“Strange Tales,” “Ghost Stories,” and “Eco Horror”
Night Time Logic is the part of a story that is felt but not consciously processed. It is also the name of this interview series here at Cemetery Dance and over on my YouTube channel.
Through in-depth conversation with authors this column explores the night time part of stories, the strange and uncanny in horror and dark fiction, and more.
My short story collections with Cemetery Dance are full of the kind of stories that operate with Night Time Logic. My latest is called Phantom Constellations and is coming in Autumn 2025.
I spoke with Rebecca Cuthbert, author of Six O’Clock House and Other Strange Tales about her work, about ghost stories and strange tales, as well as the work of authors who influenced her such as Shirley Jackson.
We began our conversation with a question about author Daphne du Maurier.
DANIEL BRAUM: You open the book with a Daphne Du Maurier quote. Why did you choose this quote? Do you have a favorite Du Maurier story? How has her work influenced your writing?
REBECCA CUTHBERT: Du Maurier absolutely influenced my writing. I won’t compare my work to that of my heroes, of course, but I do consider myself a grateful guest at the table they set: Du Maurier, Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Edith Wharton, and more contemporary authors like Carmen Maria Machado and Tananarive Due. These women all wrote/write gorgeous prose and present the speculative with artfulness and often subtlety. Many of them are masters at crafting creeping, inescapable, mounting, Gothic dread. Their feminist horror is all the more devastating for its beauty.
Of course, back in college, I didn’t know I was reading literary horror and dark magical realism — I’m not even sure the term “speculative” was used at all in my undergrad years. It was only later, after having “genre fiction” spat out at me like a bad taste in grad school, after trying to be a good girl who wrote literary fiction, that I realized a drafty deserted mansion is a drafty deserted mansion by any other name. Which brings us back to Du Maurier.
Rebecca is an excellent novel. It’s a stunning example of how Gothic elements pull past evils and buried secrets to the surface by way of blowing curtains and snuffed candle flames. There’s also that crafty ambiguity present in Rebecca that I love so much in feminist horror, and have emulated in my own work. Is this a haunting? If so, what kind? What’s real, and what’s a hallucination hatched from a mind already cracked by the patriarchy’s abuses? When does domestic cohabitation cross the line into complicit confinement?
Many of my narratives explore those same questions. And all these influences are fairly clear, I think, in several of the stories from Six O’ Clock House & Other Strange Tales, but especially in “Damp in the Walls,” “Joiner,” and “Hey, Stranger.” A recent review of my book called my stories American Gothic, and I’ll take that label all day long. My settings may not (all) be crumbling castles and sprawling old estates, but why can’t the Gothic thrive in damp greenhouses and greasy breakfast diners? My bartenders, waitresses, and data entry clerks are the proud great-great-great-granddaughters of traditional Gothic heroines: smart, disadvantaged, and brave because desperation requires them to be. Down, as they always always are, but never out.
That Du Maurier quote: “It wouldn’t make for sanity, would it, living with the devil,” for me at least, gets to the very center of this madness that is a world controlled by men. One only has to consider the current United States government to see this truth. Women are told that we don’t own our own bodies, that we are not fully human, that we don’t deserve autonomy — but we are expected to smile for strangers on the street. When we don’t, we are called out for it. If we are anything but thankful for our objectification, we deserve abuse and more — we are, in fact, “asking for it.” But really, we are only asking for the rights every human should have. It’s what my characters fight for. Some win it, others don’t.
I’m glad you found your way past those speaking about genre fiction that way. To me it seems like some of genre fiction’s best authors and works are right there in the literary fiction canon.
Your latest short story collection is Six O’Clock House and Other Strange Tales. How do you define strange tales? What prompted your decision to include strange tales in the title of the book?
This collection of stories was my first finished manuscript but my fifth published book. That’s because fiction that straddles lines can be hard to sell — for lovers of straightforward, bloody, screaming horror, my stories don’t scratch the itch. Those who prefer realism and slice-of-life vignettes might read my fiction and say “Ew, is this a ghost story?” I describe my book as literary horror and dark magical realism, so, for me, “Strange Tales” was the descriptor that fit without overexplaining.
