> The dominant form of folk horror is distinctly anthropocentric, focused on unwitting outsiders who are brutally sacrificed after they stumble into a rural, pagan community. > The critical element of sacrifice is still present in these ‘stone-centric’ folk horror texts, but humans are thoroughly displaced from their central role. Agency and sacrifice belong instead to stone. - There are two types of folk horror, one where the human has the central role and one where nature does. - If agency in the dominant anthropocentric folk horror plot is human, in ‘folk horror without people’, agency tilts drastically toward the non-human. - - [[Folk Horror]] is notable for its centring of human actors. In his 2017 study, Adam Scovell defines folk horror through the four narrative elements of the ‘folk horror chain’: landscape, isolation, a ‘skewed’ belief system, and an often violent and sometimes supernatural culminating event that he terms the ‘happening/summoning. - > All of these folk horror texts, whether anthropocentric or stone-centric, tell stories about the environment, and this essay makes the case for folk horror as an important source of ecological crisis fiction - - **Appurtenances**:: belonging, possession, relationship, or origin, or an affix that expresses this; something subordinate to another, more important thing; adjunct; accessory. #card > The ‘pagan’ religions of both ‘Children of the Corn’ and The Wicker Man slide into resemblance with Christianity, then, as both are revealed as systems that humans devise to explicate and control ‘natural’ disasters. > While corn is bountiful in ‘Children of the Corn’ and crops (notably the famous Summerisle apples) are scarce in The Wicker Man, the community in each narrative believes that the abundance or dearth of crops is contingent on their relationship to their gods and is open to manipulation. - **Diegesis**:: A narrative or plot, typically in a movie. #card > The [[Anthropocentrism]] of ‘Children of the Corn’ and The Wicker Man is also evident in the human-centred history that underlies their rituals. > The anthropocentric folk horror narratives of ‘Children of the Corn’ and The Wicker Man, with their depictions of a community’s sacrificial rites and their ‘pagan’ religions, tell stories about the Anthropocene, the current geological era named for humans’ impact on the planet.