Way Out: A Queer Horror Podcast
The Essays
These five nonfiction essays accompany the fictional Way Out podcast, with a welcome message and four companion pieces. Each one tackles a different aspect of the project, horror history, and queerness.
Listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music.
Contents:
0. Welcome to Way Out
1. A Knife Falls to the Floor
2. “Friendly Sounds”
3. The “Other”
4. “It’s a Good Place”
0. Welcome to Way Out
If I try to trace it back, this project began well over a decade ago, long before I knew what Friday the 13th (1980) or Halloween (1978) were. It didn’t begin in college or in high school or even with a traditional horror movie.
Rather, it began the first time I saw Clue (1985).
I was in Maryland celebrating Thanksgiving with my extended family. It was a tradition; each year, my parents, brother, and I make the two-hour journey to my aunt and uncle’s house outside Baltimore. It remains one of my favorite traditions. We spend the entire day laughing, cooking, watching the parade and football game, and taking a long walk after dinner. When the sun set and the food was eaten, we’d say our goodbyes and head home, my heart buzzing with excitement for the next Thanksgiving.
I don’t know exactly which year the infamous Clue viewing occurred, but what I can say for sure is I was much too young for it. The film is rated PG, which made me think it was suitable to watch. Unfortunately, the young Sam did not understand the complexities and bureaucracy of movie ratings. I now know that a PG rating in 1985 does not reflect the same content as a PG rating today, but alas it’s too late to dwell.
My two cousins, brother, and I crowded around the television in their game room, a sun-filled space off the main living area that always felt like a kid’s dream. We were surrounded by board games, video games, movies, toys, and more. We would spend hours playing Guitar Hero, trying with all our might to produce a flawless rendition of the Survivor classic “Eye of the Tiger.” But that day, we were in the mood for a movie.
Someone suggested Clue, since we all loved board games. We popped in the DVD (yes, back when that was how to watch a movie) and sat at attention.
I’d played the game before, so I knew there was going to be a murder and an investigation. But that’s about it.
The movie began calmly enough. Nothing came as a total shock. For the first 34 minutes, at least.
Then, six characters, led by Michael McKean’s Mr. Green, sprint to the kitchen. For a moment, everything seems fine; Mr. Green quietly and fearfully looks around before letting out a relieved sigh and saying, “she’s not here” (The “she” in question is the mansion’s cook, Mrs. Ho, played by Kellye Nakahara).
Like Mr. Green, I am at ease for a moment. Maybe Mrs. Ho is okay! Maybe she is hiding somewhere away from the kitchen! Maybe she’s gotten away!
But this peace is short-lived: Mrs. Ho tips out of the wood-paneled meat freezer directly next to Mr. Green. A knife handle protrudes from her back; she has been killed. Mr. Green catches her, proclaiming, “I didn’t do it!”
At that instant, I burst into tears. I wish I was kidding, but the second the freezer door swung open, I felt such a deep, profound hopelessness and terror. I ran out of the game room, unable to finish the movie.
The scene was not particularly gruesome nor really all that scary. There’s hardly any blood and Mrs. Ho’s face is not a frozen mask of fear. She actually has a relatively blank expression with just a small trickle of blood running down her chin. It wasn’t the imagery that scared me. Nor was it the acting.
But, there was something about the scene—that specific emotional toying—that really got to me. I couldn’t bear to finish the movie for a long time after that.
That was the first time I remember being terrified by a movie. And I don’t mean “surprise-scared” like when there’s a cheap jumpscare that causes everyone in a theater to recoil. No, this was a deeper feeling. I couldn’t get that vision out of my head, that something so mundane as a kitchen appliance could have a dead body in it. I started giving my own house’s fridge a side-eye. Who could come crashing out of it? I thought the kitchen in Clue was safe—Mr. Green checked it, after all! He said it was safe!—but my trust was broken. How can I trust my surroundings now?