Strange tales exist in murky, unsettling otherness. In liminal spaces. They are at home in the Uncanny Valley, making readers balance on one foot. Fall one way, and they’re in the real, expected world. Fall the other way, and it’s danger, chaos, death. I give my writing students the following examples, which often bring about actual shudders: Imagine you are hanging out with your best friend you’ve known since childhood. But when they laugh, it’s wrong. It’s not their laugh. Nothing else about them is different. Or this: Picture coming home. But everything, everything in your home, has been moved six inches to the left. You might not be able to articulate, immediately, what’s wrong, but you would FEEL it.
Shirley Jackson was especially gifted when it came to strange tales, and I still hold her up as the expert. “The Bus” is the gold standard: a town that doesn’t exist, strangers who are helpful but cruel, a deserted bus stop at night in the rain, a bar that is a house, a house that is and isn’t the protagonist’s childhood home, a closetful of old toys coming to life, an escape thwarted by a time loop…
I have another story collection coming out in the fall, called The Hauntings Back Home. Though closer to more traditional (quiet) horror as a whole, there are plenty of strange tales in it, like “Suffer with the Trees,” in which an abandoned newlywed explores her property only to find herself in an orchard she can’t escape — an orchard that was cut down decades ago.
I’m thrilled to hear of your discussion of strange tales with your students, especially the part about it not being someone one can necessarily articulate but can feel. I was also very excited to read the strange tales in Six O’Clock House.
The book opens with the story “Joiner.” In my readings I always hope to come across a strange tale, a story that fits or is close to the term as I see it and not merely used as a literal description. I found “Joiner” to be wonderful example of this kind of a story.
It overlooks the eighteenth green, which is surrounded by the biggest of the five ponds — the only one that isn’t man made. The pond is really more of a lake, though no one has ever measured how deep its middle is.
The above is the passage that stood out to me and captured my attention. It clued me in and foreshadowed that the work might be a strange tale. In addition to being a hallmark of your unique brand of story.
“Joiner” could be read as a supernatural story or just as readily approached as a story with no supernatural happenings at all. Tell us about the use of this intentional ambiguity in the story.
The most direct way for an author to involve the reader is through second-person narration, and though I do love that and employ it whenever I think it suits, ambiguity shouldn’t be underestimated as a way to bring the reader into the story (or maybe it’s the other way around). Ambiguity is also a feature of many of my favorite aesthetics — the Gothic, the Uncanny, the Grotesque.
Sometimes a neatly tied-up story is what people want — the comfort and closure of it. But ambiguity refuses that, dangling the answers just out of reach. However, I think if an author goes too far with ambiguity, they can lose the reader. Well-done ambiguity is paired with enough facts and hints and subtext to allow the reader to feel confident in the conclusions they draw, even if those conclusions differ from another reader’s.
I love when I can dabble in the mystery genre, along with my other, more comfortable haunts. The story “Joiner” opens with Devon, one of the bartenders at an upscale country club, going missing. The protagonist (another Rebecca, for phonetic reasons I won’t give away here), is left to cover Devon’s shifts, answer to police and bosses and customers alike, and contemplate the ever-louder presence of the frogs in the golf course’s deepest pond.
Was foul play involved in Devon’s disappearance? If not, did she leave willingly? Did curiosity loom too large for her, as it may for Rebecca? Is there an ancient supernatural presence at the country club, or does human evil lurk there? Will Rebecca solve any of it — including her complicated feelings for a married regular — while she still has the chance?
I could tell you. But I won’t. Folks will have to read the story and come up with their own theories.
Many of your stories use the possibility of supernatural or psychological to great effect. In addition to this skilled use of craft the stories are full of wonderful renderings or a range of dynamic characters and their real-life struggles, situations, and conflicts.
Can you tell us about Rebecca, the protagonist in “Joiner”?
Rebecca from “Joiner” is a blue-collar worker struggling to get by, as are so many of my protagonists. They’re intelligent but don’t have the socioeconomic privilege that would make their lives easier — cue the gothic heroines! But I think that’s why so many readers connect with my characters and compliment their genuine humanity. We know these people. We are these people. We go to work and juggle the bills and hope our old cars don’t break down.
I worked in the service industry for almost two decades. Most of that was waitressing and bartending, but I also worked at a greenhouse, at a clothing store, even on a tree farm for a little bit. I was a “flag girl” at an auction house that sold repo’d ATVs. That life experience is what helped me learn how to create believable characters and portray them in ways readers don’t just understand, but feel.
