‘Something Followed Us Home’ Is Sure To Make You Sleep With The Lights On

Sasha-Ann Simons (0:31)

Be sure to listen all the way through the podcast for a breakdown of the day's top local stories. But first, these ain't your average monster tales. A new anthology called Something Followed Us Home, Tales of Latin-A Horror, is bringing together chilling, thought-provoking, scary stories from more than a dozen Latin American authors.

The spooky collection explores everything from the supernatural to real-life massacres to fears involving AI.

And it's edited by Chicago's own Cynthia Pelayo, an award-winning horror novelist and poet.

In this episode of The Pod, we'll talk with her about bringing this group of 17 writers together, and why Latin-A horror is a genre to keep your eyes on. We dove right into talking about the collection of stories and I was curious about something I had read. Did it really take Cynthia three to four years to put anthology together? Here's her response.

Cynthia Pelayo (1:23)

It was three years in the making, yes.

Sasha-Ann Simons (1:25)

Oh my goodness. So tell me, what did that all entail?

Cynthia Pelayo (1:28)

So I wanted to pull together some of the best Latin American authors working across genre.

And so it entailed working across multiple countries, multiple variations of Spanish. These are authors I admire. We have international best selling author, like Agustina Busterica, who has sold millions of copies of her novel Tender is the Flesh. We have Mariana Enriquez. We have a Pulitzer Prize nominee, with Zocho Gonzalez. We have New York Times best sellers. I mean, I'm just like in awe that they all said yes.

Sasha-Ann Simons (2:11)

You reached out as editor to all the heavy hitters, right? Whether they were in the United States or not.

And you said, all right, I want you all to jump on this horror project. And it sounds like it was a resounding yes.

Cynthia Pelayo (2:24)

It was yes. I was like, oh my gosh, they all came back and said yes to me. So it's been like the best group art project ever.

Sasha-Ann Simons (2:33)

Yeah. What keeps you drawn to this horror genre?

Cynthia Pelayo (2:38)

I feel like horror is the genre of truth.

Especially with these authors, they don't shy away from examining societal, economic, environmental issues. And they're able to look at things from such a fascinating perspective. It's not just horror authors that we have in the collection. We have young adult authors who, this is their first time writing a horror adult story. We even have Alex Sagura, who is a crime writer and also writes comic books. And so it was just really fascinating to see their perspective.

Sasha-Ann Simons (3:20)

Yeah. And you also talked with my colleague, Embar Cologne, for the Sun Times, and she mentions how you had sort of a prompt for these writers, where you asked them, what keeps you up at night?

Cynthia Pelayo (3:32)

Yeah. So I was really fascinated because some of us are in the United States, others are in Mexico or came to the United States from Brazil or Colombia.

We have Dominican authors in the Dominican Republic. So my question to them was, what haunts you? What story, folklore, was there a tale from a parent, a grandparent, an aunt that they told you that just kind of lingers with you? What haunts you from where you're from?

Sasha-Ann Simons (4:03)

And as a result, we get sort of a mix here. We have something about a man possessed by a demon, a witch creature with a crocodile head.

There's your story inspired by a real life massacre. This is scary stuff.

Cynthia Pelayo (4:18)

Yeah. So it was with my story. I've always wanted to write about the Ponce Massacre, which is a true event. It happened in Puerto Rico.

A committee organized a parade to commemorate the abolition of slavery on the island. And the United States fired on the marchers that day. And it was a horrific event that has lingered with me, because it's something that my father told me about many years ago. I really wanted to explore it.

Sasha-Ann Simons (4:52)

Yeah, and so you don't have just traditional horror in here. As I teased earlier, you got to tell us about how one writer grapples with artificial intelligence in here.

Cynthia Pelayo (5:04)

Oh, gosh. So we have an author, we have actually a couple of authors, who wrote about their graduate school experiences here in the United States, and those type of fears that emerged from that. And so one author incorporated a Brazilian folk legend and also examined the rise and proliferation of artificial intelligence. So it was just completely scary.

Sasha-Ann Simons (5:30)

Oh, wow. I think AI is, listen, it's scary for a lot of people.