As part of Women in Horror month, What Sleeps Beneath is celebrating women in Pittsburgh who are keeping the spirit of the horror community alive. In a city where the genre is deeply rooted, from serving as the location for classic horror movies to being home to the University of Pittsburgh’s Horror Studies program and archive, locals know that horror has always been more than just a story in a book or on a screen.

This wasn’t going to be a rehashed tale of Frankenstein and Pretorius joining forces, inexplicably transplanted into 20th century America. This was beginning to look like Sid & Nancy. This was Bonnie and Clyde. Or more accurately—this is Nancy. This is Bonnie. This is The Bride!

From solidly Weird tales of ghostly hauntings and unseen things to more subtle stories of lost children and malevolent housekeeping, Women’s Weird contained a vast range of subjects reflected through the lens of female experience.

“They talk about death being cold. It’s life that’s the cold thing.”

If it were possible to sum up Edith Nesbit’s horror fiction in a single line then this quote from one of her final tales would be as good an attempt as any. As Melissa Edmundson tells us in her introduction “[Nesbit’s] characters are always hiding something … whether it be a disappointment, a regret, a fear, a screen, or a crime.” The gaps these acts of hiding create become, inevitably, filled with the chill of ghosts but Nesbit’s unexpected statement that life, not death, is cold also indicates some of the contradictions at the heart of her own life.

Novels about art works, and novels about archaeology, have something of the ghost story in them. The Final Act of Juliette Willoughby, by Ellery Lloyd, and Nephthys, by Rachel Louise Driscoll revive the long-standing trope of the mummy’s curse. 

Think of weird fiction and, probably without even realizing it, you will think of one thing: men. Whether it’s H. P. Lovecraft’s tentacled monstrosities, the decadent necromancies of Clark Ashton Smith or Algernon Blackwood’s eerie eco-horror, the canon of weird fiction, like many human endeavors, is dominated by male practitioners.

I honestly couldn’t handle another demonic unborn baby movie or ridiculous pregnancy horror film that left me utterly disturbed. The more I explored this subgenre, the more I realized I wasn’t really going to find something that scared me about the state I was in, just that I would be more scared by the ways filmmakers were incorporating additional elements that tied to pregnant people…. [Instead] I thought it might be fun to explore scary children in horror movies, because hey, why not?

[…] with Weird Sisters, Ashley once again delves into that class of weird tale which, despite their narrative power, have often been unfairly overlooked purely because their authors happened to be women. Overlooked, it has to be clarified, especially in the sense of being writers of weird fiction.

A kick, a push, a hiccup—all strange and new and wild—and admittedly pretty freaky. But what I’m finding in pregnancy horror is that directors rarely explore those natural phenomena. No, there always has to be a sinister monster baby to test our faith and sanity. If only they knew…

In celebration of Women in Horror Month, here is part three of a list of new and upcoming works of horror fiction to get excited about, written by women authors.

In celebration of Women in Horror Month, here is part two of a list of new and upcoming works of horror fiction to get excited about, written by women authors.

Never in my lifetime has it felt so important to recognize the contributions of women—in my own life, in my community, and especially in the genre we all love. So for International Women’s Day, and as a kick-off article for our celebration of Women in Horror Month, I want to highlight some of the most exciting and highly anticipated horror books of 2025 written by women authors, but I also don’t feel like I can stop here. This is only the beginning.

Dan Pietersen explores how May Sinclair’s life influenced her weird fiction in British Library Publishing’s latest collection of Sinclair’s short stories, edited by Mike Ashley.