S3: E12 Inside the Mirror Room with Horror Author & Critic Luna Gray

What happens when someone who spends her career examining horror turns the mirror on herself?

Horror author, critic, interviewer, and iHorror Senior Staff Writer Luna Gray steps inside the Mirror Room for a conversation about fear, folklore, identity, and what draws us toward the darker corners of storytelling.

Luna's work explores cult, indie, folk, queer, and streaming horror, with a particular interest in how the genre reflects identity, trauma, folklore, and the people society chooses not to believe.

She's also the author of No House Is Empty, a winter folk-horror novel about a married couple attempting to host the perfect Christmas Eve party while their life quietly falls apart. When carolers arrive, old household rules begin turning the celebration into an accounting of broken vows, buried grief, debt, and everything they've tried to hide behind a beautifully staged home.

Inside the Mirror Room, we go beyond the book and the byline to explore the person behind the fear.

🪞 Welcome to the Mirror Room.

Find Luna Gray:
Website: LunaGrayHorror.com
Instagram / Threads / Facebook / X: @lunagrayhorror
Bluesky: @lunagrayhorror.com
Substack: Luna Gray Horror
Letterboxd: Luna Gray Horror
iHorror: Luna Gray

📖 Read the article mentioned during our conversation:
https://substack.com/@lunagray/note/c-308739000?r=3fy7qf&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=chatgpt.com

📚 No House Is Empty is available on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H889PTLR?utm_source=chatgpt.com

🎙️ Discover more Mirror Room conversations and original stories from the Library of Shadows on the Looks Creepy Cool Podcast.

Until next time... another reflection awaits. 🪞

👉 If it looks creepy, it must be cool. Follow Haunted House FearFest & the Looks Creepy Cool Podcast.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to The Mirror Room, where we go beyond the stories and step inside the minds of the creators behind The Fear. Tonight's guest is someone who experiences horror from two unique perspectives. She's the author of the novel No House is Empty and a senior staff writer at iHorror, where she covers everything from cult classics and independent horror to folk horror, queer horror, and the latest streaming releases. As I read No House is Empty, one thing that really stood out to me was that the house didn't simply feel haunted, it felt like it was revealing something about the people living inside it. That immediately made me curious about the person who created that world. Tonight, we're talking with Luna Gray about writing horror, covering horror as a journalist, the fears that inspire her work, and what continues to draw her back to the genre. Luna, welcome to the mirror room. Okay, okay, house guests. I would love to welcome Luna to the Mirror Room. Luna, how are you?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Of course, I'm super excited. Now, House Guests, or I like to say the audience of the mirror room of Looks Creepy Cool, I want to remind everyone that the mirror room isn't about jump scares, it's about reflection. It's where we step back from the finished work and explore the experiences, fears, inspirations, and defining moments that shape the person behind the performances. Every guest brings a different reflection. So, Luna, the first question I uh want to ask is if you if I could open the door to the part of your imagination you normally keep locked, what would I find?

SPEAKER_01 1:52

A bunch of useless information about horror films and history.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

Okay, so let's talk about those useless horror film information of horror films and history.

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Um, since I was a little kid, I've loved horror films because I've always thought that it shows more about society than it's letting on. And as an autistic person, I'm always looking for the meanings behind stuff. The problem is, is I watch hundreds and hundreds of movies per year, and a lot of them don't necessarily have anything to dig deep into, but I can tell you all kinds of things about them.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Oh my gosh. Well, you've seen like so many. It's kind of similar to my world owning a festival. I watch so many horror films every year. So when did horror first find you, Luna?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Um, it's my earliest memories. My mother was a huge horror fan. Um, one of my earliest memories is watching Tales from the Crypt. We would do that every weekend. Um, or The Exorcist, she would terrify me with that film. Um but it's always just been a part of my family. My mom was really interested in it, my dad was very interested in it, and I just took that a step further.

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Wow. See, some of us, like myself, I had to sneak and watch some of the horror films sometimes because I felt like I was the odd one out in my family. So you're lucky you had a great horror support system.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Absolutely. And it's kind of hard for me now because I have two teenagers. So my line on what's okay for them to see and my wife's line happened to be two different things.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

My gosh. Oh my gosh. So, what's anything that frightens you as a child?

