t recommend them enough for character designs, book covers, short comics, and other illustration projects. For this project in particular, the historical specificity of their costume design was uncanny, and I am in awe.

Terrible People

~ Kathryn ~ Leave a comment

Terrible People collects six short and eerie tales of dark fantasy, unfortunate encounters, and horrible life choices. The writing is accessible to teenagers and adults alike, and there’s a diversity of death, poison, and murder for everyone to enjoy.

Terrible People is my fifth zine of original short fiction, and it’s the first that feels like a real short story collection. Each of the stories in this zine was accepted for publication elsewhere; but unfortunately, every single one of these publications was cursed. To give an example, one online magazine closed their website and deleted their social media accounts less than a month after they accepted one of these stories. To give another example, a small press that published an anthology with another of the stories burned down, meaning that almost all copies of the book were destroyed.  

Perhaps I’m tempting fate by printing these stories on my own. Who can say?

If you’d like to order a (totally not cursed) copy of the zine, it’s on Etsy here:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1556837985/terrible-people-horror-fiction-zine

At 52 pages, the zine is relatively lengthy, which means I was able to give it a spine. This necessitated extra formatting work, and I feel like I’m slowly starting to understand the art of book design. What I’m thinking of doing in the near future is making a short chapbook from a single story and experimenting with the formatting until it looks more like an actual book. Terrible People is probably the last zine I’m going to make that has the style of formatting I’m using now, which I actually quite like.

I’ve been thinking that perhaps it might be nice to set up a micropress one day. For the time being, however, I’m content simply to continue writing these strange little stories while hoping that the curse haunting my attempts to publish them eventually dissipates.