The October Film Haunt is eerie, gripping, dark, chilling, mysterious, and riveting. I had both the book and the audiobook and found the narration of the audiobook did a fantastic job of bring this book to life! This book blurs reality, fiction, horror, obsession, and the supernatural brilliantly. The October Film Haunt was made up of a group of hard-core horror film enthusiasts who had a popular online group following. The members, Jorie, Beth and Colin, would go to the locations where horror movies where being filmed. Of course they would go to the filming of . Proof of Demons the most scary and chilling cult horror movie ever made by Hélène Enriquez. But that night everything in the graveyard changed....

Now Jorie and her young son live a very quiet and isolated life in Vermont. When she receives a VHS tape in the mail, it is a horrific and anxiety provoking blast from the past. The VHS leaves her feeling unsettled and feeling as if she is being filmed. Is Hélène Enriquez making a sequel to Proof of Demons? Is Jorie an unexpected and unwilling participant in the film?

This is a unique book which is eerie, unsettling, and had me wondering what was real and what was not. I enjoyed this look at obsession, fans, horror, and cult movies. I enjoyed the chilling and atmospheric feel of this book. I also enjoyed the tension and dread in this book. I thought the author also did a great job showing the increasing dread and anxiety in Jorie.

This book wont be for everyone but it was for me! I enjoyed how this book was told using various forms of media. I am seeing a trend of this in books. Often it works very well but sometimes it does not. It did work in this book.

It was actually really scary and I enjoyed reading it. The scary scenes were very descriptive and eerie. The rickies left me feeling like someone was secretly watching me. I loved reading the part where the pieces of how the characters are linked together when at first it seemed like they had nothing to do with the other. I rarely think book to movie adaptations do books justice but it would really work for this one.

It was a little confusing due to the pacing and dual storylines happening. I like how the story was told in multiple POVs but the constant POV switches felt excessive at times.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

The October Film Haunt feels like reading a documentary gone wrong. Think Blair Witch meets early Supernatural (the tv show) —where belief itself creates the monster. It’s a sharp, unsettling take on how clinging to urban legends can spill over into real-world violence, Slender Man style. Creepy, clever, and chilling.

Wow, what a conflicted reading experience for me!

An incredibly intriguing and much hyped premise (haunted film and meta-found-footage) falls flat after a solid first third.

Wehunt crafts a deeply creepy and fabulously weird setup that simply oozes sinister atmosphere but unfortunately lost a lot of momentum for me. At the two thirds mark I was beginning to get impatient and tired of the repetitiveness (birches, pines, green sheets, holes… lather rinse repeat) and less and less interested in where the story was going. And for a long while it honestly goes nowhere. This story could have easily been cut by a third and you wouldn’t even notice.

Unconventional narratives and style are absolutely up my alley, but the story has move. This one turned into a neverending slog that was too infrequently brightened by the odd action bit. The writing style, while serviceable in setting the scene, becomes impenetrable and forced, and I was just tired of being clubbed over the head by it.

Truly, a disappointment. It started so well, and was one of the books I looked most forward to this year but it ultimately just didn’t coalesce for me.

My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.

It’s almost that time of year: Spooky Season! At the Gnome Household, I’ve been slowly getting ready for that most eerie time of year. I’ve been reading a bunch of spooky reads (such as the subject of this review and also Keith Rosson’s Coffin Moon which I gave a glowing review to last week) and watching Alien: Earth to get in the proper mindset. The focus of this week’s review, as you may have guessed from the title, is Michael Wehunt’s The October Film Haunt which comes out in a couple of weeks.

This book follows Jorie Stroud, a member of the once viral film enthusiast group, The October Film Haunt. Ten years ago one of these Film Haunts went horribly awry and Jorie has since gone full recluse in the woods of Vermont. Unfortunately, it seems that night hasn’t quite ended yet as the fanatical devotees of the director that created the last film they reviewed begin to seemingly stalk Stroud and her young son. As you might imagine, weird and scary stuff begins to happen and everything goes to heck pretty quickly after that.

