Mushroom Horror

Lately, I’ve been noticing a rising trend in fungal-themed horror novels, or what some corners of the internet are starting to dub “sporror.” (Get it? Like spores?) Mushrooms and their kin have many characteristics that lend themselves quite well to horror. For one thing, there’s still so much that we don’t know about these organisms—only in the last decade or so have we started to understand the vast mycelium networks that exist unseen beneath the soil, linking miles of forest and providing all sorts of important contributions to the ecosystem. On top of that, mushrooms, molds, and yeasts are strange, almost alien in the way that they defy categorization. They have elements of both plant and animal, and yet are neither. They are also associated with dark, damp, underground spaces and are noted for their role in decomposition. Through the recreational use of psychedelic mushrooms, these organisms have also been linked with the fantastical and surreal, with hallucinatory visions and altered states of mind. There are many poisonous mushrooms that can be fatal to humans, and some of them look deceptively similar to their less toxic brethren. Then there are the parasitic fungi, which can infect and feed off of plants, animals, insects, and humans in often gruesome ways. With so many potentially horrific directions to go in, I think we will only continue to see even more mushroom horror in the future. Below is just a sampling of works that feature frightening fungi:

The Whisperer in Darkness by H. P. Lovecraft

Though I only started to truly pay attention to the category of mushroom horror in recent years, the trend certainly isn’t brand new. H. P. Lovecraft leaned into the “alien” nature of fungus when imagining a race of otherworldly beings called the Mi-go, which feature in his 1931 novella The Whisperer in Darkness. These extraterrestrials from the planet Yuggoth are described repeatedly as “fungoid,” unimaginably different from the earthly humans in the story who struggle to comprehend them. While not true fungi—in fact, they are composed of some sort of completely alien matter, down to the vibration of the electrons—they thrive in darkness, living in windowless structures on a cold, dark planet at the edge of our solar system. They seem to worship eldritch deities, such as Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, and Shub-Niggurath.The story’s horror comes when a contingent of these beings on Earth convince the narrator’s friend to have his brain surgically removed from his body so that he can travel across space to their home planet.

Fungi, edited by Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia 

Though Silvia Moreno-Garcia is now one of the first names to come to mind when discussing mushroom-based horror, thanks to her 2020 breakout novel Mexican Gothic (which I’ll discuss next), she’s been promoting this niche category for at least a decade. In 2012, Moreno-Garcia’s micro-press, Innsmouth Free Press, published a whole anthology of fungal horror stories, which she co-edited with Orrin Grey. The anthology brings together stories by big names in weird horror, such as Jeff VanderMeer and John Langan, as well as plenty of authors I’m not familiar with. The collection begins with a very brief introduction to the overall concept of fungal horror, followed by twenty-three tales that pursue this theme in as many different directions as possible. The book ends with “A Brief List of Fungal Fiction” so that you can further educate yourself on the role of fungi in horror and weird fiction up to the point this anthology was published.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

In my review of Mexican Gothic a couple years ago, I tried not to give away too many spoilers about the role of the ominous fungus that infests the estate that serves as the stories setting, but it’s definitely one of the creepiest incarnations of this phenomenon that I’ve read. Like many grand estates of once-wealthy families, the Doyle home—known as High Place—is falling into a state of decay. This decay takes the form of patches of yellow mold that grow along the walls and mushrooms that sprout from the family graveyard. Far more than just an apt symbol of the family’s corruption and deterioration, however, this network of fungi actually plays an active role in the Doyle patriarch’s plot for power. Like in Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the identity of the Doyle family is fused with their house—not metaphorically, but biologically, through the fungus that infests both their bodies and the walls. The airborne spores of this fungus can also have troubling effects on the mind of anyone who dares interfere with the family’s goals. 

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher

Speaking of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the most recent fungal horror book I’ve read and reviewed is T. Kingfisher’s alt-history retelling, What Moves the Dead. Right from the front cover, you know there’s going to be some creepy mushrooms in this book. And creepy they most certainly are. The book opens with a description of these mushrooms, whose appearance alone is enough to give you pause—they are described as flesh-like, a “clammy, swollen beige” on top with blood-red gills. But their sinister nature goes far beyond the surface. As in Mexican Gothic, these fruiting bodies are only one manifestation of a vast fungal network that infests both the characters’ environment and some of the characters themselves. If you hadn’t already guessed, the answer to the rhetorical question in the title? It’s mushrooms.

What mushroom horror books have you read? I’m sure there are many others I should add to my list. What did you think of the stories listed above? Let me know our thoughts in the comments!