The October Film Haunt

The October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt

MICHAEL Wehunt has been a must-read for me ever since his short fiction collection, Greener Pastures, was released in 2016. His first novel, The October Film Haunt, is a testimonial to the power of horror movies, and the many reasons one might be drawn toward art that peers into the dark and unknown.

When we begin, the trio of horror film obsessives for which the book is named is already disbanded: their practice of camping (in October) at filming locations for horror films came to an abrupt end after a trip to a graveyard from the (fictional) film Proof of Demons — an opaque and experimental work which may actually depict supernatural activity, created by a reclusive director.

Ten years later, ostracized Haunt member Jorie Stroud lives a quiet, rural life in Vermont with her son after her hyperlinking writing about the Proof of Demons "haunt" left her as a snuffed-out rising star with a dead girl on her conscience. One of her fellow Haunt members is estranged, and the other's dead.

Then Jorie gets a VHS cassette in the mail — the first of many signs that Proof of Demons, and the cult obsessed with its maker, aren't done with her yet.

A layered, meta and gut-wrenching take on horror fiction and its cultural impact, The October Film Haunt would fall flat out of the gate if the fake film it's built around didn't seem that good. But Wehunt portrays Proof of Demons with such careful, unsettling language that the bits of it we get make clear why the story's cast can't help but stare into its cinematic abyss.

— Darren Ridgley