Skeletons in the Snow
Ideas for Writing about Winter Time Horror
As we inch towards longer, warmer days in the northern hemisphere, the weather becomes more temperamental; a struggle ensues between the rain and sunlight of the coming spring and stubborn ice and snowfall of winter. It makes for a messy mix that hides the dry, bitter ground under deep mounds of snow, or reveals huge pits of mud, blackening the shrinking edges of ice. Sometimes the melted snow reveals things we left behind before the snowfall, stuff lost under the fallen leaves of Autumn that we paid not a second thought to during the blur of the holidays. This week's post examines the things that are probably best left forgotten beneath the snow; stories of horrors that spring up before the flowers and haunt the frosted windows of our homes, inching closer now that the Christmas lights are all down, letting the darkness of winter creep in.
Wintertime before humans had the means to heat their homes without much fuss or keep their stores full without madly scrambling to hunt what animals had not yet retreated into hibernation for meat. Even well into the Industrial Revolution, some poorer folks were still at the mercy of winter's wicked grip. Today, for most of the world winter can be, at worst, a time of inconveniences, and at best, a time for engaging in outdoor sports or just curling up by the glow of a fireplace or TV screen. Usually popular media in America relegates horror to Halloween and autumn with the occasional summer slasher story, however winter in its extremes can certainly be more horrifying than a brisk fall night. The weather alone is something that many people today often dread; blankets of snow and sheets of ice create a silent world of white outside our windows. While there is a certain purity to it all, the sight can also be one of a lonely, eerie land devoid of any life, especially when the wind howls, gusting over the fresh fallen dust like an omen of a dread thing's approach.
As much as I do enjoy the Halloween season, my interest in horror oddly peaks around winter. I'm sure this is due in part to having first delved into the Call of Cthulhu tabletop roleplaying game in the winter of my freshman year of college. The adventure we played wasn't winter-themed but for some reason the act of playing the game inside while the world outside was a bleak whiteout made it feel all the more atmospheric and intimate—like telling a ghost story by firelight. Lovecraft's own story At The Mountains of Madness incorporates snowy landscapes into his world of cosmic horror, making the ice of the Antarctic a tomb of the terrifying origins of humanity and our alien predecessors that ruled Earth eons prior. In the era of Lovecraft, Antarctica was still mostly an unexplored continent, and without the technology to safely examine remotely it as we have nowadays the few adventurers daring enough to brave its challenges had to use only the technology available to them at the time. As such, it limited how far they could travel and how long they could remain in that inhospitable environment, during which time they would be completely at the mercy of the elements. Mountains of Madness includes what would happen if such explorers were truly not alone in the snow, quietly stalked by monsters who had yet been undisturbed for time immeasurable.
In October 2018, my first traditionally published short story was featured in Hiraeth Publishing’s (then Alban Lake Publishing) City in the Ice anthology, a Cthulhu Mythos horror collection set in Antarctica. My story “The Smoke in the Ice” took some light cues from Mountains but overall it thrived on the arctic, wintry setting alone to create a desolate location explored by doomed sailors. One of my favorite parts of writing the story was describing the vast, frigid expanse that was the icy channels of Antarctica the main characters sailed through:
[The] McLeer passed the derelict, headed towards the distant peninsula of ice. It stood out against the horizon, a line a solid white segregating the black-blue of the sea and the icy-blue of the sky. Osbert and Norton paced above deck as the sailors scurried about, keeping the vessel as smooth as possible on its course.
The glaciers loomed over McLeer forty-five minutes away from their stop at Edward II. The vessel drew its portside closer to the coast, to the white walls tinged with blue-green sculpted and marred by nature. Some areas of the glaciers sloped and curved outward as if crafted by the hands of an ancient, artificer god. Even its ruined spots were a marvel to behold; huge crags of ice jutted out over the waves, crooked and more archetypal of the dangers in the Arctic.
