July 16, 2026 Kick back with some popcorn, enjoy new perspectives on favorite horror films, and add fresh flicks to your watch list.

From vampires and werethings to zombettes and killer puppets, some of the scariest monsters of the cinema have been females. Author and horror critic Emma Alice Johnson analyzes the most well-known and shines a light on ones that have been hiding in the shadows. From The Bride of Frankenstein in 1935 and The She-Creature of 1956 to Demi Moore’s portrayal of Monstro Elisasue in 2024’s allegory The Substance, every page contains a fascinating story, including giant killer animals, nazis, espionage, medical experimentation on black-market corpses, and murder. Some of the most monstrous tales happen off-screen, with life imitating art in disturbing ways.

Along the way, Johnson explores how cultural standards of “pretty” and “ugly” fuel the concept of the monster in differing ways depending on gender, and how some horror films adhere to these standards while others twist them around. She confronts the feminine beauty ideal and the burden on women to be conventionally pretty, even when playing the monster, and how the simple act of a woman playing a gross, slimy ghoul is an attack on the patriarchy.

What horrors await? Keep reading for an excerpt of Ghoul’s Rule, the latest release from Emma Alice Johnson.

I’ve always loved monsters. One of the best days of my life came when I was in first grade. My dad walked into my room and handed me a stack of monster movie magazines he had collected as a kid. They had titles like Famous Monsters of Filmland, Fantastic Monsters of the Films, and Castle of Frankenstein. I’d never seen anything like them. Yes, I’d watched horror movies with my dad, but now, here in front of me, was page after page showing full-size photos of the monsters that fleetingly skittered in the shadows across the screen, revealing them in glorious detail.

I stayed in my bedroom for days, lying on the yellow shag carpet, intoxicated by the scent of old newsprint as I flipped through these magazines, learning about how each monster was made, and what movies it appeared in. I took in every fact and fell in love with these strange creatures.

I was not scared of the monsters. I was fascinated with them. I saw myself in them.
But one thing was missing. Almost all the monsters were men.

“No one ever thinks chicks do shit like this. A girl can be a slut, tease, bitch, or the virgin next door,” Ginger explains to her sister in the film Ginger Snaps as they bury a body in their shed. A girl can be anything but a monster. It’s a flippant comment from a teenage werewolf, but it bears out when you look at the history of cinema. To this day, how many women in film fall into the above categories? And more importantly, where are all the monstrous women?

Before exploring that question, let’s address this one: What is a monster? Merriam-Webster offers the best dictionary definition I could find: “an animal of strange or terrifying shape.” By that definition, however, a platypus is a monster. If a platypus showed up in your bed one night and chased you around your house, then perhaps you would agree that a platypus is a monster. For the purposes of this book though, I’m going to be a bit more rigid in my definition.

To me, a monster must not only be of “strange or terrifying shape,” but there must also be an element of myth, science, or the supernatural. This expanded definition includes the typical vampires, werewolves, zombies, and frankensteins, but excludes slashers, serial killers, and cannibals. The latter may colloquially be referred to as monsters and are the subject of many horror films, but they’re just regular, boring humans behaving badly. The world is full of them.

Also, aliens aren’t monsters. Although they have often been used as monsters, like in the 1979 movie Alien, they have no inherent strangeness or terrifying-ness unless they are taken out of their natural context, like the platypus in your bed. In Star Wars, the Mos Eisley cantina is filled with aliens that look wild and diverse to our eyes, but they are an ordinary part of life for Luke Skywalker.

That is not to say monsters are solely the domain of horror. They are also present in science fiction, fantasy, and more. Monster movies frequently blend genres, and in a sense, are a genre all their own.

With all this cinematic history in mind, what image do you think of first when you envision a monster? When you picture a vampire, a werewolf, or a zombie, is it a man or a woman? For that matter, how many female monsters can you name off the top of your head? Don’t be ashamed if it’s only a handful. Looking at the first 150 issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland, which originally ran from 1958 to 1983 and served as the goto publication about these films, women monsters only made the cover eight times. Lon Chaney, Vincent Price, and TV horror host Zacherley made the cover two times each before the Bride of Frankenstein first appeared on the cover of issue 17. She would appear on the cover 3 more times. The magazine is only partly to blame. It was at least trying to represent the glamour ghouls, but there simply weren’t many to represent at the time.

Fangoria, which took the monster movie magazine baton from Famous Monsters and ran with it through much of the 80s and 90s, didn’t have the same excuse. Horror was booming and more monstrous women were stealing the screen, but they weren’t showing up on the covers. I remember how excited I was to find issue 127 on a bookstore magazine rack in the early 90s, with its fullcolor photo of zombified Julie from Return of the Living Dead 3, marking one of the rare cover appearances of a femme monster. I stood there and read the whole article immediately.

In a genre historically dominated by men, it seems like the thought of a female monster rarely crossed anyone’s mind. However, some of the earliest monsters known to humankind are female. Greek mythology brought us harpies, sirens, and gorgons. To this day, the names of these creatures are used to slander women. In antiquity, female monsters represented the worst of women, or what their male creators supposed the worst in women to be. Hideous and outwardly repulsive at first, the monster ladies eventually evolved to be more traditionally femme, hiding their monstrous traits under a veneer of beauty.

While the female monsters of Greek mythology are the most well known in the western world, monstrous femmes can be found in the myths and folk tales of nearly all cultures. For example, stories of vagina dentata, women with sharp teeth in their vaginas, exist across the globe.

Learn more about horror history and monster maven archetypes with your own copy of Ghoul’s Rule, shipping now from our site or available at your favorite Microcosm peddler August 4.