My love for horror grew like a callus, like breaking in a new pair of shoes. They may tear up and destroy the skin on your feet at first, but then you get used to the shoes, the material becomes worn, and sometimes the skin on your feet becomes a little tougher. Or when you start going to the gym and your hands develop calluses after using the barbells regularly. After that initial period of discomfort and pain, you return to that activity or pair of shoes all the stronger.
That scene in Clue was the moment I put on those new shoes. Or picked up the barbells. Yes, I was scared. Yes, I couldn’t look at my fridge for a few days. But I grew past it. I developed those first few layers of tough skin.
I don’t remember the next scary movie I saw, but I remember this same pattern repeating. I was, and still am, a very anxious person. But the horror genre gave me a safe space, an outlet, to feel fear without the physical danger. It was like finding a cheat code; I feel so much anxiety on a daily basis, but now I’ve discovered this way to release it.
And not only that… the movies were good! They told stories I resonated with: stories of people fighting to be seen, of the dangers of masculinity and a homogeneous society, of escape and liberation. Sure, they have blood and guts and ghosts and murder. But, at their core, they are human stories. With an added dash of fear.
From then on, I treasured this superpower. This fear inoculation. I wanted more than anything to have a kind of mind that can translate real emotions and situations into these heightened, frightening tales.
I’ve previously written random snippets and half-baked ideas, but Way Out was my first true foray into creating this kind of world. It’s not perfect by any means, but this year-long endeavor gave me the opportunity to try my hand at this type of storytelling. Each episode examines a different facet of queer horror, a genre that has a sentimental place in my gay little heart. There’s a rich history to unpack, and I provide here only an overview of the genre.
It’s strange to say this project was years in the making, but it’s true.
Take a seat at one of the booths, order a coffee, and allow me to introduce you to Way Out.
1. A Knife Falls to the Floor
The clatter of cheap silver cutlery ushers us into our first story. It’s not an unusual sound for a diner; waiters experience the tinkle of fallen utensils like alarm clocks, jolting them into action. Their reaction speed is paramount: wait too long, the customer gets angry.
But it’s not the main character’s reaction that gets us started. Instead, it’s the mysterious guy seated at the counter. Where some late-night diner patrons would be eager to continue their meal, he simply stares and shakes in the moments after the knife falls. He’s unresponsive. Not exactly the situation you want to be in at midnight in the middle of nowhere.
While some would be content to just write the man off as a strange character, our narrator takes it one step further, attempting to explain why this man is behaving in such a way. After all, what else is a waiter to do during a slow night shift?
Maybe the man is just embarrassed at having dropped his utensil, but the reaction could, just have easily, been a trauma response to the knife itself. The knife immediately calls to Scream, the 1996 meta-horror blockbuster in which a masked killer slaughters high schoolers with a wickedly sharp kitchen knife. Being a horror fan, our narrator jumps on this connection, concocting a Scream-esque, slasher backstory for the stranger in front of him.
But, wait, let’s back up.
What is a slasher? Where did the subgenre come from?
Put simply, a slasher film includes a killer targeting and slaughtering a group of people, usually due to some event in the past. There are violent kills, a body count, a motive, and a few more classic tropes, like the “Final Girl.” But, more on that later.
Standout slashers include Halloween, Scream, Friday the 13th, and even newer entries like Netflix’s There’s Someone Inside Your House. They’re blood-soaked, dastardly fun excursions into the minds of killers and the collective American consciousness.
Slashers were born from fear, as most horror movies are. But what makes slashers unique is how they were born of a fear of the mundane. A fear that those around you could be hiding deadly secrets, could snap, could whip out a weapon at any moment.
As Courtney L. Youngblood explains, film professor Dr. Henry Benshoff’s research illustrates how “changes in the depiction of Hollywood’s movie monsters have mirrored changes in societal attitudes towards homosexuals.” He specifically points to horror’s obsession with bodily fluids, like blood, vomit, and other gore, as a symbol of the American public’s fear of the AIDS epidemic. During that time, queerness was demonized and all physical interaction seemed to hold the ominous burden of a possible infection. But, even as our understanding of the virus evolved and these fears were disproven, general support and acceptance of queer people lagged. In Benshoff’s view, the aversion to viscera and blood “neatly dovetails” into AIDS hysteria and traces this trend from the 1930s to the late 1990s.
