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Category: Ritual

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He Who Walks Behind

The mysterious lights are his currency. This is the way how he lures people into the forest in the middle of the night. In some nights he ignites the Black Fire. He who walks behind the trees (The Forest Dark Feature Film Project).

He who walks behind. This is mostly associated with Stephen King’s short story and movie franchise Children of the corn. In King’s story, He who walks behind the rows is a pagan fertility deity commanding the children of a remote city named Gatlin. The town becomes a deadly trap for a couple.

Like many supernatural powers, the idea of He who walks behind has already a tradition before it came in a contemporary culture like the black fire.

The interesting quality of this threatening and extremely dangerous entity is that it is present in many ways but usually cannot be seen. It manifests in many forms and is a shapeshifter. It can exert a hidden influence on humans, nature and things. It manifests in threatening ways but also makes promises.

The tradition of this kind of deities can be found in folk stories about pagan worship and in ritual. Typically this kind of deities demands sacrifice. In folk tradition, the deity is often connected to the power of place. Thus, it appears to be a local deity. However, it is not clear if it is kind of a force which is really a local power or is it one and the same phenomenon which manifests in different places.

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Haunted forests appear to be a good place for He who walks behind to manifest. It may be that it is such a kind of unknown force is behind unexplained phenomena and secret ritual. Its most unsettling ability is its influence it can except over humans. It does not only lead them into traps but also makes them doing things.




Something dwells in the darkness. He who walks behind is an uncanny presence which sounds familiar. It is the chaos gods which appear in many mythologies. The places of power are their seats. The Forest Dark is a place where HE is close, closer than anywhere. As Algernoon Blackwood said in his famous story The Willows: “The Gods are here, if they are anywhere at all in the world.”

He who walks behind is the one who hides his face. But who is He? Perhaps it is an abstract form, not human-like but also not a machine. It might be a form of consciousness. He was given many names. In stories, he appears in many disguises. He is the shimmer, the Wendigo, The Colour From Outer Space or The Great Old Ones.

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The Summoning

Invocation of a demon or the elder gods, sacrifice, violent happening: the climax of forest horror stories and in folk horror is often the darkest moment in the story, and my project doesn’t make an exemption from the rule. But don’t forget: the movies weren’t there in the first place. They took inspiration from reality. The origins of rituals in the forest were discussed earlier in this place but we should look deeper into the meaning of these archaic images.
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We see still a lot of remnants from the old traditions in our days even the outcome is usually less dramatic. However, the spirit is still there. Luckily (or hopefully) we don’t see a real sacrifice in our days like the poor policeman in “Wicker Man”, but often there is an effigy, perhaps a puppet of the witch, which then is sacrificed in a huge bonfire.

One meaning of sacrifice is often that something is given to get something in return. The gods were feared in former times. But it could be also an attempt to connect with the spirit of the place. The landscape was a living thing, a certain mountain was a godlike being or a volcano was described with human characteristics.

Even today on islands like Java the scientists compete with old ritualistic traditions which tell how people should live with their volcano. There is so much empirical knowledge in this tradition that the scientists respect the religion. Here the connection between a tribal society and nature is a peaceful one.

The portrayal of violent pagan rites and the outsider from the city becoming a sacrifice in some rural hinterland in many stories seems more rooted in a deeply disturbed connection rather then “tradition”. The happening ending in violence might be more like a brutal reconnection with the power of place ending up in demonic possession.

From our modern view a “rootedness in place” is strange as Michael Newton says in his article in “The Guardian”, “Cult, human sacrifice and pagan sex: how folk horror is flowering again in Brexit Britain”. Indeed the locals are often partners in crime of the sinister supernatural forces at work.

However, we should consider this scenery very precisely. In most forest horror nearly everything is dysfunctional.The rural community in the backwoods isn’t a healthy tribal society disturbed by outsiders. We may find people who found again a connection to the wild but it’s not a good one, they found the darker side of nature or these dark forces found them. And if we are not careful we lose civilized manners deep in the forest. The wilderness takes over, the savage spirit prevails.

In these scenarios it’s not any longer a folklore tradition to please the gods, the summoning or happening ends up in pure chaos. We see acts of madness and evil. The invocation triggers the “get down and boogie side (Stephen King)” of people. The summoning is often associated with the climax because it is about revelation.




It’s the moment when the true nature of the psychic forces are revealed to which the place is charged up. It’s the critical moment when the full potential is shown which is part of human nature. We see what people are capable of doing to each other.

Of course there is already a sort of addiction to these forces long before we enter the darker realms. The secret societies or the cult is an opportunity to act out that “get down and boogie side”. So, is it more a psychological thing or is the human race like the white mice in the lab which could be manipulated easily? If we are the object in an experiment we’ll never know, but we know it doesn’t take much effort, just ringing the right bells, and “rules and rituals that are both remnants of some tribal memory” (Michael Newton, The Guardian) are taking over. The journalist is right that for example in “The Wicker Man” there is no supernatural element involved in the climax but perhaps the ritual or the summoning is itself the expression of these hidden forces: It made us do something. It succeeded over us.