Dispatch 005
I probably spend too much time thinking about cults. Some might say I grew up in a cult—I attended the Southern Baptist church in Arkansas every Sunday morning, evening, and Wednesday night until I was 17 years old, even though I had become an atheist by the time I was 13. But you couldn’t really talk about that where I was from, not without losing social and economic support.
I grew up with that Old Time religion. My church tried to make it new by introducing drum kits and electric guitars, but it was still the fire and brimstone when Brother Steve, and later Brother Jeff, took the pulpit. I remember the gruesome details of the crucifixion being imparted to me when I was 8 years old. I remember how much it terrified me, and the guilt I felt that someone would go through all that…for me? In a way, it made me feel special too. Even after I became an atheist, sometimes I prayed. I had a scary life, a hard life, and you’ll talk to anyone and no one if you really need to talk.
Religious trauma is something I still grapple with. I think a lot of my feelings of self-worth, and so much of my fear, is still wrapped up in how ‘good’ I am perceived to be. It put a lot of pressure on me as a child and instilled in me a sense that, even when I’m doing my best, I’ll never really be a good person. There was only ever one really good person, and we hung him on the cross to die.
When I watch horror movies or read books that deal with the cult of religion, it taps into that child-part of me that lay awake at night thinking of the stigmata. Folk horror has its roots deeply embedded in religion; in the war between paganism and Christianity, Protestantism and Catholicism, the Abrahamic faiths, folk medicine and Western medicine. And that war is one that lives inside me every day, whether I want it to or not.
When I watch a horror film with these themes, it is the violence within myself made manifest onscreen. That is why it is perhaps my favorite subgenre, alone with found footage/found document.
Am I the only one?
Love,
Mae
Medusa Publishing Haus
The Book of Queer Saints Volume II has updated its submissions deadline! Writers who wish to submit can now do so from May 1-June 30, 2023. This change has also shifted our timeline for the project. Our official release date will now be October 31, 2023. You can check out the complete submissions guidelines and timeline updates here.
Submission Calls
Scissor Sisters: Sapphic Villains Anthology, an anthology from Brigids Gate Press edited by Rae Knowles and April Yates, will be accepting submissions May 1 - May 31. Scissor Sisters seeks to reclaim the trope of the predatory lesbian. Read more about their submission requirements here.
Why Didn’t You Just Leave, an anthology about people who stay in haunted houses, is set to be released by Cursed Morsels Press and edited by Nadia Bulkin and Julia Rios. They announced submission dates and guidelines today. The open call begins accepting submissions August 1, 2023. More information here.
Bury Your Gays: An Anthology of Tragic Queer Horror from Ghoulish Books, edited by Sofia Ajram, opens submissions on May 1. Submission guidelines can be found here.
The Pleasure in Pain, a collection of queer erotic horror edited by Roxie Voorhees, will accept submissions from June 1 to July 1. Submission guidelines found here.
Wake in Fright (1971) is a stunning and brutal portrait of toxic masculinity unleashed. Starring Gary Bond as a schoolteacher “who descends into personal moral degradation after finding himself stranded in a brutal, menacing town in outback Australia” and Donald Pleasance (Halloween) as his mentor in corruption. This is one of my more recent favorite watches, and not a film I will soon forget. Content warnings for violence, sexual assault, and real scenes of animal brutality.
Wake in Fright is free to stream on Kanopy.
V/H/S (2012), the first in the hit horror anthology film franchise, will be leaving Tubi in 5 days. Act quickly to view early short entries in the catalogues of some of the hottest horror writers and directors working today: Adam Wingard, Simon Barrett, Ti West, David Bruckner, and more.
Pictured: Alternative Japanese Poster for V/H/S
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Mae
Hello from another survivor of the Southern Baptist Church, the Alabama edition! Your writing on religious trauma really spoke to me--cults in horror are this great sidelong approach to addressing religious trauma, when tackling it headon is simply too nerve wracking/upsetting. Loved your thoughts here. :)