In “Joiner,” Rebecca’s life has stalled. She’s lonely, vulnerable but not weak. She bears witness to strange happenings, and must decide if she’s going to look closer or run away. How many times have we all been in similar circumstances? Muscles tensed, poised to jump, just not sure of our direction.
The book is full of characters with jobs we recognize. Real world “small” stakes yet ones that mean everything to their lives. In this way, along with your use of the supernatural and psychological your stories favorably evoke Shirley Jackson and Robert Aickman.
In the discussion guide included with the book it is mentioned that themes are redemption, sacrifice, forgiveness, reprieve, and revenge. Please tell us about the characters you choose as your protagonists and how they bring out these themes?
Thank you for that fantastic compliment! What lovely comparison!
Back to characters and themes, I mentioned that most of my protagonists are working-class people. A lot of them are also screw-ups. They are so flawed they make readers wince a little, or a lot, if the readers see too much of themselves on the page.
My favorite of these is Sean, the protagonist from “A Bargain at Twice the Price.” I didn’t intend to like him. He was inspired by a friend’s then-boyfriend, who was sort of the worst. When the story opens, Sean is selfish and shallow and bitter. He drinks too much and blames other people for his problems. He calls his ex so much it becomes harassment.
I used second-person narration for this story, because Sean is also self-hating and self-destructive, and his voice is the voice we hear in our heads when we’re loaded with guilt and embarrassment and anxiety — “you” is Sean, and it’s Sean talking to himself, but it’s also us, berating ourselves for the latest social catastrophe or cringeworthy interaction. This is him meeting his new neighbor for the first time — an elderly woman named Caroline:
You tell [Caroline] your name is Sean, and that you recently moved in next door, but of course she already knows that last part. She nods. You stammer and apologize and say you couldn’t help but notice the truck for sale, then wonder why you have to make everything so fucking awkward.
After spending time with Sean, I couldn’t hate him. I saw in him what Caroline does — potential to be something more, the capacity to forgive and be forgiven. I’m not sure if it was me or Caroline, but one of us was like “I think I can save him.” I’m a sucker at heart. A softie. So, if someone is capable of change, I at least give them a shot.
Another character, Viv, is plagued with several versions of herself after going to therapy in “Infested.” Her story, like Sean’s, is one of suffering and toil. Because, as I know personally, when a deeply damaged person goes to therapy, it gets much worse before it gets any better. All that naked confrontation, all that processing — it’s like being cut open and scraped out. Whether or not Viv can actually do the work isn’t clear at the outset. Which Viv will emerge victorious? Which will be silenced, pummeled, bid farewell?
The themes in this collection are fairly universal. We all want love and acceptance. We want forgiveness. We want justice and revenge. My characters want those things too.
Wonderful character work with Sean. You’ve done such a captivating job depicting the chance for change and redemption in his dynamic character arc.
In stories such as (Sean’s) “Bargain at Twice the Price” and “Thick on Wet Cement” and “Inheritance” we are presented with depictions of people who start off lonely, or in the aftermaths of the end of situations such as the end of jobs or end of relationships.
How are the supernatural elements or the possibility of the supernatural in these stories used as catalysts of change and growth for these characters?
This is going to sound very after-school-special, but, true character is revealed through hardship. It’s easy to be a good person when everything is going great. But what happens under pressure? Who are we at our worst, or when we are faced with the worst? How do we respond when life knocks us to the ground, boots us in the stomach, and spits on us to make a point?
I want my characters stripped down to these essential, raw versions of themselves, when they are at their most vulnerable — their most susceptible. When do people pray? When do they ask the universe for a miracle, or attempt to summon the devil to make a deal?
When they are desperate. The supernatural is everyone’s Hail Mary and always has been.
Divine intervention and the influence of evil are direct-contact balm and poison. Speculative elements give form to the choices my characters must make, sometimes in the space of a moment: adapt, grow, change, take hold of a second chance; or shrivel, fester, rot, and die. Readers will find this heal-or-break moment in many of my stories.
Hardship, desperation and vulnerability are wonderful avenues into conflict and it shows in the your stories.