Just as these movies reflected the fears of the 1980s, at the same time they also acted as perverse morality educators. I know, right? Let’s just take that in. Horror films teaching right from wrong?
Let’s consider the “Final Girl” trope. Most notably its appearance in Halloween (1978). Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is the epitome of responsibility and purity. Rather than sneak out to see a boy or drink or any other “typical” teenage activities, Strode stays in and babysits. This decision is not only symbolic of her role in the film—a morally pure opposition to the villainous Michael Myers—but also of the messaging. Strode, a virginal youth, survives Myers’ violent attacks (and goes on to appear in nine of the franchise's 13 films), which starkly contrasts the film’s opening moments when Myers kills his sister following her sexual experience with a man.
Strode’s “purity” and subsequent victory over Myers offer viewers a crude sort of moral code. It’s a rulebook found across the subgenre, as cited in the essay “Notes on Sleepaway Camp” by Viet Dinh.
“Slashers, by contrast, make the victims the transgressors. Consider the oft-stated ‘rules’ for surviving a slasher film: no sex, no drugs, no wandering off alone. What are these rules if not conservative morality? What is the killer if not a brutal enforcer of this morality?” (from page 280 of It Came From The Closet)
Using this logic, when a “Final Girl” like the innocent Strode survives, it represents the triumph of traditional morality. This pattern was a key feature of slasher movies, but today’s films take different approaches. Interrogating them on a critical level is essential to fully understanding what otherwise could be written off as a gory bloodbath.
In “The Egg Shoveler,” I wanted to do my own scene of a slasher. It’s heavily inspired by the famous car scene in Scream 2 (1997), but with my own queer spin. Where slashers usually have some big killer reveal and explanation, I opted to remain vague. Like the narrator says, it could be lazy writing. But fear lingers in the unknown. If you know exactly who the culprit is and why they committed those crimes, it’s easy to rationalize away your fear. However, “rational” isn’t something I necessarily look for in horror.
There is a joy in getting the answer in the end, as the Scream franchise’s now-iconic killer reveals indicate. Finally getting to see how everything panned out puts the final brushstroke in the slasher’s portrait of American society. Who is under the Ghostface mask? Why did Michael Myers kill those babysitters? Who is terrorizing Camp Crystal Lake? You’ll have to wait till the film’s climactic final moments to find out.
As for “The Egg Shoveler,” can you really blame a sleep-deprived waiter for leaving the ending ambiguous?
2. “Friendly Sounds”
While working on this episode, my family was in the process of moving houses. We had lived in my childhood home for my entire life up until that point. Our neighborhood was still being built when my parents bought in, overseeing the construction of that brick single-family home on a bendy road in suburban Pennsylvania. But over the years, they began to outgrow the house, adding two kids and a dog to the family. We lived there until I was 21, when we moved a short drive away.
My family was the first to occupy the house. It had neither a sordid history nor any evil associated with it. No mysterious incidents or anything of the sort. But this didn’t prevent my younger self from being convinced it was haunted.
One night in particular sticks out. My mother, father, and I were watching Stranger Things when I heard a person enter our laundry room through the garage and call out for “the dogs,” meaning our dog and our neighbor’s dog, whom we had been taking care of that weekend. It was a female voice. My mom also whipped her head around. And—get this!—the dogs both jumped up at the same moment and ran to the laundry room.
My dad looked at us during the commotion, wondering why we weren’t watching the show.
“Didn’t you just hear that?” my mom and I said, our voices overlapping.
He was confused. He hadn’t heard anything.
I even got up to check the laundry room and it was empty, apart from the two dogs jumping at the door. I hadn’t heard the door open for someone to exit, yet nobody was there. But, hadn’t I just heard a voice in here? I looked around the garage and found nothing.