Although Antarctica is wintry year-round, it is the perfect setting to practice capturing the desolation a crisp, empty field of snow and ice exudes before the wind, rain, and sun disturbs it. Also, it is the perfect place to hide grand, sweeping secrets that can horrify and strike awe into characters and readers alike as Lovecraft does so in Mountains. Focusing on the wide emptiness winter can sometimes bring benefits mostly cosmic horror as it makes human subjects in the story seem far smaller within the scope of the setting, completely hapless to the things that may lie hidden beneath the mountains and fields of pure white.
Another winter-themed horror story I published in Eerie River Publishing’s Monsters & Mayhem anthology (2022), titled “Bölvetr.” The story took place in North America during the Viking Age and features a group of Norse warriors encountering a wendigo—a creature that embodies the harshness of winter and the hunger it brings to the ill-prepared. Here, I had more opportunities to create a darker, claustrophobic atmosphere in the wilds of the uncolonized Northeast. Unlike “The Smoke in the Ice”, “Bölvetr” had a much smaller scope that focused on individualized human fear provoked by the dangers of the wilderness rather than unearthing secrets about the vastness of the universe. The protagonist, Torhild, must navigate this unfamiliar world whilst being hunted by an apex predator, knowing full well what waits for her beyond death:
Torhild clutched her wound and ran into the dark, her eyes straining in the blue winter’s pall. Suni’s shouts of battle faded as she wove through the pines. Low-hanging branches scratched her face. Snow dusted her short, braided hair, drifting down the back of her neck and melting against her fear-warmed skin. Her flight’s speed increased when a howl broke through the air—its mournful ululation combined tones of a man in pain, a wolf’s call for the hunt, and blizzard winds shrieking through the forest. Of the legends concerning trolls, ghosts, and other monstrous forest-dwellers, there were none Torhild knew of like the thing chasing her.
This new land is full of terrors, she thought, further realizing the danger of the weald itself. Even if she escaped the thing, found shelter amid the trees, and endured the night, the native people of the new land—called Skraelings in her tongue—outnumbered her.
No doubt they hunt in these woods too, she thought. The forest lay quiet, with the trees’ moans and rasps being the only things to break the stillness; the monster’s howl drifted in on occasion, with the spans between its utterances lengthening.
The air raked Torhild’s nostrils and her throat, into her lungs. The chill, watery scent of snow rooted in the back of her throat and made her long for thin smoke from a mellow fire. Her gut churned. The very ends of her limbs and digits fought to keep warm as she moved, but the cold gnawed at them and they screamed for respite.
I cannot stop, she told her body, I must stay out of Helheim. Her manly allies who perished standing, with weapons in hand, would find themselves in the hall of Odin’s army. There they would wait until the end of the world, fighting, feasting, and drinking. However, no seat waited there for Torhild or any woman; Odin demanded the best fighting men in their prime. Only Helheim had room for her. Though it would give respite at least, the chill of its neighboring Niflheim shrouded it in eternal winter. She could bring her wealth there, but she had none upon her person and no grave to put it with her; Torhild had no intention of dying poor.
For pre-industrial cultures, winter was a time to be greatly feared. The Norse and other Germanic-speaking peoples had an especially bitter relationship with nature itself and winter was the domain of death and monsters. It was the time of year where, if anything went wrong, entire families or towns could be wiped out by hunger or the freezing cold—a slow and unceremonious way to go. In the most extreme cases, the process of starvation could put victims' consideration of societal norms to the test, and lead to the abhorrent practice of cannibalism for survival if the need for survival won over. Situations such as this gave rise to the story of the wendigo, a person transformed into or possessed by an evil spirit after the consumption of human flesh. Such creatures have fascinated me for years, the pop culture interpretations capturing my attention when I was younger. More recently, however, I've looked more into the traditional stories about this creature and in “Bölvetr” I presented the wendigo as slightly more in line with how Algonquin-speaking peoples describe the wendigo rather than the deer-headed monster most often perpetuated in memes and Hollywood horror movies. The image of an emaciated corpse plagued by eternal hunger is a subtler portrayal of a creature born out of starvation in the winter, truly a cautionary tale for those who must contend with winter even at its harshest.