Another question from the discussion guide references that no heroes come to the rescue of these characters and they must save themselves, in light of all of what they face. “Infested” strikes me as one of these stories. In other stories, such as “Punching In” there is no definitive resolution but a tangible shift in a direction, hopeful or otherwise.
Tell us about how these story structures lend themselves to creating and presenting dynamic characters, rich conflicts, and stories with change or the sense of imminent change?
I’m a champion of good ol’ Freytag and his pyramid (or story mountain, which is my preferred image). That story structure works for a reason. But, as I tell my writing students, we don’t always have to give our readers the whole pyramid, or move up and over it in linear chronological order.
“Infested” gives readers a story structure that is as complete and classic as it can get. We meet Viv, get a glimpse of the ground situation, then we learn what her major problem is. Her attempts to solve her problem make it worse — and those try/fail cycles increase the pressure and the tension, giving the story energy to advance up the side of the mountain. Eventually we get to the tippy-top — I like to think of it as the point of no return. Viv is confronted with the biggest aspect of her problem — one she didn’t initially understand and didn’t even see coming. It’s the story’s turning point because the outcome of THAT interaction will determine whether she will solve the rest of her issue or let it run her over.
“Punching In” is different. Readers get a slice of the mountain, not the whole thing. It’s flash fiction, so must be faster paced. It kicks off mid-problem, with the protagonist, Trish, investigating her predicament. It’s almost what I’d call “Office Noir,” since her future just gets bleaker and bleaker. The changes aren’t step-by-step methodical, the way they are in “Infested.” But Trish’s frustration, the relentlessness of her predicament, is also true to life, and as her days drag on we see her anguish mount and her power manifest. What can a woman supercharged with rage do? What is she capable of? Trish’s coworkers are going to find out. In that way, she and Viv are almost opposites — Viv has a toolbox, Trish has a flamethrower.
The structure of “Hey, Stranger” was a bit harder to configure and the most ambitious set-up I had tackled to that point. It’s got dual timelines, and that’s not so odd, but the timelines are concurrent, with one happening slightly ahead of the other, and in the more recent timeline, the protagonist, Missy, is telling an unidentified listener about ongoing developments in the less recent timeline. To make things even more fun, the reader only gets one side of the conversation — Missy’s — and the reader is left to piece together what the listener says and does through Missy’s cues and context clues. There’s lots of dramatic irony, and I’d consider it comedy-horror. One reviewer said it’s the most original ghost story he’s ever read, which of course tickled me.
As for “no rescuers allowed,” I think that is me, again, following my literary heroes’ lead. Protagonists cannot be dynamic and interesting if they have no agency. Characters cannot show their mettle if they are sitting still, waiting for someone to solve their problems for them. I’m a firm believer in “Give your protagonist a problem, then make it worse.” Make it so bad that, eventually, they have to at least try to do something about it.
Strange Tales are often a genre or kind of story that is classified as horror or horror adjacent. Some stories, such as “Lovesick,” feel closer to the horror genre to me. Perhaps this is because the encounters with the supernatural or perceived supernatural have no clean nor definitive resolutions, and the characters do not have that chance to grow as their arcs feel cut short and their lives affected detrimentally by the encounters. Even when heroic choices are made, such as Drew’s choice in “Poor Billy,” the stories still deliver a sense of tragedy or horror. Tell us about your use of structure and how it contributes to a sense of dread and horror.
Some of those endings, for me, are compromises between happy and unhappy. When someone reads “Poor Billy,” they may wonder how in the world I classify that as anything other than unhappy, but, if you look at story building not as “will this character be healthy and happy on the last page” but “will this character accomplish any of their goals by the last page,” you end up with these types of resolutions — a win tempered by a loss, a loss bolstered by a win.
Some folks say there are no happy endings in horror — that if you have a happy ending, it’s not horror. I don’t agree, but I will say that horror stories leave far less room for wholly positive outcomes, and that in a collection, you must have balance. If stories all end the same way, readers will become bored quickly. I wanted to offer them variety — variety of characters and stories and endings.
That mix doesn’t work for everyone, but when it hits, it’s so validating.
Please tell us about the title story “Six O’Clock House,” the main character and the choice she makes at the end of the story.
