Scratch Moss, by David Barnett published by Canelo, March 2026 352 pages, Fiction ISBN: 978 1 83598 319 5
I love folk horror. I’ve been a fan of cult classic The Wicker Man for years and regularly re-watch it. Paganism, weird rituals, evil spirits lurking in nature, haunted houses — yes, please! I’m here for it! I came across Barnett’s writing when I read his first folk horror novel Withered Hill (2024) for an English literature seminar, and it ticked all the boxes and more. I absolutely loved it. Scratch Moss, his newest release, is the third in his folk horror series, including Withered Hill and Scuttler’s Cove (2025). Scratch Moss is set in a small North Yorkshire coal mining community. This makes a welcome break to the rural surroundings normally found in folk horror. It spans across five timelines from 1865 and the beginning of coal mining in the area, to 1905, the end of the War in 1945 when mining became nationalised, the evils of Thatcherism in the eighties all the way to the present day.
We first encounter our protagonist Joe Collier, a divorced, 50-something writer, when he is forced to return to Scratch Moss, the village of his birth, for his father’s funeral. For unspecified reasons, the village is avoided by everyone in the area; Joe cannot even find a taxi driver willing to take him there from the train station. Scratch Moss turns out to be a fairly typical bleak post-industrial northern English village, ravaged by the loss of the mining industry in the 1980s. Yet no-one ever seems to move away, despite lack of prospects in the area.
Having lived in Manchester as a teenager, I particularly enjoyed the northern setting, another welcome break from “ye olde Devon village” so beloved by English folk horror writers. Barnett proves with this publication that typical UK folk horror doesn’t have to be set in picturesque southern villages with thatched cottages or on mysterious Highland islands à la The Wicker Man, but can just as well take place in gritty, grimy, desolate, post-industrial places. As a northerner himself — he was born in West Yorkshire — his knowledge of the place and its history comes through in every line. Born in 1970, Barnett is roughly the same age as his protagonist Joe and would have experienced the upheavals of Thatcher’s Britain first-hand.
Barnett has created a masterpiece of folk horror, weaving together the different timelines and slowly revealing the secrets the village has been holding onto for over 150 years. He expertly uses common folk horror features such as isolation, ancient beliefs and ritual, an outsider (in this case Joe) coming in and gradually realising that there is something dark and sinister going on. I loved the slow build-up of tension and the many clues Barnett scatters throughout the book that not all is at it seems. There is also the threatening nature of the land itself: the menacing evil of “Red Clogs” lurking in the old mine shafts and popping up in every timeline. Finally, the most sinister folk horror trope of all: the locals know of the horror taking place and willingly participate in it.
The village is shrouded in an atmosphere of mystery and foreboding. As someone who’s been hiking in the Lake District in November and experienced many a Glasgow winter, I know how depressing the landscape up north can get. But this is not it. This is proper ghost story territory. Right from the start of coal mining in 1885, there are rumours that something dark and evil lurks below ground in the mines: “Red Clogs”, who brings prosperity but in return demands regular sacrifices. Barnett knows the genre well: the idea that the countryside, rural communities, and ancient folk traditions harbour something deeply sinister is entirely in tune with folk horror writing, which draws its dread from isolation, paganism, superstition, and the sense that the land itself is malevolent. Though not exactly pagan, the inhabitants of Scratch Moss no longer attend church, something that the local reverend in the 1905 timeline finds deeply disturbing. Throughout the decades, children keep going missing, but nobody ever mentions it. Another mystery presented to the reader: despite Joe Collier’s father being a convicted murderer, he is revered by the community. When Joe returns, he reconnects with people from his past and starts to remember events that happened just before he left right after his father’s arrest for the murder of a local man. It’s all there: a murder, a monster, sinister rituals in an abandoned church, secrets and mysteries in a forbidding landscape and I’m loving it.
The rituals and traditions of the villagers do not stem from ancient, rural paganism, but rather from the traditions of a close-knit mining community whose livelihoods depend on the back-breaking, dangerous work down in the pit. In his novel, Barnett shows that traditions don’t have to be ancient to be deeply meaningful to a community and that there is just as much mythology and many deeply held beliefs within an industrial mining community than there is rural folklore. A quick glance at the books on world mythology on my bookshelf can confirm this. I own quite a few books with tales from the Ruhr Area and the Lower Rhine region, wedged between Scottish and Irish folktales. Scratch Moss’ “Red Clogs” is just as terrifying as any fearsome mythical Scottish creature. The novel may lack the blue sky, blinding sunlight, and colourful flowers of 2019’s Midsommar and the spooky atmosphere of a haunted English country house found in other horror stories but is nevertheless a perfect piece of folk horror writing. The suspense is thrilling and the ending leaves you wondering what will happen to the next generation living in Scratch Moss village. Has the curse been broken or will history repeat itself? Barnett leaves you wanting more and I certainly can’t wait for his next release, expected this coming autumn.
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