A series of winter horror videos I quite enjoyed, which I mentioned in my post on analog horror back in October, is The Winter of ‘83, which combines the elements of cosmicism and smaller-scale horror all within the seasonal theme of winter horror. Since this series is a great, standalone example of analog horror storytelling, I'd be loath to spoiler anything so I'll recommend watching it if you have any interest before scrolling past the poster below.
Barring the first episode, Winter of '83 mostly utilizes edited public television broadcasts—or original segments imitating such styles—to tell its story. These create a mellow, relaxed atmosphere with hints of unease and uncertainty looming overhead as the story progresses. Anyone who has lived in snowier regions of the US might have a keen sense of nostalgia watching the town council meetings and mock commercials or weather alerts discussing the impending snowstorm. Winter of '83 succeeds in lulling viewers into believing they could actually be watching archival—or even live—recordings of this strange massacre of an entire town. The horror elements, as mentioned above, are cosmic in origin, appearing as alien, carnivorous lifeforms that infest the snow itself. Winter of '83 uses the conventions of small-scale horror to keep the threat confined to a single, small town in the Midwestern United States, making the scares and implications more effective as a result. It remains in line with the philosophies of ghost stories wherein this fluke event comes and goes quickly and quietly, just like a snowfall being suddenly melted away by a warm, sunny day.
When writing winter horror stories, there is ripe opportunity to build an unsettling atmosphere as the days grow shorter, deep mounds of snow shrink our world, confining us to our homes, forcing us to listen to the winds howl and bring down more showers of white, leaving us to wonder when this time of discontent will end. Here, writers can really relish in painting “word pictures” of black, blue, and white to describe the frigid, sleeping landscape of Winter. The cold itself can also prompt raw descriptions of how characters might feel themselves getting consumed by the bitter weather, slowly falling into a deep slumber from which they could not awaken—with the salvation of spring only being several days away!
Horror by its nature is meant to force its characters and readers out of their comfort zones. By the same token, winter also accomplishes this as we scramble to salvage what comforts we can from the warmer months, but ultimately new challenges and anxieties are added to our daily routines. Although these are usually things that involve keeping cars defrosted, the roads salted, and heaters running, the introduction of horror aspects can turn these and other challenges into fights for survival. Characters who expect a relaxing evening inside during a snowstorm could be forced to brave it to find a new place of safety after their home and hearth becomes upturned by an unwelcome force. Cozy houses become deathtraps once the fires are snuffed out and strange things climb in through the cracked windows.
Unlike the typical “spooky season” of Autumn, which provides a naturally gothic atmosphere many horror stories enjoy, Winter is the deadlier of the four seasons. Some cultures, such as the Celts, believed Winter began right after the harvest, around the same time when the veil between our mortal world and the world of the dead is thinnest. Who’s to say that many of the dead simply return to their native world once the harvest is over? In Norse mythology, Helheim—the house of the dead—is shrouded in the cold of Niflheim, thus the mortal world in winter would be indistinguishable to lonely spirits that wander out of the otherworld. Perhaps their tales could be ones of pure tragedy, or perhaps there’s a reason they went to the bitter land of the dead and are repeating the habits that damned them in life. You need not be restrained by culture as most traditions in parts of the world that must endure snow for part of the year likely have their own folktales about creatures that are one with the frigid wastes and would attempt to upturn our comforts or attempts to survive the Winter.
Thanks for reading this week’s post! What is the scariest thing you find about Winter? Click the button below to leave it in the comments!
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Yes, winter is a creepy time where we cling to the comfort of our homes which shelter us from the frigid nights and howling winds. What would we do, what would happen to us without our shelter and sources of heat and electricity?
I swear the temperature dropped a few degrees while I was reading this post. As you said, the winter cold is relentless and unforgiving, and anything that can survive/exist in such a hash environment is deadly by nature. Also, we associate death itself with cold, so winter’s grip can naturally lead to scary thoughts.