Hendrix has a particular talent for taking seemingly ridiculous horror concepts and turning them into stories that are funny, unsettling, surprisingly emotional, and occasionally downright terrifying. How to Sell a Haunted House is a great example of that ability. On the surface, this is a story about two estranged siblings dealing with the death of…
SBP Podcast Episode 25: The Vampire Clan Murders – Rod Ferrell aka Vesago
In the fall of 1996, a sixteen-year-old boy in Murray, Kentucky, was telling people he was a vampire. Not someone who enjoyed vampire movies or dressed like Dracula for Halloween. Rod Ferrell claimed to be a centuries-old vampire named Vesago, and he had surrounded himself with a group of teenagers who participated in blood-drinking rituals,…
Southern Reads: The Twisted Ones
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…