Dear Living Dark Readers,
Before publishing my final regular post here at The Living Dark—which will come tomorrow—I want to share something that feels especially suited to this publication and the interests that I and we have pursued here.
My friend and longtime colleague JF Martel is teaching a six-week online course at Weirdosphere beginning Thursday, September 17:
The Awful Truth: The Real Revealed in the Art of Horror.
Many of you will know JF through Weird Studies, the popular podcast he co-founded and co-hosts with Phil Ford, or through his brilliant book Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice. I have twice joined him and Phil on the podcast, and in fall 2024 they invited me to teach Writing at the Wellspring at Weirdosphere.
JF’s new course focuses on a question that’s close to the heart of my own writing: What does horror reveal about reality? What if the encounter with the monster exposes something about the world itself, and about the assumptions that ordinarily keep us feeling at home in it?
One passage from the course description especially caught my attention:
Why does a culture that has stopped believing in spirits insist on paying to be frightened by them, and why does that fright, at some level, feel more like being reminded of something than being told something new?
That sense of recognition, of encountering something we somehow already knew, has been a central fascination of mine for decades. JF tells me he’ll be working one of my stories into the course, too. I’m delighted to know it will be part of the conversation.
He has also just published a new essay on the metaphysics of horror fiction and cinema, offering a preview of the ideas that he will further develop in the course.
The course includes six weekly 90-minute lectures, six discussion sessions, and an ongoing online conversation. Lectures meet Thursdays at 5 p.m. Pacific / 8 p.m. Eastern. Lectures and discussions are recorded, with video and audio remaining available to registered students afterward.
If the intersections of horror, art, philosophy, and spiritual experience have drawn you to The Living Dark or to my other writing, I think you’ll find much to interest you in JF’s course. I’m happy to point you toward his work as this particular chapter of my own draws to a close.
Read the full course description and enroll at Weirdosphere.
Warm regards,
