Welcome back to Scare Me! a weekly horror newsletter. Today, we’re celebrating Pride Month!

I’m straight. Or at least, that’s what I told myself for a very long time. Until the year I found myself agreeing with one too many Bi Visibility Day posts and thinking, “Wait. Oh shit.”

By then, I was happily married to my perfect match (hi Jack!), who I’d choose in every lifetime. But quietly accepting my bisexuality still filled me with an inexplicable joy.

As I watch queer people’s rights erode under a fascist government, quiet introspection no longer feels like enough—especially during Pride Month. I’m feeling inspired by my friend Maya, who’s been publishing a fantastic series about bicons (AKA, bisexual icons) over on her newsletter (which I highly recommend subscribing to!).

This week’s issue focused on Dr. Fred “Fritz” Klein, whose research led to a more nuanced understanding of sexuality than the previous Kinsey Scale had captured. Previous issues featured Lani Ka’ahumanu (who put the “B” in LGBTQ+) and Brenda Howard, who created Pride Month in the first place. I’ve loved learning our history a little more each week, alongside weird art recommendations and horror book reviews.

I thought it’d be fun to offer a counterpoint to Maya’s series, focused instead on fictional characters. So today I present: Bicons in horror!

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I haven’t managed to strike Let the Right One In from my TBR yet, but the 2008 Swedish film adaptation is one of my all-time favorite horror movies.

The story follows Oskar, a young teenager who’s stoic, lonely, and friendless—until Eli moves into his apartment complex. He’s soon captivated by Eli, who doesn’t attend school or wear coats despite the bitter winter. As the two fall into an easy friendship, Oskar gradually realizes that Eli is unlike anyone he’s ever met. And not just because Eli is a vampire who subsists on stolen blood.

There’s a very sweet moment when Eli informs Oskar: “I’m not a girl.” While many viewers interpret this as a reference to Eli’s vampirism, the novel specifies that Eli was AMAB and later transitioned to a feminine identity. (It’s actually more complicated than that, but you get the gist!)

What’s important here is Oskar’s response. He considers this new information for a moment, letting it sink in. And then he shrugs. He loves Eli, and gender doesn’t make much of a difference to him. It’s a purely lovely moment in a frequently gory movie, and the ideal response to a coming out scene.

I can’t write this list in good faith without paying homage to the masterpiece that is Jennifer’s Body. If you’ve never seen it, I truly cannot recommend it enough. It’s a perfect blend of 2000s popcorn horror, deeply queer vibes, and emo music.

Megan Fox plays Jennifer, a popular high school student who’s assaulted by an indie band attempting an occult ritual. The traumatic experience grants her deadly abilities, and it’s not long before her longtime best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried in dorky glasses and a half-up hairstyle) realizes something is terribly wrong.

The supernatural curse is pure fiction—but Jennifer and Needy’s intense, confusing teenage friendship feels like a canon event in bisexual culture.

I had minor surgery last month, and I spent my first day of recovery binging Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen in one long marathon. It’s a fun show!

In the opening scene, we meet Rachel and Nicky, a newly engaged couple on a pre-wedding road trip. They’re planning to celebrate their marriage with a small, private ceremony—but Nicky’s family has other plans.

The vibes are instantly bizarre as hell. Before they even arrive, Rachel has a strange encounter with a man who asks if she’s really sure Nicky is the one. The question drums in the back of Rachel’s mind as she meets Nicky’s overbearing, secretive family. As the disturbing events escalate, we’re left to wonder: Will she marry Nicky? Or should she run before it’s too late?

Rachel is clearly established as a queer character—her ex is a woman—and that detail adds depth and complexity to the show’s reckoning with traditional marriage.

If you’re going to read a novel by the author of Audition, you already know it’s going to go hard. Coin Locker Babies is the longest and most complex Murakami novel I’ve read so far. I often find myself hazily recalling characters or plot elements and briefly wondering if I’d heard of them in an investigative podcast or documentary. That’s how realistic and vivid the novel’s world is.

Coin Locker Babies is built on the real-world phenomenon—there was a dark moment in the late ‘80s when unwanted infants were being abandoned in lockers in Tokyo’s public transportation system. We follow two of these so-called coin locker babies—Kiku and Hashi—as they’re discovered, adopted, and cast into a hostile vision of Tokyo. Murakami paints a complex portrait of both characters and the long shadow abandonment casts over their lives.

Even if you haven’t read the novel, you might know of its infamous Toxitown: a fictional neighborhood in the heart of Tokyo utterly poisoned by environmental toxins, rendering it unlivable. (But nonetheless populated by outsiders on the fringe of society.) It’s there, in Toxitown, that Hashi discovers his musical talents—and his bisexuality.

