{"id":262988,"date":"2025-11-05T09:01:24","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T09:01:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262988\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T09:01:24","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T09:01:24","slug":"new-anthology-brings-horror-to-the-tundra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/262988\/","title":{"rendered":"New anthology brings horror to the tundra"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new anthology of Arctic horror stories includes modern interpretations of Inuit myths, zombies on the tundra and cannibal children.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you encounter scary stories, in most cultures, they have that high interest value where they could be a little morbid or graphic or very dark and macabre, and usually these stories kind of have some sort of inherent lesson in them that might make it cautionary in nature,\u201d said writer Jamesie Fournier, describing why traditional Inuit stories often take on scary themes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat seems to work well is when you have these darker elements at play in a story, it makes it especially memorable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo when you make them gruesome, especially for younger folks, that is something that will stand out in their mind \u2014 if they find something to be afraid of, that fear also keeps them safe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fournier\u2019s work can be found in a new anthology of scary tales released by Inhabit Media.<\/p>\n<p>Taaqtumi 2: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories is the second volume in the series, released on Sept. 2. It includes 12 scary stories from a variety of Inuit writers, including Gayle Kabloona, Aviaq Johnston and Terrie Kusugak.<\/p>\n<p>Fournier described his story Mask and Bone as primarily being about a conversation between an uncle and his nephew.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/nunatsiaq.com\/ads\/251010-legislative-assembly\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"373\" height=\"331\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/A-14610.93.gif\" class=\"no-lazy-load wp-post-image\" title=\"\" aria-hidden=\"true\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The uncle describes how things used to be back in the day when he was growing up and the stories he had heard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd it goes from there,\u201d Fournier said, not wanting to give too much away.<\/p>\n<p>The big, bad monster in the story is Amautalik, an Inuit mythological creature that gets its name from the amauti, which is a parka with a hood on its back to carry children.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a creature that used be able to steal people on the land and carry them in their amauti and then they would never be seen again,\u201d Fournier said.<\/p>\n<p>He said he got the idea for Mask and Bone from masks his mother\u2019s friend used to display on the wall of her home.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe had these Inuk masks on the wall of her bedroom and they always scared me, they always creeped me out \u2014 these almost porcelain masks with fur trim around them,\u201d Fournier said.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/nunatsiaq.com\/ads\/251031-marketplace-black-friday\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"373\" height=\"331\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/251031.100.98.png\" class=\"no-lazy-load wp-post-image\" title=\"\" aria-hidden=\"true\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would find myself just staring at these masks and being slightly disturbed by it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Fournier, a part-Inuk writer born and raised in the Northwest Territories, moved to Iqaluit in 2022 to learn Inuktitut. He said he splits his time between the N.W.T., Ontario and Nunavut.<\/p>\n<p>He writes horror stories, children\u2019s stories,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nunatsiaq.com\/stories\/article\/aliens-tomatoes-and-the-north-jamesie-fournier-takes-the-proust-questionnaire\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">poetry, screenplays, and performs spoken word<\/a>. In 2022, Fournier published his first\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/nunatsiaq.com\/stories\/article\/modern-horror-and-inuit-storytelling-blended-in-new-book\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">full-length novel<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new anthology of Arctic horror stories includes modern interpretations of Inuit myths, zombies on the tundra and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":["post-262988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}