I liked The Twisted Ones quite a bit, but I think the version of this book I liked the most was the one where I had absolutely no idea what was waiting in the woods. That uncertainty is where T. Kingfisher is at her best. A strange journal. Unsettling figures standing among the trees. A…
SBP Podcast Episode 24: The Skunk Ape – Bigfoot in the Swamp
Florida is already a place where the strange can feel completely believable. Alligators disappear beneath black water. Panthers move through forests without most people ever seeing them. Wild monkeys live in parts of the state. Burmese pythons have established themselves in the Everglades. And once you get far enough into places like Big Cypress, the…
13 Southern Horror Book You Need to Read This Spooky Season
The South has always been good at telling ghost stories. Maybe it is the landscape. Miles of pine forest where the road disappears around the next bend. Swamps that seem to swallow everything around them. Old houses sitting quietly beneath live oaks. Small towns where everybody knows everybody—and where everybody seems to know at least…
Southern Reads: The Elementals
There are plenty of horror novels that try to make you afraid of the dark. The Elementals does something much more interesting: it makes broad daylight feel dangerous. Michael McDowell’s 1981 Southern Gothic novel takes the things that should feel familiar and almost comforting about a summer on the Gulf Coast—the beach, the heat, old…
The Swamp Has a Soul: The Strange History of Marvel’s Man-Thing
There are places in the South where you do not need much imagination to believe that something might be watching you. The Florida Everglades certainly qualify. It is a landscape of sawgrass and cypress, black water and mangroves, alligators disappearing beneath the surface and narrow trails vanishing into places that look almost untouched by time….
SBP Podcast Episode 23: Marie Laveau: The Voodoo Queen
Few people in Southern history have become as inseparable from a city as Marie Laveau is from New Orleans. She was real—a free woman of color born in New Orleans in 1801 who became one of the most famous figures associated with New Orleans Voudou. She was also a practicing Catholic, a mother, a healer,…
SCarowinds 2026: What’s New, What’s Back, and What to Know Before You Go
I go to SCarowinds pretty much every year, and I was back at Carowinds for opening weekend in 2026. One of the things I enjoy about returning is seeing what has changed. Over the past couple of seasons, the event has felt increasingly ambitious, and this year gives regulars quite a bit to explore: a…
Southern Reads: Wolf Worm
I enjoyed Wolf Worm, but I’m not going to pretend it didn’t test my patience. There were several points while I was reading it — especially when I looked down and realized I was somewhere around page 170 — when I found myself thinking, all right, we need to get going here. Normally, that’s about…
SBP Podcast Episode 22: The Pigeon Forge Murder: The Death of Ann Robertson Jones
Pigeon Forge, Tennessee is one of the South’s most familiar family vacation towns. Cabins, pancake houses, souvenir shops, roadside attractions, Dollywood, and the Smoky Mountains have made it a place generations of families know well. But in July of 1987, that familiar image was shattered. Ann Robertson Jones, a 42-year-old mother and local business owner,…
The Aviary: Great Blue Heron
There are few birds in the South more striking than a Great Blue Heron. Tall, patient, and almost prehistoric in appearance, the Great Blue Heron is the kind of bird that can make an ordinary creek, marsh, or pond feel suddenly wild. One moment the water looks quiet and still, and the next there it…