Hashi’s story is extreme, and it’s not easy to relate to his choices. Still, I appreciated the way queerness, fame, adoption, abandonment, and more complicate his identity.

The first time I read It, I immediately thought Richie was a gay man. Later, when he mentions being in a long term relationship with a woman, I thought it was cool that King included a bisexual character.

Then I reread Richie’s passages and realized I had completely projected all of it.

And yet…Richie reads undeniably queer to me. I recognize the way he constantly riffs and jokes. His infinite impressions and voices are a closet full of disguises, a method of hiding in plain sight. He’s indiscriminately flirty. He’s got a lonely kind of sadness that’s barely kept at bay by his comedy routines.

My very kind Macabre Daily colleague Brian Finnerty is in the midst of a Pride takeover of the site’s podcast, and we recently had a delightful chat about Richie and so much more with authors Luke Dumas (Nothing Tastes As Good), Avery Curran (Spoiled Milk), and Sara van Os (Decomposition Book). It should be out soon, so make sure to keep an eye on our podcast feed if you want to catch it!

Looking Glass Sound is a technical wonder by the reigning queen of complex plot mechanics. Ward’s opening section is one of the most unnerving, brutal small town murder mysteries I’ve encountered in fiction—and that’s before you get to the coded messages, witchcraft, and metafictional books-within-books.

There’s a thrilling instability to her main character, Wilder, who loses his innocence during a memorable and dangerous summer in a coastal Maine town. Wilder’s growing awareness of his bisexuality is one of the many complex realizations he’s forced to grow into early adulthood.

Diavola was one of the best surprise hits on my TBR last year. I expected a fast, fun family horror—and Diavola delivered all that and more. It was one of my favorite books I read all year.

Some families are held together by mutual love and respect. Others are held together by an unspoken agreement to gang up on the black sheep. Diavola centers the latter. We meet Anna as she’s traveling to meet her parents and siblings in Italy, bracing herself for a holiday full of negging and passive aggression.

Anna bears this treatment with intentionally infuriating composure—until she begins to suspect something is deeply wrong with the villa they’ve rented. As the hauntings escalate, Anna’s family refuse to heed her warnings. They’ve never taken her seriously before. Why start now?

There’s a fantastic third act that took the story in directions I didn’t expect, plus wry humor that provides a counterpoint to some seriously unnerving imagery. Anna also happens to be explicitly bisexual, though her identity as an artist is foregrounded more.

The Lamb is typically classified as a sapphic novel—and it does feature a central relationship between two women. But when I interviewed Lucy for Phantasmag last summer, she confirmed that her characters’ sexualities are more complex. The novel explores bi- and asexuality, two identities that Lucy openly embraces.

I highly recommend Lucy’s Dread Central essay about how horror’s famous final girls helped her reclaim her queer identity. “By altering my reading of the final girl, seeing her not as virginal or pure, but as an asexual presence, my world shifted,” she writes. “The final girl gave me the tools I needed to survive.”

You can read the whole essay here!

Whenever a new Rachel Harrison novel drops, I clear my schedule and read it immediately. I think last year’s Play Nice is Rachel at her smartest, sexiest, scariest yet.

Cleo is a polarizing main character—but I loved her. Her life as a stylist-slash-influencer in New York City is turned upside down by the news of her estranged mother’s death. Even more unexpected: Her mother never sold the family’s haunted house.

Ever the optimist, Cleo decides to flip the house (think of the content!!!) and before long finds herself entangled in a decades-old family mystery complete with demonic possession, recovered memories, and a paperback memoir marked up with her mother’s annotations.

While most of Cleo’s family takes black-or-white sides, she’s willing to fearlessly wade into the gray—and I think her queerness is key to understanding her capacity for occupying spaces in between binary categories.

During a StokerCon panel, I had the opportunity to ask Rachel about queer characters in her novels. Will we see more, I wondered? She said yes—she’s got an upcoming novel led by an asexual, aromantic main character. I can’t wait to read it!

Now that I’m back from Stoker, I’ve got a handful of interview feelers out—but nothing confirmed yet. I’m itching to get back to Interview Land, but if things take a little extra time you might have to first endure an issue or two on my current hyperfixations. (I’ve been obsessed with Backrooms since it came out a few weeks ago, and I’m hoping to find an outlet for my yapping either here or TikTok. Maybe both??)

Regardless, there are good things ahead for Scare Me! I can’t wait to share some of the new projects I’ve been working on lately. More soon!!

Scare Me! is a free weekly horror newsletter published every Thursday morning. It’s written by Michelle Delgado, featuring original illustrations by Sam Pugh. You can find the archive of past issues here. If you were sent this by a friend, subscribe to receive more spooky interviews, essays—and maybe even a ghost story or two.