The Terror of the Text ― Essays on Books, Scrolls and Manuscripts in Horror Films

From Faust (1926) to The Babadook (2014), books have been featured in horror films as warnings, gateways, prisons and manifestations of the monstrous. Ancient grimoires such as the Necronomicon serve as timeless vessels of knowledge beyond human comprehension, while runes, summoning diaries, and spell books offer their readers access to the powers of the supernatural—but at what cost?? This collection of new essays examines nearly a century of genre horror in which on-screen texts drive and shape their narratives, sometimes unnoticed. The contributors explore familiar American films like The Night of the Demon (1957), The Evil Dead (1981), The Prophecy (1995) and It Follows (2014), as well as such international films as Eric Valette’s Malefique (2002), Paco Cabeza’s The Appeared (2007) and Lucio Fulci’s cult classic The Beyond (1981).

Cynthia J. Miller, a cultural anthropologist focussing on popular culture and visual media, teaches in the Institute for Liberal Arts at Emerson College. She is the editor or coeditor of a dozen scholarly volumes, many of which explore the horror genre. A. Bowdoin Van Riper is a historian specializing in depictions of science and technology in popular culture. He is the reference librarian at the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, and is the author or editor of a wide range of volumes, ranging from science to science fiction to horror.