What Sleeps Beneath is an online magazine that explores the horror genre as one of the most important cultural vehicles of our time. It is a home for all horror-loving nerds, and a space to investigate what the genre tells us about ourselves. We write book and movie reviews, conduct interviews, and write original academic research.

Browse the full archive, or search for a specific article. Not sure where to start? Use the drop-down to browse by topic, format, or subgenre.

Guest Writer 10/30/26 Guest Writer 10/30/26

When Dreams Become Hauntings: Why Horror Blurs Sleep and the Supernatural

Sleep gives filmmakers several ways to make a private fear appear to act upon the world. A dream can bring a character's suppressed feelings into a conversation they would otherwise avoid. It can also give a monster access to someone who was safe a moment earlier. The uncertainty about what is happening matters, but a film can settle that question and still leave its characters in terrible danger.

Luna Gray 10/26/26 Luna Gray 10/26/26

‘Public Access Afterworld’ Review: The Horror of Becoming Content

Jane Schoenbrun’s debut novel turns content moderation and television franchises into interconnected forms of horror. Luna Gray examines its corporate exploitation, troubled characters, and sometimes overwhelming ambition.

Guest Writer 10/26/26 Guest Writer 10/26/26

Why Hands Can Be So Unsettling in Horror

Horror loves a close-up of a face. The widened eyes, the scream, the slow turn toward something just out of frame are the genre's most familiar images. Yet some of its most lasting dread comes from the other end of the arm.

Ande Thomas 10/24/26 Ande Thomas 10/24/26

Three Rivers Film Festival is Making More Room for Horror

Film Pittsburgh executive director Shanna Carrick discusses the expanding horror program at Three Rivers Film Festival, the new Romero Award, and helping independent filmmakers find their audiences in Pittsburgh.

Kit Neikirk 10/20/26 Kit Neikirk 10/20/26

‘Backrooms,’ ‘Rose of Nevada,’ and Job Anxiety Through Liminal Spaces

How Backrooms and Rose of Nevada use liminal spaces to explore job insecurity, disappearing industries, and the fear of losing your place in the world.

Noah J. Welter 10/15/26 Noah J. Welter 10/15/26

Halloween (1978): A Pumpkin Bourbon Cocktail

Celebrate John Carpenter’s Halloween with Noah Welter’s autumnal cocktail featuring browned-butter–washed bourbon, pumpkin syrup, and smoky Scotch.

Guest Writer 10/15/26 Guest Writer 10/15/26

Making the Unseen Parts of a Horror Scene Feel Dangerous Through Sound

Some of the most effective moments in horror happen before the threat is seen. A noise behind a closed door, movement on another floor or an unfamiliar sound outside the frame can create a sense that something is nearby without revealing exactly what it is.

Luna Gray 10/12/26 Luna Gray 10/12/26

Good for Her . . . and Then What?: ‘What a Nightmare’

Rebekah Faubion’s adult horror debut delivers the bloodshed promised by its “good for her” premise, then asks whether justified anger can become permission to control and punish. Its inherited-trauma metaphor is stronger than its softened final reckoning, but that moral tension gives the revenge story weight.

Ande Thomas 10/8/26 Ande Thomas 10/8/26

‘V/H/S/Mixtape’ Review: Horror Finds a New Frequency

GWAR hosts a chaotic mixtape of murderous puppets, cosmic terror, and weaponized silence. The latest V/H/S finds fresh inspiration in the horror of sound.

Luna Gray 10/5/26 Luna Gray 10/5/26

The Girl Who Wants to Take It Home: ‘What Feeds Below’

Petra finds a carnivorous plant and immediately starts thinking about medicine. I was mostly wondering how long it would take the thing to digest a person. Tatiana Schlote-Bonne builds What Feeds Below inside that gap. Her narrator is surrounded by organisms that eat, infect and rebuild human bodies, and she keeps wanting to get closer.

Guest Writer 10/5/26 Guest Writer 10/5/26

What Makes an Abandoned Place Feel Haunted Before Anything Actually Happens?

An abandoned building starts frightening people long before any ghost story gets told about it. The dread arrives at the doorway, in the first breath of stale air and the first glance down a corridor with no lights.

Ande Thomas 9/30/26 Ande Thomas 9/30/26

‘Infirmary’ Finds Terror in the Security Feed

Nicholas Pineda’s Infirmary starts quietly. There is, of course, the almost obligatory disclaimer at the front that identifies the footage we’re about to see as wholly true and part of an ongoing investigation, but that’s not the unsettling part.

Christian Wallis & D.R. Forge 9/28/26 Christian Wallis & D.R. Forge 9/28/26

What Is Creepypasta? Six Stories to Start With

Thomas Ligotti wrote that “the highest aim of the realistic horror writer is to prove, in realistic terms, that the unreal is real”. Nowhere is this sentiment embodied so well as in internet horror fiction, colloquially known as creepypasta (a name riffing on the act of copy and pasting stories across multiple forums i.e. copypasta, and homage to the genre’s collaborative storytelling roots).

Guest Writer 9/28/26 Guest Writer 9/28/26

As Halloween Approaches: How Can You Get in the Horror Mood

Halloween is nearly upon us again, and we all know what that means. TV channels will be packed with horror films, there’ll be plastic pumpkins, and maybe some real ones, lining the aisles at the shops, and gangs of kids, and even adults, dressed in costumes ranging from the mundane to the bizarre will roam the streets.

Guest Writer 9/25/26 Guest Writer 9/25/26

From Haunted Houses to Haunted Apps: How Horror Found the Smartphone

Horror has a longstanding use for the telephone. Someone calls with a threat, the line goes dead, or help turns out to be impossibly far away. Smartphones complicate that relationship. The device a character reaches for in an emergency also contains their photographs, conversations and location history. Losing control of it can mean giving someone access to much of their life.

Alaska Hallsworth 9/21/26 Alaska Hallsworth 9/21/26

‘The Buffalo Hunter Hunter’: Vampires, Colonial Violence, and Who Gets to Tell the Story

In The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, blood carries the violence of colonialism, while a settler’s journal controls whose story survives. This essay examines how Stephen Graham Jones uses vampirism and layered testimony to confront historical erasure.

Guest Writer 9/15/26 Guest Writer 9/15/26

Why Horror Turns Games and Rules Into Nightmares

Games are supposed to make rules comforting. Someone explains what can and cannot happen, everyone agrees to play, and even when competition becomes intense, there is usually a clear way for the game to end. Horror understands exactly how much damage can be done by keeping that structure and removing the safety.

Pat King 9/14/26 Pat King 9/14/26

‘Itch!’ Interview: Bari Kang on Practical Gore and Making Horror a Family Affair

Filmmaker Bari Kang discusses Itch!, from its practical gore and zombie influences to filming in his own NYC store and directing his daughter.

Spencer Stoller 9/10/26 Spencer Stoller 9/10/26

‘Ordinary Horror’ Review: Finding Horror in Italian Literature

Through a blend of horror studies, philosophical analysis, and aesthetics, Ordinary Horror: The Aesthetics of Deformation from Leopardi to Ferrante by NYU professor of Italian studies Andrea Capra explores undiscussed nuances in contemporary and canonical Italian literature alike.

Christian Dávalos 9/7/26 Christian Dávalos 9/7/26

Horror and the Architecture of Dehumanization

The term “social horror” seeks to highlight and challenge real-life injustices and everyday violence. It moves away from the notion of the supernatural monster to emphasize the human being as the primary source of violence and cruelty against others.