My mom agreed with me, though. She heard it too. And so did the dogs, apparently.
We tried rewinding the show and determined the noise couldn’t have come from the episode. The whole time, my dad did not believe there had even been a sound.
I still don’t have an explanation. I fully believe I heard someone, and I have one human and two animals backing me up. Yet at the same time, I also have no physical evidence and one naysayer. I don’t know if it really was a haunting—and I seriously doubt it was—but… come on! That’s creepy, right?
As I shoved books and childhood ephemera into boxes for our move, these spatially bound memories flooded back, that one specifically piquing my interest even years later. Looking around my empty bedroom, I felt an overwhelming gratitude for having a house in which I was and felt safe, even if there were some weird but ultimately harmless occurrences.
In saying goodbye to the only home I had ever known, I was drawn to house-based content, specifically haunted house movies. They brought me a peculiar comfort in a time when so many of my emotions were tied to a physical place.
I noticed patterns in these films, leading me to dive deeper into why home is perhaps the most frightening setting for a horror film. Not only do they distort a safe haven into a fatal battleground, but they also invite deeper critical reading. In Laura Alyssa Springman’s thesis titled Haunted Homes and Restless Ghosts: (In)Visible Structures of Power and Violence in American Haunted House Films, Springman explains:
“Ghosts and hauntings are innately tied to marginalized groups because of the pain, death, and precarity that go hand in hand with their histories and identities. Because the ghost is a liminal figure, and because precarity is a reality for many different identities, a wide variety of readings can be performed using its presence.” (from page 73)
In “The Mother and Daughter,” Amy and Kendra are on the run, ending up at a house that just may be haunted. They hear strange noises, find items in places they didn’t leave them, and even witness physical changes. So often, these experiences are seen as threatening and scary. Understandably so.
A haunting in a movie is a problem to be solved, requiring experts of one discipline or another. On their first night, Amy and Kendra are at the mercy of the house and whatever’s inside it. But, rather than being harassed and attacked by these supernatural occurrences, Amy and Kendra are protected. In fact, the house attempts to protect them from intruders and unexpected guests.
As Springman’s thesis details, ghosts are inextricably linked to marginalization. Perhaps this haunting, rather than targeting Amy and Kendra, recognizes a kinship with them. The traumas of their pasts unite them. The house becomes a sanctuary. A fortress.
We also see out narrator’s heart seep into the story, hoping that the woman and her daughter, despite their past, will find their own safe place. Because that’s what home is supposed to be, right? Somewhere to not just be safe, but to feel safe. Amy closes with this reassurance, that even though scary things are happening around them, they are safe.
3. The “Other”
Life is an exercise in compartmentalization. We block off time for work, for meals, for sleep, for a special, fun outing (if there’s a second of freedom in the eternally busy schedule). In those blocks, we operate as a masked version of ourselves. The “work you” is different from the “meal you” is different from the “fun you.”
We’re all accustomed to this way of living, and so-called “work-life balance” has been discussed to death. But beyond being studied, this balance has been interrogated on the screen and on the page in more eloquent and simple ways than I can manage.
Just look at Darren Aronofsky’s masterpiece Black Swan (2010). Natalie Portman’s Nina immerses herself in her work: simultaneously embodying the innocence of the White Swan and the sensuality of the Black Swan in the dance company’s production of the ballet Swan Lake. The emotional and physical strain, heightened by a charged rivalry with fellow dancer Lily (Mila Kunis), hurls her into a psychedelic and transformative nightmare. It’s a gutsy yet immensely successful look into artistic obsession and what can happen when the boundary between yourself and your craft becomes blurred.
But for those of us not in a ballet dance company, work-life balance involves separating a “work self” from a “home self.” The office stays at the office. However, this everyday personal-professional division can have harsher repercussions for queer people.
