What if you could turn your trauma into your hustle? It might not be the healthiest way of dealing, but Brigit does just that by creating a ghost hunting show centered on her connection to her dead sister in What Grows in the Dark, a debut horror novel by Jaq Evans that came out earlier this year.
Brigit Weylan and her best friend Ian sometimes feel guilty about defrauding the clients featured on their ghost hunting YouTube show, but they comfort themselves with the idea that Brigit brings real closure and healing, even if her purported clairvoyant connection to the spirit world via her dead sister is a sham. Then Brigit receives a call from her sister’s ex-girlfriend asking her to return to their hometown and investigate the recent disappearance of two kids, and things start to get all too real. Two teenagers went into the Dell where Emma died sixteen years ago, and they haven’t come out. Brigit may not truly have psychic powers, but perhaps she and Ian will be able to get close to the townspeople and discover something the police cannot. The more time Brigit spends back in Ellis Creek, though, the more she is plagued by strange dreams, hallucinations, and the terrifying gaps in her memory surrounding her sister’s death. She may already know more about what lurks in the dark, luring children into the Dell, than she has allowed herself to realize.
This book has some real folk horror vibes, even as it eschews some of the more common trappings of the genre. Despite the fact that children have been going missing in the Dell for decades, no folk tales have emerged to warn off future generations—at least none that Brigit has heard. The creature that lurks in the Dell has no name, no backstory immortalized in local legend. Instead, there are only breadcrumbs for Brigit and Ian to follow, newspaper clippings and “missing” posters and vague murmurs of deals struck in the woods and their unintended consequences. As a child, Brigit invented her own stories for the woods, creating a game called Wild Men that she played with her sister. Even though there is no consistent narrative to grow into legend, somehow the distressed and desperate young folk of Ellis Creek keep finding their way into the Dell year after year, making deals with whatever it is that grows there in the dark.
The ghost-hunting side of Brigit’s life takes sort of a backseat once she returns to Ellis Creek, but it raises some interesting questions. Is it always unethical to act as a fraudulent medium? What if your clients truly seem to benefit from the experience? Brigit does have a real talent—for genuinely connecting with the living and getting them to open up, if not for connecting with the dead. But as she confronts her own past and the truth about what lurks in the Dell, it turns out that Brigit may have been in communion with something supernatural after all.… The ghost-hunting angle also provides a unique perspective for Ian, who experiences much of the world through the lens of his camera. The distance this creates comes in handy both when confronting real evidence of the supernatural and when facing his yearning feelings for Brigit.
If you like tales of small towns and dangerous things that lurk in the woods, be sure to check out What Grows in the Dark! As a bonus, the novel also casually incorporates queer characters and interweaves the struggles they face in a small town into the plot. You can find What Grows in the Dark on shelves now at your favorite local retailer, or buy it online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. And remember, don’t make deals with the dark entities that live in the woods….