“I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.”

That’s how the narrator kicks off The Rocky Horror Picture Show, one of the most famous cult classic, audience participating, midnight screening movies in history. It’s also how I’d like to kick off my Pride Month post to talk about a topic that is getting a lot more attention over the last few years and something I find endlessly interesting: the intersectionality between the 2SLGBTQIA+ experience and horror media.

You may be surprised to learn that there is a long, colourful history of 2SLGBTQIA+ artists and creators popping up in and around some of our biggest horror classics. Mary Shelly, who wrote the original Frankenstein, is believed to have been bisexual. Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, is also suspected to have some queer-leaning tendencies (he wrote letters to Walt Whitman basically saying as much), and many speculate that watching what happened to friend and fellow writer Oscar Wilde kept Stoker from exploring any further (Wilde’s in the horror club too, he wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray). James Whale, who had a male life partner, directed some of the most classic of Universal monster movies like Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein and The Invisible Man. Anthony Perkins, the star of Psycho, spent pretty much all of his life closeted due to fears of being blacklisted from acting. These are just some examples, there are many more, from very early cinema pioneer F. W. Murnau to writer Clive Barker to Cassandra Peterson (AKA Mistress of Darkness Elvira) to showrunner Bryan Fuller, etc. etc.