A 2018 study from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation (HRC) underscored the vastly different workplace atmospheres experienced by LGBTQ workers compared to non-LGBTQ workers. Titled “A Workplace Divided: Understanding the Climate for LGBTQ+ Workers Nationwide,” this research found that one in five LGBTQ individuals were told or indirectly encouraged to dress more masculine or feminine, as opposed to one in 24 non-LGBTQ individuals. Additionally, the HRC Foundation found that 46% of LGBTQ workers are closeted at work, with the main fears revolving around possibly being stereotyped, making people feel uncomfortable, and losing connection with coworkers.
It’s not an easy problem to solve. Well, I mean, there is a pretty easy solution: just don’t be homophobic. But more realistically, progress comes in increments and true liberation is an ongoing battle.
Almost every queer person I know has some story about changing or stifling parts of their identity for their own safety at work or, more broadly, for mere acceptance of them as a fellow employee. Whether it’s dressing differently, talking differently, or avoiding certain topics altogether, living as queer in professional spaces can all too often be a verbal minefield.
This experience becomes more literal in the episode “The Sleeper,” which sees Yara unintentionally sever ties between her self and her “work self.” She has lost her connection with her body, relegated to watching herself “de-queerify” as if on autopilot. She becomes a fully detached observer, a result of continuous and intense repression to fit into her workplace. While it’s just a snapshot of one weekday morning in her life, the emotional toll is evident, both on Yara and the Other self. Her compartmentalization is collapsing. But her experience doesn’t do physical harm to Yara; this severance is meant more as an omen. This vague “could-be-real-or-a-dream” moment leaves the power in her hands.
In my final fleeting moments of college, the workplace is a daunting inevitability. As a queer person, I intensely feel the emotional dichotomy of this moment: the precipice of true personal independence confounded with the uncertainty of a job’s culture. Will I be able to truly be me in a place I’ll be spending the majority of my weekdays in? Will I feel the need to tiptoe, to omit, to carefully choose words all to simply fit in? Will I be able to speak up if necessary, and will I even be heard?
The story of extreme repression in “The Sleeper” is a product of my own anxieties. A dramatized version of my worries, a heightened and frightening vision of a future I want to avoid. And what else is horror but taking anxieties and fears to the extreme?
Many horror movies capitalize on this isolated feeling. It’s a reliable fear to tug on, one all people can relate to in one way or another. But it more deeply resonates with queerness, when the very essence of your personhood conflicts with the society around you. It goes as far back as Frankenstein or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. These are places where individuals are so outside the norm that they become a new category altogether. And, by extension, viewers are invited to feel that same fear of not fitting in, of being ostracized, in a heightened and severe version.
It’s weirdly reassuring. While being queer in public was and continues to be a scary and sometimes dangerous experience, horror offers an outlet to both experience that fear as well as channel it into art.
4. “It’s a Good Place”
Figuring out an ending sucks.
What do I want you to walk away with? Did I end it in the right way? Is it a letdown? Too expected? Not believable?
In composing the story of Way Out, I found myself stagnant once it came to writing the dreaded last episode. I fumbled with ideas, even going as far as to draft an episode inspired by The Craft where the narrator comes face-to-face with a coven of warlocks. It didn’t go well. Safe to say: I was struggling.
I had to put everything down for a minute and re-immerse myself in the genre. I have this tendency to think myself into pigeon holes, falling deeper and deeper into the interpretation of possible storylines and in turn paralyzing the actual process of writing. It was in this phase when I realized I just needed to get something down.
And that brings us to “The Hazel-Eyed Stranger.”
Let me address the elephant in the room: the whole “you’ve been dead the whole time!” trope has truly been done to death—pun intended. Perhaps no one did it better than M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense. I’ll never know the true impact of the “twist” since I knew the plot going in, but anticipating the surprise during my first viewing made me more deeply appreciate all the social nuance and tension leading up to it. It broke my heart to see Bruce Willis’ Malcolm interpret his literal inability to interact with living individuals as conflict or isolation. To be such a powerful story both with the context and without it is an impressive feat.
