Carmen Maria Machado’s Pennsylvania Gothic Comic Series is Haunting
The Low, Low Woods encapsulates everything about northeastern PA’s melancholic, creepy vibes
Pennsylvania gets a couple different takes. There’s the vigorous frustration and agitation towards the denizens of Philadelphia and their specific fervor for their sports teams (go birds). There’s Pittsburgh, the midwestern step-sibling of the Northeast Corridor, full of funny words and strange food practices. There’s the poor white, rural population bearing the famous nickname “Pennsatucky.” There’s the Amish and Mennonite communities and their populous farmer’s markets. There’s also the mountains, and the towns nestled in and around them. The Poconos are a far cry from Frankenstein’s Alps or Dracula’s Carpathians but there is a certain amount of unsettling and tempting charm about them and the towns that populate them.
The age-old formula for a gothic story is this: woman + atmosphere. Well, what about two women, and an atmosphere that doesn’t often get a chance to be in the spotlight? National Book Award finalist Carmen Maria Machado hails from the regions north of Philadelphia’s sprawl, where cell reception can get a little dicey and scenic overlooks pepper the interstate. Allentown, an old steel and industry town, is situated in Lehigh County, about an hour away from Mount Pocono. It’s the home of both Machado and the spiritual setting of her graphic novel series The Low, Low Woods.
Stephen King is usually who we think of when it comes to place specific horror. With the exception of a slew of novels set in the wilds of Colorado, the majority of his stories take place in rural Maine. King novels are sold like Maine souvenirs (at least that was my experience this summer in Bar Harbor). But while King has redefined New England spookiness, Maine isn’t the only place that can feel haunted. A haunt is a gathering place. Haunted is to have a disquieting effect. To haunt is to linger or appear habitually. When thought of in these ways, a place like the Poconos feels right at home next to gothic settings of the classics and the eerie world of King.
The Low, Low Woods is set in the fictional Pennsylvania town of Shudder-to-Think. In a state that boasts town names like Echo, Asylum, Free Love Valley, and Bird-in-Hand, the oddly named town feels right at home. It also shares a biography with real-life Pennsylvania town Centralia. Like Centralia, a Pennsylvania coal-mining town now abandoned, Shudder-to-Think is on fire from below: a coal mine blaze has been going for years beneath the surface of the town. And while Centralia was deemed uninhabitable and evacuated, Shudder-to-Think soldiers on, lacking the economic cornerstone that kept it afloat and a sense of purpose. It’s in the midst of its death rattle but that death rattle has been long.
Teenagers and best friends, El and Octavia, begrudgingly live in this town they were born in and find themselves on the cusp of finding freedom or be trapped in it forever. Traditionally, this is a male story: the baseball star trying to get a ride to greatness, the son hoping to avoid following in his father’s footsteps. Here, it’s two young women with very different senses of duty. El’s injured and out of work father leaves her with a sense of responsibility and burden while Octavia’s focus is entirely on her collegiate future. They grapple with this in different ways. El immerses herself in the town’s living history by visiting a nursing home with a therapy dog and speaking to those who have lived in the town all their lives. Octavia looks to the future.
Then there’s the issue of the town’s present dangers. El and Octavia open the story waking up in an empty movie theater and feel as though something has happened while they were asleep (their underwear is inside out). This unknown but remembered trauma brings on anxiety and frustration, coupled with the town’s malignant presence creates a feeling of inherited pain, a loop that won’t close because Shudder-to-Think feeds on it. Starving places need fresh meat.
So, why does it need to be set in a rural, Allentown-adjacent place? It doesn’t, but the fact that it does has given us a taste of a very specific type of atmospheric literature. Machado blends weird fiction (that feels like a combo of Lovecraft’s monsters and Clive Barker’s hellish worlds) and industry’s fossils. The author whose horror-infused, feminist driven short stories feels like she has a wealth of story and mythology to share in this series. The first four issues of the series are out now. Look for hardcover collected edition this fall.
