‘In folk horror, the soil beneath our feet is seismically unstable’, writes Hollie Starling in her introduction to Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror. What a prescient collection this is, and what a privilege to be asked to review it.
When I stop to consider the state of our world – physically, politically, socially – it feels as though everything is slipping, crashing, burning. The only hope we have is each other and a conviction that every person has equal worth. We are fundamentally f*cked as soon as we decide otherwise. This anthology explores the ‘deep and murky well’ of the layers that make up the experience of inequality, through the febrile medium of folk horror. The magic of the book lies in its exploration of the ‘desperate acts and dark pacts’ that grinding poverty can lead to, but, crucially, it’s the result, the ‘unleashing of a glorious flex of collective power’, that captivates the reader.
Ten pieces make up this collection, including Starling’s own Yellowbelly, a supremely satisfying story that gives modern misogyny the Black Mirror treatment. Both Yellowbelly and I Am Hagstone by Salena Godden are perfect examples of the way that this book subverts expectations. Leave your assumptions about folk horror to one side, people. Make way for speculative sex bots and urban witchcraft, wreaking vengeance. I’m here for it. I’m here for it with bells (that toll at midnight for the blood of my enemies) on.
Photo by Amy Stone
Carole by Emma Glass and The Hanging Stones by Jenn Ashworth both floored me with particular personal resonance and will stay with me long after this review is filed. And The Keepers by Natasha Carthew could surely be expanded into a novel or an entire series that I would devour. I love an unlikeable character, particularly when their trajectory turns out to be less straightforward than it first appears, as is the case in The Ossuary by A. K. Blakemore. Meanwhile, The Spit in Your Mouth and the Bile in Your Stomach by Mark Stafford stands out as a graphic comic fairy tale that warns of the danger of selling your soul to social media. And Tom Benn’s It Fair Give Me the Spikes left me hungry for more hauntology – a sister genre to folk horror that adds a tantalising spectral dimension to this collection.
Two of the stories in Bog People are the winning entries of a competition set up by Starling for unpublished working-class writers. Perpetual Stew by Daniel Draper and Eldritch by Mark Colbourne thoroughly deserve their place in this anthology – both very different in subject matter and style but also darkly funny and brilliantly written. I love this book for featuring unpublished authors. I may be published, but I don’t have an agent and, after many years in the soul-destroying cycle of submissions, opportunities like this mean so much for emerging voices. The focus of this anthology is representing the unrepresented, of course, but it’s vanishingly rare to find unpublished authors featuring in a book from one of ‘the big five’ publishing houses. Bravo, Starling.
‘When a person’s life chances are sealed by an accident of birth it’s no coincidence that it is the pitchfork that has become the most familiar totem of the angry mob,’ writes Starling. That’s the power of folk horror and, in particular, this collection from working-class writers. The blurb says that Bog People ‘offers up a high-born sacrifice on a sea of pitchforks’. Reading this book imbues an invigorating sense of rebellion, of revolution fuelled by the fire of molten mother nature herself. Oligarchs and overlords, she’s sick of your shit, and she’s coming for you.
Main image by Amy Stone
Bog People: A Working-Class Anthology of Folk Horror edited by Hollie Starling will be published by Chatto & Windus on October 16, 2025 and is available to pre-order here.