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Um, I mean, as far as traditional horror, uh, Pennywise the Clown frightened me quite a bit. Um, I was terrified of that. Um, I the exorcist when she walks crab-legged backwards down the stairs is burnt into my mind forever. Um, there's tension and suspense affect me more than most things. If you can keep me anxious.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Wow. Before we get in more into your novel, actually, why don't you tell everyone about it? Because I I read it and there's like a certain um line in there that's like my favorite, and like you touched on the psychological and tension just now, and I saw that was weaved into your book, and it wasn't relying pretty much on jump scares so or traditional scares. So if you can tell the audience more about your book, and then I'll go from there and ask you my uh interesting questions.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Okay. Um, my book is titled No House is Empty. It's currently for sale on Amazon. It's a Christmas folklore series. So basically, the premise is we have this darling couple living a life that they cannot afford in a house that they don't appreciate. And one Christmas, the house reminds them of all the gifts they were given and haven't actually used. And so we then delve into that. What is the meaning of Christmas? What do we owe ourselves and our neighbors during that time period? And what do we do with all these lost traditions that we just do out of habit?

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah. No, and it was great how you weaved in the emotional tension and everything there. So one passage that really stayed with me, and I'm gonna read it, it's like, oh, it was like sweep the hearth, finish the work, keep the vow, fill the house, leave the bowl, five debts on this house, it has paid none. And that line stopped me because it made me realize the house wasn't simply haunted. It almost felt like it was keeping score. So, what inspired you to explore horror through the ideas of debts, vows, and accountability rather than a more traditional haunted house?

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Well, I like to think that our house lives alongside us. It holds our memories, it's where we raise our children, it's where our most intimate time is spent. So I feel like a house, if it were sentient sometimes, might see us as a little bit ungrateful for the things that it provides us, the heat, the warmth, protection. Um, and I also wanted to look at it through, especially right now during the economic turmoil we're all having. I'm sure a lot of people are planning on doing Christmas on credit cards. And that's something that we've grown accustomed to. And I wanted to analyze that too, the fact that a lot of us are putting on a show once a year that we can't afford and stresses us out. So I try to combine those two theories, and this is what came out of it.

SPEAKER_00 6:38

I love like the chapter headings that you have for each book. It's like it's gearing up for me, it geared me up for like, wow, what's next? This is what's happening. The main couple, they're arguing, and then um, like there's the Christmas carols and everything else. So, how did you really build up that tension within your book?

SPEAKER_01 6:56

I try to use my real life examples. Um, I've been married for 15 years. Well, congrats. You have good years and bad years, so I kind of reflected on some of that stuff where you're you're trying to put on a good face for your partner, or you're trying to put on a good face for your relatives, and that stuff is so stressful. So I just try to put it inside the character's mind and show that to the reader, and hopefully it's something that can resonate with.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yeah, because as I continued um reading, I I found myself thinking that the house wasn't really the villain. So it felt like more like the house was like a mirror that revealed who people really are. So uh was that always your intention, or did the story naturally evolve in that direction as you wrote it? I know you incorporated, you know, things in your life, what's happening like even today, the economic times, but was that always your intention?

SPEAKER_01 7:50

No, initially this was meant to be an entirely different story. Um the carolers themselves were going to be much more vicious and things of that nature. And there's going to be no supernatural. But as I started digging into the folklore that I kind of wanted to use, I found so many cool things in like German folklore that I really just wanted to incorporate into the book. And that's when it started making this supernatural turn and this like whole accounting of the house system.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Oh, interesting. Interesting. So uh one thing that I find like about you is that um actually, oh, one of the fears I wanted to ask about you is like, do you think Hara helps us process emotions that are gift difficult to talk about in everyday life? Because, you know, with the married couple, you know, um, it was hard for them to fully talk about things. But as the as the book progresses, they were forced to talk about certain things. So how was that like?