I think the elements of this book that stand out the most to me are the characters. Jorie, our protagonist, and Beth are far and away the best parts of this book. If we were in a world where the end of this book wasn’t so conclusive, I would gladly read a whole series of books about Jorie hunting for weird and cursed films. Honestly, someone give me a perennial series about someone hunting weird cursed film reels and I will give you all of my money. Our weird cultists were also pretty fun. The Rickies were a fun cult/deranged fan club and I liked learning more and more about them over the course of the book.

Otherwise, not a lot stands out to me about this one. The plot was fine but nothing that’s going to stay with me like Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Silver Nitrate has. The one standout portion was that Wehunt really did well at blurring the line between supernatural and just a deranged long con for a significant portion of this book but once that was over and this was obviously supernatural, that faltered a bit.

Haunted and cursed films are one of my favorite subgenres of horror literature. It’s the perfect mix of spookiness and weird quests for esoterica. Mentioned previously, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Silver Nitrate is one of my favorite horror books of the last few years as is Craig Russell’s The Devil’s Playground. I enjoyed Wehunt’s addition to the subgenre but I’m not sure it’s going to rank with those other standouts. I definitely will read Wehunt’s future books but I think this one is going to go down as mostly a miss for me.

Review from Booklist Magazine --> Wehunt (The Inconsolables, 2023) is one of the most dynamic voices in horror, and his debut novel expands on two of his short stories, perfect for those who love horror featuring urban legends and found footage. Jorie, once a popular influencer who investigated horror-film locations with friends Colin and Beth, is now a single mom struggling to make ends meet. Back in the day, the three found a terrifying creature, things went sideways, and the online scorn became unbearable. Jorie’s guilt was compounded by painful deaths for which she still feels responsible. Then, a VHS copy of the last film she was involved with, Proof of Demons, arrives in the mail. Nostalgia and grief make Jorie long for something that she may never recapture. Proof of Demons also attacks Coleman, a man who finds a copy that inflicts visceral horrors on him. Jorie has to figure out who is targeting her for her secrets before more harm comes to those she loves. The terrors Wehunt weaves throughout the novel are a cosmic fusion of William Faulkner’s gothic with modern sensibilities. This novel will keep readers guessing until the very last page. Highly recommended for public libraries’ horror collections.

I really wanted to love this book. It had all of the right elements -- a notorious horror movie, a tragic backstory, lots of references to horror movies....but it all builds so, so slowly towards the eventual climax. I lost interst long before the end.

I was incredibly excited to get this ARC!
Michael is a new to me author, but the cover lured me in and the description sealed the deal.

I love the cult film feeling to the book.
There are absolutely parts of this book that put me on edge and creeped me out. Some parts were a little harder to read just structure wise, but overall a great read.
Overall it unnerved me and made me side eye people around me, so it definitely hit its mark.

2.5, maybe a 3 rounded up.

Horror is best when it’s a little weird- however, The October Film Haunt was TOO weird. I fear the way elements of horror used here weren’t quite strong enough to make me scared, only confused- except for the descriptions of Coleman’s lung cancer. Reading that while dealing with a lingering cough from a cold left me with true fear. There were too many characters, too many points of views to follow, but I’d have to say the fictionalized version of Trevor Henderson was my favorite. There’s something about a creator being faced with his creation that is truly haunting.

Jorie Stroud was once an avid horror fan. Found footage, slashers, demons- she’d seen it all, and with her friends she had formed a blog devoted to exploring the places these were filmed. The October Film Haunt. But it’s been almost a decade since she shut the website down. One fabricated story led to the death of a teenage girl, and Jorie carries the guilt with her still. She hasn’t touched anything in the genre ever since.

But when a mysterious tape arrives in the mail, and figures dressed as the cultists from the film Proof of Demons start showing up near her home, Jorie has now become the protagonist of a brand new horror movie- one she might not make it out of alive.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the e-arc! The October Film Haunt comes out September 30!

I wanted to love this book so much, but I’m going to be honest.. I had to restart it 3 times because I put it down and completely forgot the plot. I love a slow burn, but this was really… really slow. It had so much potential and it fell flat for me :/

The October Film Haunt has a lot of great ideas, but unfortunately they don't result in a great story. Strong start, but things get muddled, almost as though the concepts weren't quite conveyed to the page.

