On Being Afraid of Fairies
and why the real world is much more terrifying
What are you afraid of? Allow me a moment of half-serious guessing. You’re probably afraid of getting an incurable disease that changes or ends your life. You’re afraid of surviving a horrific fiery plane crash only to be eaten by your fellow passengers once you freeze or starve to death yourself. You’re afraid of everyone finding out you’re a massive fraud (of what is unclear) and losing your friends and family. Ok, maybe that last one is mine.
Let me pose another question: are you afraid of vampires, or ghosts, or of the fae tricking you into living in their world for eternity?
I’m a millennial living through late-stage capitalism so vampires, ghosts, and especially trickster fairies sound like great opportunities to me!
Give me a blood-hungry vampire over a condescending doctor who dismisses pain and other obvious symptoms as “women’s troubles”.
Send me to serve a fairy lord instead of having every aspect of my life monetised and sold to world-destroying billionaires.
Have you seen how crazy inflated house/flat prices are all over the world? Really, how scary is a ghost in comparison to the thought of renting f o r e v e r.
Before Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, Sheridan Le Fanu wrote a short story called Carmilla about a mysterious, intriguing lady stranger that sleeps most of the day and lives off the blood of beautiful young women. Pretty titillating considering the context of when it was written, and it made me wonder if Le Fanu and his audience were equally frightened by both vampires and lesbians. Maybe a [gasp] lesbian vampire was one of the scariest things he would think of.
Carmilla has been on my to-read list since I learned about its existence and I finally found a good compilation of Le Fanu’s stories that included it. The collection is called Green Tea and Other Weird Stories (sometimes the title is Other Ghost Stories) and I picked this one because it had tales about both zombies and fairies, in addition to the aforementioned sexy gay vampire story. I haven’t read all the stories yet, but I’m enthusiastic about most of the ones I have read and I wanted to share my thoughts.
Let’s start with Carmilla! Aside from the gruesome way the big strong men kill the little lady vampire in the end, I loved the story. Queerness and vampires has been thoroughly documented1 by those with more knowledge than I, and it is always fun to read an original text like this one. I would have loved for it to be a full novel, rather than a short story, because I definitely wanted to learn more about the young human woman protagonist and how she feels about being the target of Carmilla’s love and bloodlust. The story also made me question the common“rules” of vampires — the stuff about sunlight, garlic, where they sleep, etc… — when they were set and by whom. That’s an idea for another post, one that will not include any vampires sparkling in the sun.
Laura Silver Bell is a very short story about a village wise woman named Mall Carke who meets a mysterious stranger. He seems way too interested in the local beauty, Laura Silver Bell. The wise woman correctly identifies him as one of the fae, and despite Mall Carke’s warning Laura lets herself be enchanted by the sexy fairy man. Over a year passes without anyone seeing Laura. One night when Mall is doing some sort of spell the fairy man comes to her cabin saying he needs help with his Lady that is about to give birth. Mall goes with him only to find that the woman giving birth is Laura. She warns Mall to take only her normal birth assistant fee and leave a.s.a.p. or the fairy man will keep Mall there forever. Mall does as Laura said and never did any kind of magic again. The moral of this story is simple: don’t be a hot young woman and don’t be a witchy old woman.
An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in an Old House in Aungier-Street was a pretty standard haunted old house story. A hanged ghost, heavy footsteps descending stairs, a string of suspicious deaths in the house. Interesting, but not quite interesting or scary enough for that epic title.
While I bought this book for Carmilla the story that has stayed with me the most is Borrhomeo the Astrologer. Borrhomeo lives in Milan during a plague and he has been working on the elixir of everlasting life for a while. A handsome young man comes to him offering to show him how to make the elixir and Borrhomeo eagerly accepts the offer. The stranger brings Borrhomeo to his master who lets him taste of the elixir. The master will teach Borrhomeo how to make more, if only Borrhomeo makes a mark on the churches and other establishments that the demonic plague hasn’t touched yet. This mark will allow the plague to enter and will likely kill those inside. Borrhomeo knows this and still he is anxious to complete the task so he can learn how to live forever. The two strangers tell Borrhomeo that he’ll be concealed as he goes about the dirty work, but, kind of hilariously, he is definitely not hidden from anyone. Borrhomeo is quickly sentenced to a torturous death. But remember, our bro Borrhomeo has already tasted a bit of the elixir. The strangers warned him not to taste more than a few drops, as each drop is equal to about 20 years. Bro-homeo drank a whole glass. So he has to go through his own execution and burial while still being conscious, if not animated. And then just lay there, buried alive, until the elixir wears off and he die-dies.
Out of all the stories I’ve read so far this one is the most frightening. Not so much the demons that use Bro-homeo’s fervour for the elixir, but I cannot stop thinking about how readily he was to inflict the plague on his fellow people. That and the being buried alive part.
Almost like paying rent forever.
When I sit down to read these stories I try to make the experience as old-fashioned as possible, in an effort to get in the headspace where these stories would be unsettling. That doesn’t always work, which is a bummer, but I don’t mind reading these as the historical social artefacts they are.
It makes sense that we’re afraid of different things in 2023 than we were in 1872. Just think of all the human-made horrors we’ve been able to see on our TV and phone screens in the last 50 years. Still, I just can’t get over how we’ve gone from a visceral fear of vampires, ghosts, demons, and, lol, fairies, to this:
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week!
So. The words “thoroughly documented” used to link to a YouTube video by a man called James Somerton who has been shown to be a massive plagiarist. Like, he almost says no words that are his own. Here’s a link to a 3-hour YouTube video about plagiarism and the James Somerton stuff starts at 1:50. Yes, half that video is addressing specifics of how Somerton plagiarised literally everything. I will spend some time today trying to find out who he plagiarised for the video I linked addressing queerness and vampires both for myself and to link here for anyone who reads this in the future.