SPEAKER_01 8:53

I think that horror is really, really good at taking big societal problems, boiling it down into a monster that we can kind of understand and wrap our minds around. And you can even see um horror films are often just a reflection of our cultural anxieties. We had a whole bunch of torture-based horror right after 9-11. Um, and I mean, right now we're having a huge horror explosion because people are anxious and fake fears are better than real fears.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Yeah. So you're a horror novelist and a senior staff writer at iHearr. So, how has being a horror critic influenced your own writing? Has it made you more self-critical or more confident in your voice?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Uh, very critical of it. I have spent the past decade criticizing everyone else's work. So when it came time for me to put pen to paper, it was very hard not to use that same analytical eye set on it, which is horrible if you're the one writing it.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Yeah. So how do you get out of side of your head?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Um, my favorite method of writing is um, I believe it's Stephen King's, but it's just gardening. I just start typing with a very basic idea and just keep typing until I get tired. Somewhere in there will be a good idea. Um, and so I just kept doing that, trying to get words on the page until eventually it started to look okay. And then it started to look good, then it started to look publishable.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Um so when a story first comes to you, does it usually begin with a character, an emotion, or an image or a setting, or just a single question?

SPEAKER_01 10:39

A single question. It's normally a why. Why do we do this? Um, and that's so much of what uh No House is Empty is is why do we do the things that we do? Um, especially Christmas is such a great example. So many people practice it for non-religious reasons, but we still honor a lot of the traditions with it. And I think that that's really interesting in kind of a um a mythical way. We're still engaged in all these practices that are tied to a moral system that we don't adhere to. And maybe what would that look like if that moral system did come knocking?

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Yeah. Or or you shut shut it shut the door in its face on some Christmases. Um so you talked about like um how you um like you have an idea and you just start gardening. I love that word. You just start gardening. So how do you know when a story is finished?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

That is normally my wife. Um, because it was up to me it would never be finished. But she is my first uh test reader, and she'll normally tell me, like, stop messing with it, just send it to an editor. Um, you're gonna make it work because I'll just pick at it.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

Oh my gosh. Well, thank God for her.

SPEAKER_01 11:59

It helps a lot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

I know. So No House is empty. Um, where can um readers uh, you know, um pick up your book? Where can they know, like know more about you, your website, everything?

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Sure. Um, if you want to buy the book, it's on Amazon. No house is empty. If you want to know about me personally, you could either visit my website, which is just lunagrayhorror.com, or you could read my Substack, which is where I do my more personal writing. And that's also Luna Groy Horror at Substack. If you want to see me, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Sorry, sorry, get sorry, go ahead, Luna.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

I was just saying my professional work is pretty much all hosted on iHorror.com.

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Nice, nice. Is there anything that like scares you, Luna? Like, you know, you've seen so many horror films and you've, you know, you're a horror writer, like anything that really like ever surprised you just about your stories or about yourself? Like when you're thinking about things and you're putting the ideas down, like any any particular story or idea that popped out, like, gosh, that really surprised me.

SPEAKER_01 13:05

Um, I'm really into folklore. Um, because I think it it delves more into the traditions and why we act the way we act. And what surprised me about folklore and why it scares me is folklore doesn't often have that many mythical elements. It's normally just people. And that's terrifying because it's about traditions. Traditions can be weaponized and used against us. So I found that terrifying, and that's kind of why I tried to flip it in the book, too, was to wrestle my own fear of folklore. But outside of that, um, no, like the things in horror movies rarely scare me. The last one that got me really good was Skinner Marine.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, and that was made on a very tight budget. Yes, it was.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Um and it's hard to even define that film as a movie. You're staring at the ceiling most of the time. But it got on again.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Right, right. So, um gosh, it's so interesting. So, about like your writing and the stories, oh, particularly folk uh folklore horror. There's so many different traditions around the world. Is there any particular culture or folklore horror story that has stayed with you?

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Hmm, there's quite a few. Um the I just wrote a rather long piece recently on vampirism in America. Um, I'm not sure if you're familiar with that little bit of uh history. Well, um one of the cures for vampirism back in the day was to dig up a corpse. If the corpse was not decayed at a point that they thought was reasonable, they would cut out the organs, turn them into a tonic, and people would drink them to fight off the vampirism. And I yeah, I think that's fascinating. And I don't blame the people doing it either, because what they were fighting was actually consumption. And back then, you have consumption ravaging your whole family. You have no idea what germs are or anything like that. If somebody told you that digging up your sister and drinking her organs might save your kids' lives, you might do that. And I just think that's really fascinating.

SPEAKER_00 15:32

Wow, how do you not gosh, I hope they don't still do that. I mean, like, how long have they been doing that for?