That is an odd story for me in that I knew the ending first. That’s uncommon for me — I’m more often a “Let’s see where this character takes me” than someone who plots everything out. It’s common for me not to know the ending until halfway through a story. But I had this vision of a woman in a greenhouse — that’s as much as I’ll say here — and then I had to work backward. How would she end up in that situation? What would push a person to make a decision like that? And from there, I could develop everything else: her personality, her family and personal history, the people she works for. And when I put her in that place with those people, it was easy to determine the series of related events — all those dominoes that had to fall for the story to end where I wanted it to.
That story is difficult for some readers to get through due to its content. I hope they feel the sympathy with which I created the protagonist, and understand that the story is a critique of diet culture and the systems, small and large, that prop up bullies. But I do understand why some readers can’t make it to the end of that one.
I really like your story openers. I find that the openers are already keyed in to the heart of the story, the heart of the conflicts, setting up character or conflict or setting and often more than one or all of these things. All the stories I find to be well crafted and strong. Please tell us about your creative process and how you begin writing a story.
Thank you! Openings are so important — they are your one chance to entice people to keep reading. As for my approach, I like to situate readers as soon as I can. That usually means starting with statements of premise or descriptions of setting. More points to me if I can nail down the narrative voice in that opening — whether it’s first-person or another narration choice.
I also think about the old advice “Don’t bore, don’t confuse.” Don’t drag out your first-page exposition. Don’t make the reader wonder what the hell is going on, unsure of where they are or whom they’re supposed to be watching. That also means usually avoiding dialogue openers (though sometimes I’m a rebel and do it anyway), because readers want to meet a character before they hear them speak — they need to know who the person is and why what they’re going to say will matter.
The best opening lines beg questions. They don’t have to be huge questions — just breadcrumbs left out for the reader to follow. The opening line from “Infested” is a simple example of this: “The will isn’t complicated; he’s an only child.” A reader might ask any of the following: Who died? Who’s an only child? What’s he inheriting? How will this inheritance complicate his life? Plus, opening lines that reference death, directly or indirectly, tend to work well.
As for my creative process, I wish I could say I had one trusted strategy. But in all honesty, every story requires a different approach, and some take longer than others from conception to polished draft. The oldest story in this collection is “Joiner.” I wrote the very first draft of that in 2007. I finished it in 2021. Others, like “Infested,” came about fairly quickly, with only a few drafts taking me from one to done. Sometimes I know the ending when I start, but nothing else, like “Six O’Clock House,” or I only know the general concept, like “Inheritance.” For “Damp in the Walls,” I had a detailed outline, and the story almost wrote itself.
Regardless of approach or number of revision cycles, though, every story here was born from or developed by the knowledge and skills I have worked so hard to acquire. I take every writing workshop I can, learn from examples, and listen to my mentors (Moaner Lawrence and Lindsay Merbaum). I trade feedback with writer friends. I take notes at panels and author talks. Whether it’s formal or informal education, I encourage every author to keep learning and trying new things. No one knows everything, plus learning is fun.
Several of the stories, in addition to being your own hallmark brand of stories, can also be said to be ghost stories, as they literally and unambiguously have ghosts in them. Tell us about the appeal of ghost stories to you, as a reader and as an author?
I love ghost stories! They are my favorite type of story to read and to write, and I’ll never get tired of them. My next collection is a tribute to my hometown library, the Anderson-Lee Library, where I spent many happy hours as a kid, looking up ghost story collections in the card catalogue and searching the stacks for treasure.
Ghosts are fascinating to me, in part, because science cannot DISprove them. Most of the “evidence” supporting ghosts’ existence is anecdotal; and photos, videos, and sound recordings of ghosts may be real, but could be faked. However, there is no evidence, perhaps because there can be no evidence, that they’re a myth.
Ghosts represent the ultimate mystery — what happens after death? Is there anything at all on the other side? Does consciousness survive after the body has expired? And how much control do we have once we’ve passed on to whatever’s next? Maybe we believe in ghosts as a comfort to ourselves. But what’s wrong with that? How is it any different from religion?
Here’s what I DO know. If, after I die, I become a ghost, hanging around the earth in some form, and it is within my powers to do so, I will absolutely haunt people and have so much fun doing it. I will zap lights and snuff candles and clomp across the attic floor and laugh and laugh and laugh.
