Horror Joy

Jeff interviews horror author Josh Hanson (King’s Hill, The Woodcutters, Fortress, Marshbank, Minotaur Stories) about the relationship between horror and joy, which Hanson links to story-driven pleasure, safe transgression, and chasing the intensity of childhood fear.
Hanson recounts discovering writing in college, burning out after an MFA at the University of Montana amid anti-genre attitudes and market-focused training, then returning to fiction around age 50 and establishing a daily routine that led to his debut.
They discuss why haunted houses resonate as violations of domestic safety, and Hanson’s upcoming novel Calliope Street (out July 29), a triptych about Jack and Avery, a fixer-upper with a basement collage “altar” that functions as a portal, identity misrecognition and threat, and suspicion after Avery’s disappearance.
Hanson cites Dario Argento’s vibe-first approach as inspiration and discusses recent horror that is bringing him joy.
Josh Hanson

Brian and Jeff welcome Shane Hawk, a Cheyenne and Arapaho horror writer and editor, creator of the Native Horror Index, and contributing editor at Counterpoint Press acquiring and editing Indigenous North American writers.
Hawk explains how horror can produce joy through safe distance, catharsis, and the chance to rewrite grim histories by letting Native characters survive and resist stereotypes.
He recounts early influences (Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark, a childhood Halloween scare), returning to intense reading in adulthood, and self-publishing Anoka in 2020 before COVID led him to spearhead Never Whistle at Night with co-editor Ted Van Alst, evolving from a Discord/Twitter idea to a Vintage deal and major sales.
He discusses horror community support, the anthology’s themes of revenge and community, his comfort centering Native perspectives, co-writing the stage audio-drama The Land Has Spoken, launching the directory-style Native Horror Index.
The sequel to Never Whistle at Night, titled Back for Blood, is set for August 18, 2026.
ShaneHawk.com
Native Horror Index

Jeff welcomes Damir Debanic, owner of InterHuman Games, to discuss his upcoming board game Jure Grando, a Croatia-based, vampire-adjacent folklore horror title on GameFound.
Debanic describes horror’s cathartic link to joy, his path from organizing events in 1990s Croatia to 15 years at sea, and why board games are “programming with paper” and a vehicle for story. He explains that horror board games mainly appeal to board gamers drawn in by theme, then outlines Croatian vampire/štrigoi lore, krsnik monster-fighters, and how Slavic mythology informed Dracula’s supernatural elements.
Jure Grando emphasizes simple folk protections, no dice, minimal combat, and a two-phase race against encroaching darkness, a demonic cat, and the endgame arrival of Jure Grando, with multiple scenarios and endings.
Debanic also summarizes prior games (Within Walls, Propuh, and Fear of the Dark) and previews future folklore projects and a possible Jure Grando sequel.
InterHuman Games

On Horror Joy’s Meet Your Maker, Brian is joined by Undertone writer-director Ian Tuason. They discuss the relationship between joy and horror, distinguishing joy as a sustainable state from fleeting happiness and describing horror as a creative outlet that can offer safe thrills and catharsis, especially for people shaped by trauma.
Tuason recounts his path from writing poetry, stories, and short films to making a low-budget feature designed around sound, which he chose out of necessity and because audiences’ imaginations make the unseen scarier than visuals.
They discuss Undertone’s reliance on silence, noise-canceling headphones, and off-screen space, as well as its religious imagery rooted in Tuason’s Catholic upbringing, where guilt functions like an antagonist and Mary and Abzu represent opposing sides of a maternal archetype.
Tuason shares that he is rebooting Paranormal Activity, drawing on the first three films’ unseen terror while exploring the male gaze as a nemesis.

In this episode of Horror Joy, Brian and Jeff make an unplanned stop on their “haunted house tour” by traveling from U.S.-centered hauntings (slavery, Jim Crow, Reagan-era policies, conquest) to Japan, discussing Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 cult film Hausu and Junji Ito’s Fragments of Horror story “Wooden Spirit.”
They compare how both texts present “haunting houses” animated by spirits and brought out through women, linking them to gender roles, eroticism, and the fetishization of culture and material heritage.
They analyze Hausu’s deliberately camp, self-aware style, the named archetypes of its seven schoolgirl protagonists, its comedic-horrific deaths, and themes of girlhood’s end, queerness, postwar trauma, and consumption.
They read Wooden Spirit as eco-horror and cultural fetish, emphasizing wood’s “eyes,” seduction, and men’s uselessness, and close by finding joy in horror’s weirdness, comedy, and formal experimentation.
Breaking the Mirror: Hausu and Bad Love Objects by Erin Nunoda
Hausu of the Rising Sun: Death of the Girl by Georgia Thomas-Parr
Beyond the Panel: Cinematism and Affective Responses in Itō Junji's Tomie by Ivan Darío Jaramillo Chávez