The Graveyard Book | Neil Gaiman

This is the book that catalysed everything. The Graveyard Book is one of those books that you read in your youth that become an inseparable part of who you’re and influence how you think in the future. Reading TGB was a gamechanger because for the first time, I was introduced to a nuanced and emotional storytelling – which mixed the mundane and the extraordinary, the living and the dying – that had all the paranormal things I liked as its driving force, done in whimsically macabre ways I found appealing. Even though I already had a childhood obsession with the weird (I memorised every cryptid, knew every mysterious event by heart) it never crossed my mind as a teen that I could use all of that to make a good story proper. Basically, TGB introduced me to my #aesthetic. Not too long after I came up with my first, true original story – TWiDI. This webcomic owes a lot to Neil.

Into the Unknown, Reader’s Digest

I am a nerd for the strange and the mysterious. My childhood was spent in the school library pouring over every single book it had on the unexplained – before the internet got really mainstream in 2005, the library was the first thing -. Surprisingly the library had a quality collection of those books. Into the Unknown is part of the foundation that built my interest (there are more – titles I can vaguely remember: The Unexplained, SUPERSTITION,
Pictures That Tick Vol 1 | Dave Mckean

The Secret History of the World | Jonathan Black
This is….an interesting read. I don’t necessarily believe in alternate histories, especially when it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but if you accept his premise, it is a fascinating construction of history. It’s the history of the world as seen by the esoteric, the secret, the occult. There are myths and traditions and other esoteric knowledge in the book that has been fuel for further research (not for history, for other things). I

Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name

Emily Carroll (her older webcomics especially)

Mirrormask

Coraline – both movie and book

The Fall

Big Fish

Amelie