“Beware the Food of the Fae”: A Review of The Girl in the Corn, by Jason Offutt
(Brentwood, TN: CamCat Publishing, camcatpublishing.com, 2022). ISBN: 9780744304510 Along with abandoned castles, caves, and ancient forests, cornfields are immediately evocative of horror. Images of a pair of gloved hands pulling someone unexpectedly into high corn (something I filmed last autumn for one of my projects), the rats in the corn in Stephen King’s The Stand , scarecrows, and of course King’s Children of the Corn all bring a chill to the spine. Then there are the entities known as faeries, which are not the cute little sprites that fill the pages of children’s books. Even Tinkerbell, before she was Disney-fied, kills Wendy in JM Barrie’s Peter Pan because she is jealous of her affection for Peter. Faery and UFO lore have significant overlaps (a fact touched on in this story) and the idea of parallel dimensions and the elements that make up a good faerie story—don’t eat the food, don’t invade their space, the exchanging of a human baby with a Changeling, b...