What resonated with me following my repeated viewings of The Sixth Sense was the theme of resistance. An inability to accept a situation. What if… what if Malcolm actually fashioned something out of this new existence? What if he created something to fulfill the needs that weren’t met when he was alive? Would he want to stay in that experience?
With this sentiment, I turned back to my beloved highway diner. My main character has an understandable love-hate relationship with his job, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad place to be. In fact, this acts as another parallel to my own life.
I, like my main character, found a safe space in Way Out. This project and the horror genre itself are my own kind of retreat. As someone in almost total creative control of this endeavor, I saw the blank page as my playground. I could exercise those creative muscles and try new things. They may not always work, or they could be total hits. But what’s important is the freedom to have those successes and failures. It’s a privilege denied to so many.
In thinking about the conclusion of the project and of my college career, I kept returning to the concept of escapism. It’s what this final episode revolves around: the main character has found his escape. From what? He and we don’t know and maybe never will. Yet it’s that gross highway diner he returns to, whether or not it’s real. Whether or not he’s alive.
As queer people, we are sometimes forced out of these safe spaces for whatever reason. A community or support system can be broken up in a second, so we will cling to those chosen families any chance we get. And that’s how the narrator sees Way Out: a place to reclaim the comfort that was so often denied to queer individuals.
I also needed to be acutely conscious of the “Bury Your Gays” trope. Horror has a nasty habit of killing off queer characters, leading queer theorist William P. Banks to posit that, in the 80s and 90s, “LGBT characters are most useful if they’re dead or gone.” GLAAD, an LGBTQ+ media advocacy group, even directly attacked the rhetoric and venom associated with the trope during a 2017 panel discussion at the Television Critic Association.
“We’re not furniture,” actress, producer, and screenwriter Lena Waithe said on the panel. “We’re not there to jazz things up. That’s when it becomes exploitative.”
The “Bury Your Gays” outrage essentially forced a reckoning with how queer characters are portrayed in popular media—especially in horror, where gruesome deaths are the norm.
In the essay “Notes on Sleepaway Camp,” writer Viet Dinh interrogates queer expression and experience in the 1983 film. Queer characters inherently represent a threat to conventionality or what is considered “normal” at the time. What form does that threat take? Usually, either a victim or a killer.
In victimhood scenarios, queerness becomes incompatible with life and happiness. The killer becomes a sort of moral enforcer, exemplifying how queers are “others” and cannot be allowed to continue in the narrative. This scenario has, luckily, gone out of fashion. Now, even films like Scream 4 poke fun at this trope.
On the other hand, killer scenarios position queer characters as something to be feared, a confusing figure lurking in the shadows. Their crimes are intertwined with their identity, becoming a fatal juxtaposition to the conventional. Silence of the Lambs is still contentious in this sense. While the film states—using outdated terminology—that serial killer Buffalo Bill does not fit the stereotype of a transgender individual, it simultaneously connects him with queerness. The audience is left watching a man dressed as a woman torturing and murdering young, defenseless, blonde women. Buffalo Bill represents a departure from cisgender-heterosexuality, and that queerness has now been linked to violence.
In Way Out, I tried to be careful of any of these situations, opting for a more vague conclusion. Way Out represents that haven for which we all search. The main character—possibly through death or imagination or psychosis or whatever explanation satisfies you—has created this place. And when that place is threatened by circumstance, it’s only natural to attempt to maintain it. Like he says: it may be denial, but that moment brings him back to safety. To comfort. It’s escapism and reclamation in the least judgmental of ways.
And here I am, yet again stuck for an ending. Like my main character, I struggle with goodbyes and conclusions. For so long, this project has been a marathon and the finish line is finally in sight. It feels strange, bidding farewell to what has consumed so much of my attention over my senior year of college. But it’s also a good feeling. From the first word to these final ones, I made my own safe space, and it’ll always be open. For me, for you, for my main character. The diner’s entry bell sounds in the last seconds of Way Out, inviting all of us back inside for a hot meal and a coffee. After all, it is a 24-hour diner!
Written by Sam Thomas