SPEAKER_01 15:39

I mean, this was in well, I want to say it was in West Virginia, but it was like 1850, I think, was the last like newspaper written about it here in America. Um so you find all these little weird, not weird, you find all these different pockets all over the world. Um and it I think that it says so much about us, and especially when it's something recent like that that only happened a couple hundred years ago. Um it really shows how far medicine has come and science has come in that time period.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yeah, thank God. I mean, like, gosh, back then there was no like band-aids or anything or you know, brushing toothpaste. Gosh, I would not. Um, I always have my life saw handy, so I don't I don't know how I would survive there back then. So, oh, so speaking, because you are a staff writer for iHeart, are there any trends in horror right now that really excite you?

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Yeah, the um the return to analog horror, I think is really interesting. Um the fact that it looks like we're going backwards. We're moving away from CGI when possible and back to practical effects. We're going for this analog, grainy film look over everything, which reminds me of my own childhood videos. Um and I it we're getting a bigger push for independent films, which is kind of my whole thing. I love that so, so much.

SPEAKER_00 17:10

Yes, yes. I'm constantly on YouTube finding the next indie horror or whatever, submit it to the festival. Yeah, no, that's amazing. So um, for someone who's just discovering independent horror, what are they missing? Like, what is it about you think indie horror is like so horrifically magical, is what I like to say.

SPEAKER_01 17:32

Well, the easiest way I think for me to explain it is if the film is coming from a studio or a large studio, that studio wants to impress as many audiences as possible. So they're gonna throw a lot of different directions at you. An indie film has the privilege of being hyper focused on one thing, and they're not necessarily worried about large audiences, they're trying to find their niche audience. So you get really special films that way that would never make it through a studio.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, which is oh, go ahead, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

I I also think that the push of what you just said, um, YouTube or the reason that's so successful right now is YouTube provides a unique environment where you upload a video and within minutes you have feedback.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

You can't do that for the film.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

No, you can't. I mean, they have certain like studios, you know this, they have certain focus groups, focus groups like that, but that doesn't represent like the entire population pretty much for YouTube, billions of people, you just go on there and find a indie horror film, and it's just great. So uh before we wrap up, um, is there anything else you want to tell our listeners before I ask you the final question before you leave the mirror room?

SPEAKER_01 18:52

Sure. Um just know that indie projects, both in film, television, and fiction and nonfiction, are alive. You just gotta track them down. And if you're looking for a place to track them down, iHorror.com. We champion the little nights.

SPEAKER_00 19:11

Awesome. Awesome. And um, and before we go, we always ask our guests in the mirror room, because this is the Looks Creepy Cool podcast, what is the creepiest thing that's ever happened to you? And what's the coolest thing that's ever happened to you?

SPEAKER_01 19:27

Those are both pretty easy. Um recently I started doing an overnight stay at haunted locations as a new segment for iHorror. And we were staying at a haunted hotel. And at 7 o'clock p.m., we were up in the attic looking around, and there was a large uh chiming clock that went off seven times. And then when we went down and asked the staff, they said that they didn't have any like grandfather clocks, any kind of clocks that chimed in the building. But we can even hear it on our recording, so I'm not really sure where the sound came from. So that was crazy.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Um the question was. Sorry, sorry, Luna.

SPEAKER_00 20:11

How long did you guys stay in the house?

SPEAKER_01 20:14

We were there from 6 p.m. till 8 a.m.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

So just a day.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Thank God. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah. Um, I woke up in the morning too with one of my eyes viciously scratched, like I could not open it. And I thought that that was also creepy. Um But also very recently, uh, the coolest thing that's happened to me is I met a fan for the first time in the wild, which considering I do most of my work writing, I didn't know I had fans. Um that was really cool.

SPEAKER_00 20:49

Oh, that's awesome. Well, hopefully after this interview, you'll have more fans. And uh, and speaking of, I'm gonna put um everyone, I'm gonna put um links to where to you can reach out to Luna, find Luna, um, in the show notes and in the descriptions below. Luna, I want to thank you for visiting the mirror room on the Looks Creepy Cool podcast. Please don't be a stranger and keep us posted on what's going on next as you write the creepiest story um ever. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Bye, everyone. Have a good night. Want more chills and chatter? We're streaming on all podcast platforms.