This end up being a DNF fairly quickly for me. For whatever reason I couldn't get into the story. I feel like it could be more me than the actually writing itself.

This one was a huge disappointment for me. I went in thinking it would be something I’d love, but from the very first page, it was confusing and frustrating.

The writing style drove me up the wall—everything was described in the strangest, most nonsensical way. WHY is everything “buttery”? It felt like the author just threw random adjectives onto the page. The writing was choppy and disjointed, which made the story hard to follow. Instead of creating atmosphere, the overdone descriptions made the book feel like a string of run-on sentences with no clear point.

I kept skimming, hoping to find the good stuff, and while there were brief flashes of intrigue, nothing creepy or atmospheric ever really materialized. The concept had potential, but the execution fell flat. By a third of the way through, I knew it wasn’t going to get better, but I pushed through anyway. In the end, I regretted not DNF’ing—so many questions were left unanswered, and the conclusion just wasn’t worth the effort.

Thank you @stmartinspress for the #gifted copy.

Thank you to St.Matin's Press for an early copy via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.
3.5 Stars

I was pretty excited to get a chance to read this book close to the spooky season. It started out with a bang and lots of nods to the horror flicks of the '80s and VHS tapes. In addition, very quickly on an old doll shows up as an ancillary character. That brought the creep factor for me.

Three friends who have a shared love for the cult/horror films, set out to visit the sites of the films most notably, Proof of Demons. Things take a turn, one friend eventually dies, the other two are estranged. Even worse, a teenage fan dies in connection to the film haunt led by the friends.

Now one of the original October Film Haunt creators, Jorie, lives with her young son in an inherited house up in Vermont. Every description is modeled after classic horror films. Lots of mentions of jump scares without the reader actually jumping. When a VHS tapes show up, it looks as though the October Film Haunt is being resurrected and the remaining two of the trio get back together to determine if it's crazed fans, a reboot of the film, or someone making a new film. Lives are at stake and soon someone will die.

What I found is I recognized most everything that was put out there relating to these past popular horror flicks but I am unfamiliar with the cult type following or films that this book seemed so dedicated to. There were many characters introduced that had some sore of connection to the original Demons movie but they became muddled to me, possibly because the book felt overly long. I ended up a bit lost in this one.

Regardless of my own issues with the storytelling, this book definitely has a reader it was meant for and I'd recommend this book to the die-hard horror film aficionados.

This was a DNF for me, unfortunately. The premise had so much potential, but I just failed to connect to or get invested in this one. To be fair I won't be rating it anywhere else.

This started out strong but then the slow burn was too slow for me.
Interesting idea and it felt like reading a book within a film series.
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for access to this eARC.

It is so hard for me to figure out how to rate this book because even with its shortcomings, it was unique, and I can see so much potential in it. The things that made it hard to get through were the pacing, the weird sentences that weren't always clear about their intended meanings, and the filler/length of the book. I think with some editing, this could be a much shorter and more promising story.

I am always grateful to read horror books before they come out, even if I don't end up loving them, so I don't regard the time I spent on this one as a waste. I just wish it had been more condensed and that it hadn't skipped around so much-- It was hard to keep up with what was going on at certain points, and that's coming from someone with multiple graduate degrees who is used to reading challenging materials.

Thank you to the publishers at NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for sending me an e-ARC. I love how this book didn't shy away from darker or deeper themes, and how it incorporated all those spooky old VHS feelings into its narrative. In the end, I appreciated the ambient, experimental feel it gave me throughout the reading experience.

I loved the eerie, atmospheric first half of The October Film Haunt — it hooked me right away. Unfortunately, the second half felt repetitive and dragged a bit, losing some of the tension. Still, Wehunt’s writing is striking, and fans of slow-burn, experimental horror will appreciate the unique premise.

