Marko Lukic – författare

Despite its necessary centrality within the genre, the concept of the victim has not received much direct attention within the field of horror studies. Arguably, their presence is so ubiquitous as to become invisible—the threat of horror implies the need for a victim, whose function never alters, often becoming a blank slate for audiences to project their desires and fears onto. This volume seeks to make explicit the concept of the victim within horror media and to examine their position in more detail, demonstrating that the necessity of their appearance within the genre does not equate to a simplicity of definition. The chapters within this volume cover a number of topics and approaches, examining sources from literature, film, TV, and games (both analogue and digital) to show the pervasiveness of horror's victims, as well as the variety of their guises.

Blending folklore studies, media theory, horror criticism and cultural geography, this collection charts an unprecedented map of urban‑legend storytelling, from haunted cemeteries to pixelated backrooms. Across three themed sections, international scholars trace how tales of hook‑handed killers and countless other spectres migrate through oral tradition, cinema, television, board games and video games, to continually reshape the fears and identities of the communities that share them. By foregrounding space – the cemetery, the highway, the small town, the livestreamed haunted house – as a dynamic agent rather than passive backdrop, the book reveals how legends build cultural memory, police social boundaries and critique neoliberal landscapes. Interdisciplinary, globally-scoped and media‑agnostic, this volume moves beyond folkloric catalogues and genre surveys to show precisely where horror lives today – and why those locations matter.

This book provides a comprehensive reading of a space/place-based experience from the birth of the American horror genre (nineteenth century American Romanticism) to its rise and evolution in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This book provides a comprehensive reading of a space/place-based experience from the birth of the American horror genre (nineteenth century American Romanticism) to its rise and evolution in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.