Because, perhaps most importantly, ghosts are just a good time. You can add them to any other genre. Ghosty horror? Of course. Paranormal mystery? Yes. Paranormal romance? Sure. Silly comedy-horror populated by funny ghosts? Yes please. I could go on and on.
Nature plays a large role in your writing. How does it come into play in the stories?
There is a relationship between feminist horror and eco horror — women and nature suffer from the patriarchy’s dual plagues of oppression and abuse. Men in power seek to tame them both, to own them both, to keep them both in line and use them as they want.
That is not to say men have to be the villains in every eco horror story and feminist horror story — feminism’s core is autonomy and equal rights, which means women can be bad, too! And humans of all genders and types damage the environment.
Those subgenres often have revenge themes in common, as well, and they are so satisfying to read (and to write). But that brings me to your last question…
The stories “Tumbling After,” “Rest for the Wicked,” and the last one in the book, “Damp in the Walls,” felt like they belong together thematically. The final story operating to bring together many of the themes in the book. Please tell us about this group of stories, about any themes you see in the work, and about the sequencing of the stories.
In these stories, victims take cruel treatment until they don’t — sometimes they are pushed to act (or not act) to protect themselves, sometimes it’s because they must protect someone they love. Then again, it may be a supernatural entity that acts on behalf of a person’s victims—a force that seeks to balance the universe in some small way.
“Damp in the Walls” contains pretty graphic depictions of domestic violence. Those scenes were difficult to write, and I will admit I cried more than once writing that story. Because it’s important for me to get those experiences right, to portray them accurately, I got a sensitivity reader to help me — a friend who escaped a violent marriage herself. She assured me that Jen and Kevin were, sadly, true to life.
As for the order of stories, I wanted to bookend the collection with two of what I call my “water stories.” In addition to “Joiner” and “Damp in the Walls,” the collection includes “Danger: No Swimming, No Fishing.” The first and last stories in a lineup require intense consideration — they are the first and last gifts you will give your readers. I wanted to make sure they were two of my strongest.
And why all the water? Well, there is so much transformative imagery and lore associated with it, especially when we’re talking about natural bodies of water, and the gothic appeal of an abandoned reservoir at night or a swollen creek in a raging storm is, to me at least, irresistible. Water has the power to kill or rescue, to give or take. It’s natural and supernatural, and can be setting or character or plot device or all of the above.
I grew up on the shores of Lake Erie and live there again now. Perhaps that’s another reason I’m drawn to water and water imagery. It’s always been there, in my peripheral vision. The lake stretching to the edge of the horizon. But it’s not just Lake Erie that has influenced me. The reservoir in “Danger: No Swimming, No Fishing” is based on a real abandoned reservoir in my hometown — and the real deaths that have occurred there.
The creek, storm, and flood in “Damp in the Walls” are real, too — in 2009, a “hundred-year flood” took lives and ruined homes when a storm swelled the banks of Cattaraugus Creek and rushed downhill to lower regions. I remember that storm, but I still researched the heck out of it so I could nail the details.
As for the reservoir story? I didn’t need to do much new research for that. I was the reporter standing on its bank in 2017, snapping pictures, wondering why it felt so haunted.
So I did what any writer would do, and I put it in a story.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
REBECCA CUTHBERT writes dark fiction and poetry. She loves ghost stories, folklore, witchy women, and anything that involves nature getting revenge. Her titles include In Memory of Exoskeletons (poetry), Creep This Way (nonfiction), Self-Made Monsters (hybrid collection), Down in the Dark Deep Where the Puddlers Dwell (children’s book), and Six O’Clock House & Other Strange Tales (stories).
For her author website, free stories, and more, visit linktr.ee/rebeccacuthbertwrites.
DANIEL BRAUM writes “strange tales”, intentionally ambiguous stories in the tradition of Robert Aickman that evoke the old Twilight Zone shows. His stories, set in locations around the globe, explore the tension between the psychological and supernatural.
An illustrated volume of his work titled Creatures of Liminal Space, featuring illustration and design by Dan Sauer, is available at Jackanapes Press.
His all-new short story collection Phantom Constellations is coming in Autumn 2025 from Cemetery Dance Publications.
More about him can be found here.