Michael Wehunt’s The October Film Haunt - out on hardcover and eBook on September 30, 2025 - is a dread-inducing story of guerrilla filmmaking, analog entities, and horror fandom told from multiple perspectives. The book's lead protagonist, Jorie, is a divorced mom in her thirties, living with her son in the forests of Vermont. She once co-ran a popular blog with her best friends about horror movie locations, where she wrote an infamous post about the Pine Arch Creature, the presumed demon from a found footage horror film with a cult-like following, Proof of Demons. In the years following the unintended consequences of her post, Jorie has abandoned her love of horror and all things creepy, settling for freelance editing and a cashier gig at the local grocery store. But over a decade later, she finds herself directly involved in the world of Proof of Demons when she receives a VHS tape in the mail, simply labeled “funeral watching”.

Simultaneously, Coleman - an elderly, married father - confronts his own mortality after a cancer diagnosis. Like Jorie, he also used to run a blog, in which he wrote letters to his long-lost brother, who went missing without a trace shortly after the pair fell out of a tree and saw through the earthly veil and into… Heaven? Somewhere else? This aspect of the novel reminded me a lot of the faux short documentary, “Hero,” from Todd Haynes’ Poison (1991), about a young boy who ascended into the sky. I really enjoyed this storyline of The October Film Haunt; it felt both metaphysical and brutally physical, as Coleman’s body deteriorates and his reality joins with that of Proof of Demons.

For the first half of The October Film Hunt, I could only read Wehunt's debut novel in the daylight, for fear of looking up from my Kindle while turning the hallway corner and encountering bedsheet-covered cult members (“Rickies”, nicknamed after the Proof of Demons filmmaker, Hélène Enriquez) or catching the gleam of a film camera lens in my backyard. Wehunt entrenches his story in the real, familiar world of horror - name-checking projects and filmmakers familiar to fans of the genre and even incorporating Siren Head’s creator as a character - and had me on the edge of my seat, trying to solve the mysteries behind Proof of Demons and wondering whether the story would stick to realism or take a turn for the surreal.

Like many hyped horror movies lately (Longlegs, Weapons), The October Film Haunt starts as something akin to a mystery or crime procedural, only to lean into elements far more fantastic and unmoored. This pivot has worked for me really well in the past, feeding on my fear of the unknowable and keeping me engaged with the mysteries therein. Unfortunately, as the stakes skyrocket for Jorie and her son, the tension of the story deflates. I often felt bored by the second half of The October Film Haunt. I grew tired of reading about the leaves in the trees and the position of the sun when I just wanted to know what would happen next and if demons are real or nah! I'm starting to think meta horror novels just aren't for me, as a fan of non-fiction; I hit a point where, if I'm no longer feeling pulled along by the story, I'd rather be reading about real horror films and the theories behind them.

Would I recommend The October Film Haunt? Sure. The imagery of the film within the book, Proof of Demons, is very vivid and memorable - graveyards, flickering creatures, visions of another plane, wooden crowns and bedsheets - and I think Wehunt deserves kudos for placing the novel so believably in reality, seamlessly incorporating Internet forums and viral videos. But if you don’t have a keen interest in horror movies and books about them, the stronger aspects of this novel might not resonate with you. On the other hand, if you’re too familiar with the genre, you might recognize certain plot beats all too well, guessing twists with 40% of the book still left. (As I did.) I would like to see The October Film Haunt adapted for the screen. Partly because, as Hollywood is wont to do, maybe they’d change the ending.

Thanks very much to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC in exchange for this honest review.

I read The October Film Haunt by Michael Wehunt as an ARC. The book follows several characters that are tangled up in a horror film that blurs the line between fiction and reality, and becomes more and more sinister as the film returns from the past back into their lives.

I think the biggest strength of this book was the surreal imagery and recurring creepy themes. At times I was confused what was going on in specific scenes, but there was enough atmosphere going on for me to still enjoy those scenes. The “rickies” constantly appearing in green sheets with crowns will be an image that sticks with me, and probably one of my favorite elements of the book

I do wish we could have seen more of the october film haunt’s trips to places because that sounded like a cool cozy horror idea. I also felt that the Roger character probably could have been cut because it had a lot of overlap with Trevor and i got them mixed up too often.

Overall, fairly fun spooky book