In the latest special issue of Horror Homeroom (this one on horror literature), I take up a little known folk horror novel from 1982, Bernard Taylor’s The Moorstone Sickness.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

The central ritual at the end of The Moorstone Sickness puts the novel in company with many folk horror narratives, not least in that the culminating sacrifice centers the reproduction of life. Folk horror, perhaps more than anything else, is about offering up sacrifices to ensure the fertility of land or people (or both) – take, for example, The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973), Harvest Home, Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn” (1977), Wake Wood (David Keating, 2009), and Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019).

The Moorstone Sickness takes up a particular form of fertility – in this case, the reproduction of one’s own life – a kind of quest for immortality. It thus stands in company with Adam Nevill’s The Ritual (2011) and Get Out, as well as the earlier folk horror film, The Witches, all of which culminate in some way with a ritual specifically involving the sacrifice of the young to protract the life of the elderly.

You can check out the entire essay here.