To be queer and to love horror stories is not always easy. Those stories are spun out of our culture and our societal norms, and the labels and definitions that come out of horror stories aren’t always inclusive or healthy…

But for all those stories that tell us to stop asking questions, stop trying to figure out our own unique relationships to our bodies and our sexualities, there are dozens of other stories that whisper—or even shout—that the way to beat back the darkness and the danger is to be more yourself, to break more soul-squashing rules, to be as queer as you need to be. The heroes of horror stories are often the oddballs and the weirdos, like the kids in The Monster Squad or every character in a Shirley Jackson novel.

As queer writers and readers, we find ourselves feeling both at home and deeply unwelcome in the horror genre. Sexual and gender nonconformity are in the genre’s DNA; queer people began writing horror long before it was a recognizable fiction category, and our ranks include some of the biggest names in the contemporary horror scene. There’s also something thoroughly queer about the themes that preoccupy the genre, the thrilling or threatening friction between outsiders and communities, attraction and revulsion, sex and violence, power and vulnerability. As people who fall on the ever-expanding spectrum of lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, trans, intersex, and nonbinary identities, we think about desire, embodiment, and belonging in ways that are rarely simple and never unexamined. It makes sense that many of us are drawn to fiction that tackles these topics in unexpected and often unsettling ways. 

But, as the essays and interviews in this special issue demonstrate, if we often see ourselves reflected in horror stories, it can also feel like the genre wants us gone—or dead.