We’ve talked about American Gothic, French and German Gothic, and even Irish Gothic. But what about Scottish Gothic? Cultures with a strong oral storytelling tradition tend to also have a very rich tradition of horror stories, and Scotland is no exception. A recent anthology by the independent press Haunt Publishing seeks to capitalize on that connection. Haunted Voices: An Anthology of Gothic Storytelling from Scotland, edited by Rebecca Wojturska, blends traditional Scottish oral tales with dark stories from newer voices that reflect the diversity of the country. Check it out for an informative and entertaining take on Highland horror!
Haunted Voices contains thirty-one stories, six of which come from archived recordings preserved by the University of Edinburgh’s School of Scottish Studies. These recordings date back to the ’70s and ’80s—and even one from the ’50s—and are told by highly regarded traditional storytellers. The archived recordings are interspersed between tales commissioned specifically for this volume by contemporary writers, poets, singers, voice actors, and spoken word artists. In the audiobook version, each writer reads their own story, alongside the original archived recordings. The archived tales have been transcribed for the ebook and paperback versions, and each story is accompanied by a spine-chilling illustration by Zuzanna Kwiecien. I highly recommend the audiobook for the most authentic oral storytelling experience, though if you have trouble parsing heavy Scottish accents, you may want to follow along with the ebook, as well. Most of the tales are quite short, making them perfect bite-sized pieces when you just need a little dose of horror.
Part of what makes this collection so unique is its inclusion of archived recordings. The editor of this anthology combed through the university’s archives, picking out the tales that best illustrate the Gothic themes already present in traditional Scottish storytelling. Some of the tales warn of the dangers of ghosts, such as “The Warlock and Robbie Ha,” in which a man is possessed by the spirit of a recently deceased warlock. Another tale, “The Graveyard Wager,” plays with our belief in ghosts, telling of the unfortunate fate of a young woman who went into a graveyard at night to prove that she wasn’t afraid. Yet another, “The Fire and the Factor,” is a more realistic tale of murder and the lengths to which a mother will go to cover up committed by her son. By mixing these tales in with modern ones, Rebecca Wojturska shows that Scottish authors writing horror today are participating in a continuous tradition with roots in the cultural practice of oral storytelling. But this tradition is not limited to Scotland. A few of the stories from the archived recordings correlate to fairytales collected by Hans Christian Anderson and have an air of cross-cultural familiarity.
Some of my favorite stories in the collection were those that celebrate the blended cultures of immigrant communities in Scotland. “The Girl in the Sauna” by Diva Ivanauskaitė tells of a young woman who outwits the devil, inspired by Lithuanian folk beliefs about saunas. “The Ghost Wife” by Guri Raje is a South Asian tale that uses ghostly possession to explore the tension between a young wife and her mother-in-law. And “Tala in the Woods” by Katalina Watt draws on the Filipino legend of the vampire-like manananggal.
Other stories took tales I was already familiar with and made something new out of them. “The Keep” by Kirsty Logan is a Bluebeard-like story told from the perspective of the dead girls. When a new girl comes to stay in the magician’s treehouse caravan, the dead girls leave her warnings and clues about the fate that awaits her if she stays. “Anne of the Dark Eyes” by Ricky Monahan Brown is a creative retelling of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, though that isn’t readily apparent from the beginning, as a young man narrates the misdeeds of his “friend” Robbie. One of the most fun, though, is “The Cravin” by D. A. Watson, which parodies Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” Instead of being about a young man’s grief for his dead lover, “The Cravin” explores the warring impulses of a self-destructive alcoholic.
And those are just a few of the stories included in this collection! Haunted Voices has something for every kind of horror fan, from the genuinely terrifying to the quaintly humorous. You can buy the audiobook and the ebook directly from the Haunt Publishing website, and the paperback should be available once workers can brave the post office again without fear of Covid-19. If you read the collection, be sure to come back and share your thoughts in the comments!