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Books Like The Whistler by Nick Medina: Folklore and Haunting Horror
The smallest thing in Henry Hotard's haunting is also the easiest to remember. He hears a whistle and has to decide what could have made it. These books give that kind of fear a different foothold, from a hunting trip people would rather forget to a journal that starts making sense outside a house.
Read my review of The Whistler by Nick Medina.
Nick Medina's four novels and the stories set on Takoda
The full shortlist
Why each book belongs here
The anthology shares the warning in Medina's title. The novels give the threat a longer history inside one place or one group of people.
1
Never Whistle at Night
- Similar because
- The anthology takes its title from the kind of warning that gives Henry's haunting its opening. It collects dark fiction by different Indigenous writers, including Medina's short story ‘Quantum’.
- Different because
- The settings, voices and kinds of fear change from one piece to the next. In Medina's novel, the warning has consequences that one man has to live with across an entire story.
2
The Only Good Indians
- Similar because
- Years after an elk hunt, four Blackfeet friends find that something from it may have followed them into their adult lives. Like Henry, they have reason to connect a present threat with something they did before they understood what it might cost.
- Different because
- Jones moves among people linked by the hunt, and the violence can be more explicit. Medina spends more time with one young man who has to decide what he heard and how to get the people he loves to take it seriously.
3
The Twisted Ones
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
- Similar because
- Mouse finds her step-grandfather's journal while clearing out a house in rural North Carolina. As the strange details start to agree with what she sees, the journal does something like the story woven through Henry's haunting. It gives events around a house a history the main character can't easily dismiss.
- Different because
- Mouse's account has a dry sense of humor and room for the practical business of clearing a house. The creatures and the surrounding woods drive the fear, where Medina concentrates more of it in a sound and the possibility of an answer.
- Reading note
- The journal and the story around it draw on Arthur Machen's The White People. The earlier story is optional.
4
What Moves the Dead
- Pace
- Balanced
- Darkness
- Dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
- Similar because
- Alex Easton goes to see the ailing Madeline Usher and notices that the wildlife near her house is behaving oddly. Like Henry, Easton has to work out which strange observations belong together and what other people can be persuaded to take seriously.
- Different because
- The Usher estate and its lake give Easton physical clues to inspect. Kingfisher builds a short Gothic investigation from those details, with less time on the haunted person's relationships or the memory of a choice made before the story began.
- Reading note
- The novella reworks Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher and can be read independently.
5
Indian Burial Ground
- Pace
- Uneven across timelines
- Darkness
- Very dark
- Romance
- Minimal
- Difficulty
- Accessible
- Similar because
- Henry and Louie both have to make sense of something frightening in a place they know well. Indian Burial Ground gives Takoda another local story that sounds different once someone you know has a reason to believe it.
- Different because
- Henry wants to make sense of a presence that seems to be closing in on him. Noemi starts with a death and Louie brings in a much older strand of family memory. The suspense has to travel between two periods.
- Reading note
- The second Takoda novel offers more context for Medina's recurring setting and some of the threads he later revisits.
6
Bad Cree
- Similar because
- Mackenzie sees things in her dreams that begin turning up around her when she's awake. She has to make sense of evidence nobody else saw. Henry has a similar problem with a sound he can't make anyone else hear.
- Different because
- Johns ties the fear to a sister's death and to Mackenzie's return to her family in Alberta. The dreams lead her to ask for help with what she's carrying. Henry has an old warning and a haunting with a more direct sense of pursuit.
Side-by-side
Pace, darkness, romance, and difficulty
| Book | Pace | Darkness | Romance | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Twisted Ones | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| What Moves the Dead | Balanced | Dark | Minimal | Accessible |
| Indian Burial Ground | Uneven across timelines | Very dark | Minimal | Accessible |
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