By Kalvin Valdillez, Tulalip News
After a long and eventful summer, it is now officially spooky season. With Halloween right around the corner, we wanted to highlight some Indigenous horror books to help you get in the spirit of the season of ghosts, slashers, and monsters.
We compiled a list of six spine-chilling novels that are written by Native authors who tackle serious subject matter that affects our people, like generational trauma, the MMIWP epidemic, alcohol and substance abuse, and the horrors of early settlement, while simultaneously blending in traditional stories and supernatural legends that have been passed down generation after generation.
Below you will find a brief summary of each of these books, along with some frightening, yet insightful, quotes that are sure to spark your interest. Happy reading!
Never Whistle At Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology
By Shane Hawk
Fair warning, some of the stories in this book will stick with you for several days and are downright scary. We’re talking ghosts, monsters, curses, hauntings, sinister revenge plots. But of course, you were probably able to surmise that on your own from the title, as the message to Never Whistle at Night is embedded into the minds of Indigenous youth, adults, and elders all across the nation.
In this book, we are introduced to nearly thirty original stories by well-known Indigenous authors like Stephen Graham Jones, Morgan Talty, Kelli Jo Ford, Nick Medina, Norris Black, Waubgeshig Rice, and many, many more.
“Many Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home.”
Bad Cree
By Jessica Johns
A little bit supernatural horror. A little bit mystery. Extremely thrilling from beginning to end. Bad Cree follows a grief-stricken young woman, Mackenzie, who moved to Vancouver B.C. from her reservation in Alberta for a new start. However, upon getting acclimated to the city life, she begins having eerie encounters with crows and a number of realistic nightmares that center around an incident from her past.
Taking these as signs to return home, Mackenzie finds comfort and strength in family, while also repairing broken bonds along the way. But the closer she grows to her sisters, mom, and aunties, her nightmares seem to intensify, and they keep calling her back to that ill-fated night. There is plenty of rez humor in this page-turner and author Jessica Johns does an excellent job in incorporating her tribe’s culture, traditions, and stories into her work.
“An Indian dying is like a balsam fir getting chopped down. Trees for mile and miles feel the pain under the soil. They send their reserve nutrients through the root network to the stump, which closes over with bark like a scab. Eventually, the stump turns into a nursery, a home for new growth, for something else to take shape. This isn’t the same as healing or being reborn, but it’s the closest we’ll ever get.”
White Horse
By Erika T. Wurth
There was a well-deserved hype about White Horse when it was released in 2022. This book was a New York Times Editor’s Pick, a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, and it also received a Goodreads Choice Award for Reader’s Favorite Horror. The novel follows Kari James, an urban Native living the city life in Denver. When Kari receives a family heirloom from her cousin, a bracelet that was once owned by her late mother, she quickly realizes that it is seemingly haunted when it begins to bring Kari visions of her mom when she was younger.
The events that follow help unravel the mystery around her mother’s sudden disappearance, but there is something more menacing in the works as an evil entity makes it’s presence known to Kari along the journey.
“I am healed. But I don’t realize that healing requires scars, and I am still rough beneath them, I still have pain locked behind that ropy skin. And there is weakness there, there is vulnerability, a thing I have always been terrified of. A thing that has festered. A thing that can take me down into the dark. And feed. And feed.”
Night of the Living Rez
By Morgan Talty
This collection of short stories all take place in the state of Maine, on the Penobscot Indian Reservation. Featuring twelve Indigenous horror stories in total, Morgan masterfully weaves these tales together while shedding some light several issues that Native people experience in their lifetime. This includes drug use, generational trauma and violence, and numerous other challenges that one faces growing up on a reservation.
Each story is dark but also a bit relatable if you are a product of the rez. And if you aren’t, Morgan does a fantastic job at bringing attention to these issues while incorporating some humorous Indigenous dialogue along the way. Within these atmospheric stories, he showcases the strength of our families and tribal communities. Clocking in at just under 300 pages, this book is a perfect weekend read.
“I wonder if ‘How’d we get here?’ is the wrong question. Maybe the right question is ‘How do we get out of here?’ Maybe that’s the only question that matters.”
The Whistler
By Nick Medina
This novel is hot off the press! Officially released on September 16, The Whistler is highly anticipated amongst fans of Native Author, Nick Medina who brought us modern Indigenous horror classics like Sisters of the Lost Nation and Indian Burial Ground. Full disclosure, we have yet to check this one out, but we cannot wait to dive in!
According to the book jacket summary, this story follows an Indigenous ghost hunter who is forced to move back to the reservation, in the care of his grandparents, after a traumatic accident that left him quadriplegic. He then starts to notice a demonic figure in the distance that appears to be getting closer to him with each passing night. He begins to confront his past and the events that led to his accident, realizing it all could be traced back to when he whistled at night.
“Never whistle at night,” he said. “Don’t you know that it attracts bad things? Bad spirts. Evil that attaches itself to you.”
“An Indian superstition?” she asked…
“No,” he said. “A fact.”
Buffalo Hunter Hunter
By Stephen Graham Jones
Now, although we absolutely recommend checking out all of these reads this fall, if you only have time for one, make sure it is Buffalo Hunter Hunter. This supernatural historical fiction is heralded as New York Times Bestseller Stephen Graham Jones’ best work to date. And that says a lot considering he has nothing but bangers under his belt such as The Only Good Indians, The Indian Lake Triology, and Mapping the Interior. This book is sure to check all the boxes for a good Halloween-time read. Vampires? Check. Revenge against early colonizers? Check. Gruesome flashbacks? Check.
This story alternates between timelines, spanning 100 years, and follows the trials and tribulations of a mysterious character named Good Stab as he recounts his life story to a Lutheran pastor. If you have some Audible credits, you are definitely going to want to hear this haunting tale on audiobook! Just make sure that you ‘listen with a good heart’.
“What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I’m the worst dream America ever had.”
“You don’t understand,” I said pleadingly as if to a higher power, longing to use my hands to gesture with, to make him see, to get him to understand that these were different times, with a different breed of men——the kind necessary to forge a new land, a better country, one that made use of its resources rather than letting them lie fallow.
“I understand,” he said, however. “You wanted to make us cry. And so, you did. You wanted our land, so you took it. You wanted us out of the way, so you killed us in our lodges. Is there more to it, Three-Persons?”