Welcome to the latest edition of It Came From the Shelves..., our tried-and-tested series where we recommend books from the Hex Libris stacks across three areas:

—writing, mindful reading, and personal development (such as R.L. Stine’s There Is Something Wrong With My Brain);

—reading resources (such as Productivity Game);

—collected titles by topic, notably (horror) film analysis / theory.

As this is the first entry in our collection series, where else to start than with our beloved found footage horror? Read on for recommended reference books, epistolary fiction, and a couple of open access publications...

Open Access

Horror Homeroom, run by Filtered Reality contributor Dawn Keetley, Elizabeth Erwin, and Gwen Hofmann, covers all aspects of horror and publishes digital collections, such as Issue #7 (Spring 2023): Found Footage Horror.

Edited by Ellen Boyd, Lauren Gilmore, and Keetley, this open access collection approaches its topic from a variety of engaging and refreshing perspectives, from the archival horrors of Y2K websites to digital existentialism to the horrors of influencer culture in Deadstream (2022).

Grab your drink of choice and read here!

Grim journal, showcasing the voices of women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC writers and creators, is an open access publication from Anatomy of a Scream — founded by HoL's Accursed Librarian, Valeska Griffiths.

Issue #11 (September 2022), Reel Fake: Hex, Lies & Videotape, sets the tone with a searing editorial note on the horrors of navigating increasing digital consciousness in the current landscape, with pieces covering analog horror, narcissism in online culture, and the frightful intimacy of forced perspective in relation to true crime. "Welcome to the age of perpetual visibility..."

Read here!

Found Footage Fiction

Found: An Anthology of Found Footage Horror Stories, edited by Andrew Cull and Gabino Iglesias, presents eighteen shorts that capture the cinematic beats of found footage horror -- just look at that cover...

Each contribution is strong, with the bar set high by a beautiful introduction, and the seamless yet well-rounded selection flows easily through tales of the supernatural, stalkers and serial killers, and clever approaches to urban legends.

I'm very excited to hear that a sequel is in the works, especially as "What was found cannot be forgotten, cannot be unseen, cannot be undone..."

Episode Thirteen, by Craig DiLouie, is one for lovers of ghost hunting shows.

The book follows the crew of one such show, Fade to Black, as they tackle their biggest location to date, the derelict site where the Paranormal Research Foundation conducted mysterious experiments in the 1970s before vanishing.

The story unravels piece by piece across tapes, journals, and digital correspondence, and, without saying too much, is a nuanced approach to the subject that covers a variety of perspectives across the team and goes to some unexpected places.

Highly recommend listening to this on Audible, as it's a full cast production and plays perfectly to the book's multimedia format.

Mister Howl is a found footage illustrated novel from T.W Burgess, who also created Early Haunts, a graphic novel collecting four forgotten ghost stories and incorporating augmented reality to bring them to life.

Mister Howl is a supernatural take on Rear Window, with our protagonist, Jay, confined to a wheelchair and documenting a shadowy figure in the opposite residential block — the titular Mister Howl — via analog recordings.

Burgess is a master of the immersive horror experience, and the haunting, grainy images accompanied by ephemera such as short-hand diary entries, audio logs, and reference papers invite you to solve the mystery with Jay.

Although out of print at the moment, there are plans for another run. Be sure to follow T.W. Burgess on socials to keep up to date.

Found Footage Film Theory

Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality, by Filtered Reality contributor Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, offers a comprehensive overview of found footage.

Not only does it provide a blueprint for the stylistic, historical, and thematic development of found footage as a contemporary framework, it focuses on pivotal milestones such as public safety films, “snuff-fiction” films, and faux-factual television from the 1980s and 1990s, with a focused section on Ghostwatch (1992).

Found Footage Horror Films: A Cognitive Approach, by Filtered Reality contributor Pete Turner, focuses its lens on mediated realism in found footage horror.

Exploring how such films are intentionally constructed to appear as nonfiction, it applies a theoretical framework that incorporates mimesis and narration to examine how the diegetic camera technique and point-of-view perspective affects viewers' cognitively.

Blood on the Lens: Trauma and Anxiety in American Found Footage Horror Cinema, by Shellie McMurdo, explores the relationship between found footage narratives and significant traumatic events and anxieties across the American socio-cultural landscape — both historical and contemporary.

Found footage horror's unique ability to thematically and aesthetically confront and comment on this trauma and anxiety is discussed in terms of the wider context of the format's innovative and pervasive nature, and how it continues to endure even as we enter a post-cinematic age.

In Digital Horror: Haunted Technologies, Network Panic and the Found Footage Phenomenon, edited by Linnie Blake and Xavier Aldana Reyes, Aldana Reyes notes that found footage is a framing device undefined by genre, rather than a subgenre of horror.

Along with Blake, Aldana Reyes uses the term “digital horror” in this anthology to accommodate several categories, including found footage, technological hauntings, and snuff films — all of which perpetuate a contemporary anxiety around surveillance that leads to social alienation and security paranoia.

And we couldn't leave without mentioning our own tribute to found footage, sixteen chapters dedicated to the progenitors (including epistolary novels like Dracula (1897), radio shows such as The War of the Worlds (1938), grand-guignol theater, television (Ghostwatch)) and evolution of the contemporary found footage horror film (including the rise of digital folklore in The Blair Witch Project (1999), an anthropological analysis of Cannibal Holocaust (1980), and post-cinematic horror in Host (2020) and beyond).

Read more about Filtered Reality here.

We hope you enjoyed reading, fellow found footage fiends!

This is far from a complete list so do let us know what titles you would add, and we’ll include them in any further installments!

Until next time, stay spooky!