Thanks to the recent success of Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us, Black horror has become a force to be reckoned with in the horror genre. The subgenre has always been there, but not taken seriously by the mainstream horror audience and academics alike. A quick Google search for “Black Horror” pulls up a lot of these pieces, as well as suggested watching lists that chronicle not only black participation in horror, but the history of black horror itself.

A Quick History of Black Queer Characters in Horror

However, when you do a quick Google search with the terms “Black gay horror,” you will find little to nothing concerning the black queer experience in horror. A prominent horror site featured Russell Clark’s portrayal of the lethal vampire Belle in Fright Night Part 2 as a means to celebrate both gay portrayals in horror and Black History Month. Despite their ‘efforts,’ the horror site fell woefully short when they mentioned that trying to feature black gay horror characters was hard due to the lack of them in the genre. This is quite the contrary. Before Belle in Fright Night Part 2, and especially since then, black queer characters can be found in horror, across several types of media within the genre, if you actually look for them. We did, read on to discover what we found...

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