SOON, autumn will be upon Iowa, and the International Writing Programme writers, currently based at the University of Iowa, will be exposed to everything that comes with it. Pumpkin pie, piles of leaves, cold days and Halloween.

My own early thoughts about autumn and Halloween combined with the current hype surrounding the new film, “It”, recently got me thinking about horror in Guyanese literature (oral or written) and culture. What elements are there in our country, in our villages and towns that we would equate with true horror? This space would be a good place to insert a joke about current Guyanese politics. However, I shall resist the urge and will focus on the task at hand.

When I say “horror” in the Guyanese context, I mean what are those terrifying mythological/supernatural elements in our culture that can be written into our literature and achieve the nationwide level of notoriety that “It” has given to the creepy clown at the centre of the plot? Unfortunately, I have not managed to see the film as yet. But I can tell, based on reviews and an assortment of trailers, videos, memes and viral threads (all of which constitute a virtual body of literature created by the young people of today), that the newest incarnation of Stephen King’s groundbreaking novel “It”, is quite a sensation.

Of course, Guyanese horror exists as much as American horror exists. There are those who might say that horror is horror and that it cannot be categorised culturally. Some might argue that people, as a whole, can be scared by the same things. Some might also say that all peoples get scared in the same way. But is this really true?

To define Guyanese horror is to define supernatural elements that bring fear to the Guyanese people. But the relationship between Guyanese and the supernatural has always been one that consists of several layers – only one of which happens to be fear. With the supernatural in our country, otherworldly beings can be viewed with admiration or can be treated with scorn; they can be worshipped or they can be shunned; and, of course, they can be feared. In this way, creatures and beings who contribute to the notion of what might be termed “Guyanese horror”, have a relationship with the local populace that might appear to some to be more nuanced and more complex than the sort of representation of the creature that the film and, perhaps, King’s book itself presents to us.

Of course, fear alone can be quite a complex feeling to unravel and it does not do to simply simplify the fascination with the clown from the film as simply being the after-effects of a horror movie. Film is literature, and a literary/psychological/sociological/cultural study of the film could possibly offer important understandings of horror in American culture. Why are people scared of the shapeshifting clown? What does the creature in King’s book truly represent?

Why has this form of horror endured for such a long time in the realms of local and popular culture? In a similar manner, fear – what we fear and how we fear, coupled with religion and other cultural factors, helps to shape the elements of what we are calling Guyanese horror, but with the addition of particular layers to the relationship between the supernatural and the people who believe in it.

Guyanese horror would stem from local folklore because that is where all of the superstitions in Guyanese culture, including aspects of several religions, emerge from. This connection of horror to folklore and folklore to religion might explain the additional layers that form the relationship between people and the supernatural.

In Hinduism, for example, there are various deities who are to be worshipped, but there are also an equally important branch of gods and goddesses who are meant to instill fear in the believer, whether that fear is to ensure that an individual does the right thing or whether that fear comes about simply because of the depictions of that particular god or goddess in the oral tradition that has been handed down to us. A good example of this is seen in the Hindu goddess, Kali – often portrayed with several hands, a garland of skulls, a platter of blood, a severed human head in one hand, and an open mouth with a protruding red tongue.

The image itself is terrifying, so the goddess must be feared. The goddess, however, is a slayer of demons, so she must be admired. Kali is also a form of the god, Shiva, so she must be loved. Kali helps to underscore the various layers of the relationship that Guyanese people can have with the “terrifying” or “horrid” within local folklore, within the concept we are regarding as “Guyanese horror”, which as exemplified through this brief discussion on Kali is not built on fear alone, but on other important emotions and reactions as well.

Of course, there are other aspects of local culture that present this sort of complex relationship with beings and creatures from another realm. The god-figure of Makonaima from Indigenous folklore might generate various emotional reactions, other than fear, from the people who believe in him. Even those spirits and monsters from folklore that are generally known to be explicitly negative forces might undergo a re-presentation in literature in order to shape the relationship between humans and the folkloric to be one that is much more than fear.

The examples that come immediately to mind are Dr. Paloma Mohamed’s play, The Fairmaid’s Tale, where a young girl is transformed into the mermaid-like fairmaid, inspiring fear, yes, but also sympathy and admiration considering what the girl achieves earlier in the play. In other versions of fairmaid stories, we see the fairmaid being approached by at least one lecherous man who tries to assault the creature, believing her to be a beautiful woman at the riverside on a dark night. More often than not, in these stories, the fairmaid usually strangles or drowns the man.

This also inspires fear but also imparts admiration, respect and a sense of justice on behalf of the creature. Certainly, in both the oral and written literature in Guyana, there are many other examples which can highlight the multifaceted relationship that exists between Guyanese people and the creatures they believe in. Fear is only a single part of the complex concept that we are here referring to as Guyanese horror.

As an outsider looking in on American pop culture, it is fascinating to observe the various reactions to “It”, all of which are, in a sense, celebratory of an iconic horror figure created by an iconic horror writer. As everyone celebrates “It”, I think a lot about our own monsters that can be found in Guyanese literature and the fact that they are slowly dying. The ole higues’ flames are slowly ebbing out. The baccoos are locked in their bottles. The massacuraman moves further upriver. The cries of the churile are becoming fainter and fainter.