For the keen-eyed, you may have noticed a trend when it comes to my reading recommendations. I am a huge lover of (most things) horror, and Spooky Season (aka October) manages to bypass my usual hatred of anything distinctly Not Summer. But while vampires and ghosts and werewolves (oh my!) are all well and good, there’s one aspect of the horror genre that often gets overlooked when the leaves start changing color and the pumpkins come out.
Have you ever wondered about what things lie just beyond the outer rim of our collective knowledge, in the places we’ve never explored? Have you ever wondered if the things that live there ever wonder about us? Have you ever wondered if they’re interested in looking for us and messing around in our insignificant affairs? Cue my favorite kind of chilling scare: existential terror, eldritch and cosmic horror flavored. It basically boils down to this thing is here, you will never be able to know why it does what it does, be worried about it. Eldritch and cosmic horror finds its roots in the unknowable, the fathomless, and the incomprehensible, but oddly enough, it’s the type of horror that really makes you think and, at least in my opinion, is the most human and introspective. Horror, most of the time, is something that is grounded in metaphor (you only need to look at the close connection the LGBTQ+ community assigns to werewolves to get a sense of it) and can often reveal the things we’d rather not talk about. But when you’re feeling small and so very out of your depth, you can really get into the meaty truths of being a person and the strange world we live in. Plus, fear in media and literature has always been an exercise in empathy. Things won’t be scary unless you can actually feel for the character and their story.
Granted, eldritch and cosmic horror isn’t without faults being tied so closely to the works of H.P. Lovecraft (you can read up on it in this great CBC interview that briefly covers the history of the genre and how his works are being referenced in the current day). Still, there are tons of new voices changing and adding to the mythos that make it a welcoming (but still a very scary) place for all. If you want to read up on your modern eldritch and cosmic horror history, check out Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, which had a large hand in its resurgence, along with some other nods to it from the film world including Alien, Watchmen, and more.
I promise all my rambling has a point. There’s one reason I have been eagerly awaiting this October. Besides horror, my other great love is tabletop RPGs (roleplaying games). Of course, there’s the ever-popular Call of Cthulu, but with its roots so heavily tied into Lovecraft’s original creations, I’ve always been wary of picking it up. That’s when I stumbled upon (or more like got directly smacked in the face with how much I’ve been searching something like this out) the new(ish) steampunk-based cosmic horror RPG Candela Obscura (which I’ve put in a request for our shelves here). With Spooky Season fast approaching, it’s the perfect time to grab some pencils, some dice, and a brand-new character sheet and get to playing.
Candela Obscura’s world doesn’t hold back against you or your party as you travel into the depths of the ruins of an old, shattered city (or perhaps those depths start to come to you). You play as a citizen of Newfaire, a small coastal town settled in a valley of the Fairelands, recently ravaged by war and sat on top of Oldfaire, a city destroyed by magic and hubris in the not-so-distant past. Magic or “Bleed”, in the world of Candela Obscura, is always a bad thing, far too powerful and dangerous to be trifled with. Its origins are unknown, but somehow always seems to sprout from the lost parts of Oldfaire. You and your friends explore the Fairelands as paranormal investigators, searching for and stamping out the Bleed that seeps into Newfaire, but whether you come back in one piece is up to the dice. Depending on your fortune, your travels through the world of Candela Obscura can leave your character with scars of your choosing, irrevocably changing them physically and mentally. I’m excited to give the game a whirl, but if I’ve piqued your interest and you want to take a look at it before you hit the table, you can check out some play sessions on YouTube.
In the meantime, while I eagerly anticipate rolling some Spooky Dice in Spooky Season, I thought I could share some of my other favorite cosmic horror picks to get me ready for game time and for you to get ready for October.
For dipping your toes:
If you’re mostly new to the realm of eldritch horror, Death Stranding has enough of the strange, otherworldly elements to give you a taste. Taking place after an apocalyptic event that shattered any cross-country communication and mysteriously connected the land of the living to the dead, you play as Sam Bridges, tasked with reconnecting all the lost points in America. Although the mechanics have been dunked on by the internet for being a walking simulator (the kind of game that is literally what it says on the tin), nothing gets your heart pounding faster than a fuzzy memory of something that once was trying to grab at you while you can only go approximately three kilometers per hour (and it’s only slightly softened by the fact you’re traversing mountains to deliver a pizza).
