While I refuse to call it Spooky Season, this time of year does have me yearning for stories about witches and mountains, full moons, haunted houses and headless horsemen. Unlike tales of bodysnatching aliens or hellraising demons, the charm of folk horror is that it sidles up to the almost believable. Our suspension of disbelief is extended further than usual with historic settings, real locations and the universal terror of isolation and uncontrolled nature. Well-written folk horror bridges the gap between myth and modernity with eerie familiarity: It could, or did, happen here. One of the basic tenets of living in a folk-horror world is to never visit a remote community—a remote Scandinavian village or an island off the coast of Britain—where the locals worship old gods and welcome visitors with horrific rites.

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