Let the Hauntings Begin

               My love of horror and my love of literature grew up together and fed on each other like monstrous parasites caught in an unholy symbiotic relationship. Reading horror kept me entertained and made me want to be a writer. I learned more English reading H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe than I did from my teachers at school. The genre taught me many lessons, but the first one ended up being something that applies to all genres: great writing makes us feel things. When I was asked to edit [PANK ] Hauntings, I immediately said yes, mostly because it meant reading a lot of stories and essays and sharing those that made me feel things.

While many readers think horror is about feeling fear or disgust, the best dark literature may include those, but it is never limited to that. Horror fiction, which we can also call creepy, eerie, dark, weird, gory, and scary fiction, makes us feel empathy, curiosity, sadness, and, occasionally, hope. It also borrows under our skin and makes us feel uncomfortable and unsettled. When that happens, reading becomes a magical experience. That’s what you can expect in the weeks to come.

We received 700+ plus submission for [PANK] Hauntings. I’m humbled and thankful. I’m also worried about the massive amount of reading ahead, which I’m already doing (I was sending out an acceptance for a superb essay two minutes before writing this). These 700+ submissions show that horror is alive and thriving. What I’ve read so far proves to me that many writers see the genre for what it is: a mirror we hold up to society as well as the best entertainment. In the coming weeks you will read tales and essays that range from smart to creepy, from scary to sad, from funny to surreal, and from dark to luminous…and often mix many of those in the same narrative.

Humanity has worked really hard at developing the brain (I know many individuals currently in the news make us think otherwise, but trust me on this). Despite this development, our brain hasn’t outgrown fear, and that means we still have a visceral reaction when reading things that affect us.

“Some psychological theories propose that fear is a biologically basic emotion of all humans and many other animals, a view in line with most lay opinions as well,” states Ralph Adolphs in The Biology of Fear. “But several proposals beg to differ, arguing that emotions like fear should be replaced by a distinction between a fear and a panic system, or “survival circuits” related more broadly to adaptive behavior, or dimensional accounts such as reward and punishment. A variety of evidence supports a view also in line with common usage: there are types fear.” My hope is that we tickle all of them in the weeks to come.

Yeah, science is still looking into fear, and so are writers. The difference is scientists look at the reactions we have to controlled stimuli and writers…well, we hear a noise in the basement and go check it out, and we take readers with us. There’s always something in the basement…and in the cellar, in the woods, in every old church, at the bottom of the lake, in the cemetery, in that abandoned house at the end of the block, under the skin of that weird person whose eyes make your skin crawl, and in every cheap motel in the world. Hauntings are everywhere, and now they’re here. Buckle up, friends, because darkness is coming your way, and you will love every minute of it.

– Gabino Iglesias, October 2020, as the world burns