But if you’re in the mood for another walking simulator that doesn’t have you go from coast to coast and is far more genre-heavy, I highly recommend Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. You explore an empty, idyllic English countryside hours after a catastrophe whose origins unravel around you as you play, set to the tune of operatic hymns. Its scares are quiet and subtle with nary a jump scare or tentacle monster in sight, and they become more terrifying the more you wander and are left to question and think about what you’re seeing. I found this game years ago and it’s still got its claws in me.
For getting in on the action:
I don’t think there’s any video game developer as synonymous with the cosmic horror genre as Remedy Entertainment. I don’t think I could have left out either Control or Alan Wake from my picks without regrets either. The former is more action than horror but full of the mindboggling oddities and strangeness that’s at the heart of the genre. You play as Jesse Faden who has come to the Oldest House, headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, in search of her kidnapped brother. But little does she know that something has escaped from the artifacts and cursed things kept in the Oldest House and it has taken over the entire building, its staff included. Cue epic eldritch-powered fights in the middle of an abandoned office cafeteria. Who wouldn’t want to wield the power of the Great Unknown to fling coffee cups across the room?
While Control leans into the action, the first installment of Alan Wake is the middle ground between action and horror while its sequel pushes all the way into the realm of survival horror games. Both stories follow our titular character (whose initials “A. Wake” seem a little suspicious when you’re familiar with cosmic horror mythology), a writer who has come to the Pacific Northwest town of Bright Falls in search of his missing wife (there might be a pattern here, but I’m not going to say anything). But when he discovers a book he has had no memory of ever writing and the stories on the page begin to come to life, Alan must confront the darkness seeping out of his words and his fracturing psyche, armed only with a flashlight and a single weapon. My spooky senses are happy tingling.
For a slow burn:
For those who prefer their eldritch horror read rather than played, we’re finally getting into the (comic) book recommendations. While this would be the perfect spot to highlight Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, I’m going to give it to James Tynion’s The Nice House on the Lake. I’m a huge fan of his Something Is Killing the Children series and though this pick is fully biased I am the captain of this spooky ship. I came across The Nice House as I was scrolling through our catalog in a bout of lazy afternoon curiosity and boredom, and though I have yet to finish it, the story Tynion tells is gripping from even the first few pages. It’s almost instantly apparent that the ensemble cast of The Nice House has been gathered by their mysterious and enigmatic friend Walter for a particular reason, and it isn’t to enjoy a nice summer vacation away from the stressors of the COVID-19 pandemic in a bougie lake house that is far too fancy for any of them. Tynion is great at turning the knife in his plots and the unsettling atmosphere is complimented by Álvaro Martínez Bueno’s semi-realistic, boldly colored art style. Knowing me, I won’t be able to stop myself from devouring the rest of this read.
For diving right in, headfirst:
I’ll be honest, it isn’t H.P. Lovecraft’s name that’s the first to come to my mind when I think of cosmic horror. It’s Junji Ito. Since 1987, Ito has been scaring readers with his terrifying stories and grotesque illustrations. If you’re not into body horror (which has been getting its own recent resurgence with films like The Substance) you might be better off reading the Wikipedia summaries of Ito’s works, but for those intrepid readers with iron stomachs, there’s so much to enjoy in his tale-spinning. He’s a master at taking deep seated human fears and stretching them as far as they can go until they’re monstrous and unrecognizable. There’s Remina, which tells the story of scientists who discover a new planet only to realize that while they watch and study it, it’s watching and studying them, rapidly (and hungrily) making its way to Earth. There’s No Longer Human, Ito’s take on the acclaimed posthumous semi-autographical novel by Osamu Dazai. Then there’s my personal favorite: The Enigma of Amigara Fault, where mysterious, perfectly people-shaped fissures begin opening up in Amigara mountain. Unfortunately, it’s a short story that comes at the back of one of my least favorite Ito works, but my advice to you is to pick up Gyo and just skip to the end to read it. Then you can check out this YouTube video that I come back to every so often to see what makes Ito’s use of metaphor so masterful.
There are so many other recommendations I want to give, from Mike Flanagan’s Oculus (I couldn’t end a horror-focused post without mentioning my favorite director) to Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country, but if I allowed myself to keep going we’d be here all day (or until some eldritch monstrosity happened to look our way). I’ll leave things here because I need to start preparing my character sheet for my Spooky Dice rolling session, so I’ll wish you all a very scary Halloween season. Until next time!