Gay Ghosts Manifesto
Folklore:
Ghost stories spread through campfires, sleepovers, and whispers. No editors or hierarchy determines a cannon or rules, it is an oral tradition. Queerness and queer counterculture also share this rhizomatic lack of a hierarchy. Without an organized hierarchy, queer people decide their stories and destinies parallel to a dominant straight, cis narrative.
What do we whisper around a campfire?
Horror and the Taboo:
Naming and embracing fear helps us ask why we fear certain things. What scares us hits on deep instincts that many people do not question.
Why are we afraid?
Camp:
Gay ghost stories embrace beautiful, filthy, garishly bad taste. Horror embraces the tension between high culture and low culture, and the gay iconography of John Waters, Lee Bowery, and Spirit of Halloween stores in strip malls.
Abby Neale
Abby Neale is the artist behind the zine distro, Lavender Menace Press, which puts out a semi-annual Gay Ghost zine. Their work explores community and the mythology of everyday life. They live in New England, which has lots of cryptids, ghosts, and old graves.
Satan Baphomet
They say all queer people go to hell, they are correct in a way. Queer people are my demons put on the earth to protect the freaks, upset the far too pure, and invite other freaks under their leathery bat wings. Hail Satan, Peace to all the Freaks.
Histories:
Pieces of queer and trans history often have been erased, we have no idea how figures like Joan of Arc, or women in Boston marriages might identify with our contemporary ideas. Blurring the lines between past and present plays a key role in any good ghost story.
How do we seance queer voices of the past?
Dark Humor:
When things feel too big and scary, we need to laugh at them. Laughter and fear closely align in our brains. Laughing at horror helps us feel brave.
Why do we laugh at what we fear?
Monstrosity:
What society finds monstrous: vampires, demons, and zombies, often express fear about society. Villainy often has a queer-coded element, such as Ursula and Jafar in Disney movies. Queer and trans people often become aligned with monsters such as witches or demons as a way of making us seem dangerous or profane. Many queer and trans people have been told they are witches, demons, or are going to hell.
How do we reclaim queer monstrosity?