Cailynn's Blog

This Frightful Reads Friday, we descend into the lyrical, unsettling depths of Our Wives Under the Sea — a queer horror tale of love, loss, and transformation from the ocean's dark heart.

From coins on the eyes to post-mortem photography, mourning the dead has never been simple — or safe from the eerie. Dive into a chilling history of rituals that blur the line between remembrance and the supernatural.

This week, on Frightful Reads Friday, we return home — but not to comfort. T. Kingfisher’s A House With Good Bones is Southern Gothic horror with teeth, trauma, and something watching from the garden.

From crossroads to graveyards, some soil holds more than bones. In folklore, the ground is sacred, haunted, and powerful — a place where memory, magic, and mourning intersect. In this post, we dig deep into global beliefs around cursed land, grave dirt in witchcraft, and ghost-soaked soil that never forgets. Dig too deep, and it starts to whisper.

In The Family Plot, Cherie Priest weaves Southern Gothic horror with emotional depth, inviting readers into a decaying mansion where every creaking floorboard holds a secret. With richly drawn characters, themes of grief and memory, and ghosts that whisper rather than wail, this story lingers like dust in a sunbeam — haunting, quiet, and unforgettable. If you like your horror slow-burning and soaked in sorrow, this one belongs on your shelf.

Buried alive—a fear as old as the grave itself. From Roman executions to Victorian safety coffins, history is filled with chilling attempts to avoid premature burial. Real cases like Alice Blunden and Eleanor Markham blurred the line between life and death, while Edgar Allan Poe turned that dread into literary terror. This post explores the psychology, history, and mythology behind one of humanity’s most claustrophobic nightmares.

Alix E. Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches is a gothic fantasy woven with spells, suffrage, and the strength of sisterhood. In this review, we explore how the novel captures both the magic of resistance and the haunting echoes of historical witch trials. Like The Girl Who Knew The Medicine, it asks: what happens when women’s power — whether sacred or chosen — becomes a matter of survival?

In The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling transforms marriage into a gothic nightmare of secrets, rituals, and forbidden knowledge. This review explores why the novel lingers long after the last page, from its occult imagery to its suffocating dread — and how it echoes the same fears that inspired The Girl Who Knew The Medicine. Would you step into Lindridge Hall, or run before the door closed?

Explore witch trial rituals from Salem to Scotland — how fear shaped accusations and still haunts horror fiction today.

The Year of the Witching review explores Alexis Henderson’s haunting gothic horror about prophecy, forbidden woods, and a young woman caught between faith and forbidden power. Immanuelle Moore is raised in a puritanical community, but the Darkwood calls her toward secrets that could unravel everything. Like The Girl Who Knew The Medicine, Henderson’s novel asks how societies decide who wields power — and whether it’s a sacred ancestral calling or a destructive curse.

Why is 13 the witch’s number in Europe, but meaningless in African traditions? In Europe, witches were bound by superstition and scapegoating. In Nguni cultures, they were bound by intent and the will of the ancestors. This blog explores how fear, malice, and storytelling shaped the figure of the witch — and how The Girl Who Knew The Medicine reimagines that legacy in a modern South African setting.

This House of Hunger review dives into Alexis Henderson’s lush gothic horror about bloodmaids, aristocratic estates, and power disguised as protection. Marion enters the Countess’s household seeking safety — but finds herself consumed by rituals that blur the line between devotion and destruction. We’ll explore the novel’s themes, its resonance with African ritual fears, and why its corrupted rituals reminded me of The Girl Who Knew The Medicine.

The witch is never just one figure. In 17th-century Europe, she was a scapegoat, accused of consorting with the devil. In Nguni traditions, the umthakathi was feared as a sorcerer who used ukuthakatha to harm. Yet, alongside them were cunning women, white witches, inyangas, and sangomas — healers who balanced fear with reverence. This blog explores the fragile line between healer and heretic, accusation and intent, and how The Girl Who Knew The Medicine was born from that hau

Some friendships last forever. Others go straight to hell. In Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism, a 1980s coming-of-age story collides with a chilling tale of possession. Packed with retro nostalgia, dark humour, and genuine scares, this novel proves that friendship might just be the most powerful exorcism of all.

Every haunted object has a story — and the Warrens kept the most dangerous ones locked away. Hidden inside Ed and Lorraine Warren’s Connecticut home, the Occult Museum was a vault of nightmares — from the infamous Annabelle doll to cursed mirrors and satanic idols. Was it truly a shield against evil, or a theatrical display of fear?

How do you fight the voice… when it’s coming from inside you? In Sara Gran’s Come Closer, a woman’s life begins to fracture under the weight of lost time, strange noises, and an insistent inner voice. Is she possessed by a demon named Naamah — or is she slowly losing her mind? This short, sharp possession/psychological horror novel pulls you in close and refuses to let go.

For decades, the Warrens were the most famous paranormal investigators in the world — revered by some as protectors against the supernatural, dismissed by others as master storytellers. From the Amityville Horror to the Annabelle doll, their cases shaped the way we imagine hauntings today. But were they uncovering the truth… or crafting it?

Some houses keep their secrets. Hundreds Hall keeps its ghosts close. In Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger, post-war England’s decay seeps into the bones of a crumbling country estate — and into the minds of its inhabitants. Called to Hundreds Hall on a routine visit, Dr. Faraday becomes entangled with the Ayres family as strange, unsettling events begin to consume the household. Is the house truly haunted, or is something far darker at play within?

Exorcisms are among the most mysterious and unsettling rituals in the Catholic Church — a battleground between faith, fear, and the limits of human belief. From Vatican rules and documented cases to the sceptical lens of psychology, this post explores how the Church confronts what it deems demonic possession. But are these battles truly against something inhuman, or do they take place within the human mind?

Some houses shelter you. Others swallow you whole. In The Good House, Tananarive Due takes the haunted house story to a new depth — blending supernatural horror with family legacy, Haitian magic, and the scars of grief. When Angela Toussaint returns to her grandmother’s home after tragedy, she discovers the Good House isn’t done with her… and what lurks inside isn’t just after the property, but her soul.