Published as an e-book, Incubus, ( بختك-“Bakhtak“in Farsi) is a collection of fifty seven horror, at times blunt, stories written in Farsi by different Iranian writers, living inside and outside Iran. According to his forward to the book, Mehdi Ganjavi, who along with Mehrnaz Mansoori and Naser FarzinFar, oversaw the project from start to finish, the idea of the book came to life when a small Halloween project in an Iranian cultural gathering in Toronto, Canada, became a Facebook call to Iranian artists to submit their Farsi horror short stories online. And hopefully this is just the beginning of many more such projects to come, taking this genre of the contemporary Persian literature, to new heights.
At first, you catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye. Just as you turn your head, it’s gone. But the feeling of being watched, now becomes evident, maybe even overwhelming. The feeling of fear comes over your whole body, and you are frightened. The shadows of the outside tree branches reflected by the moonlight on the bedroom wall, hovering over you toys, are now looking more like the giant monsters in you story books…
And then it happens: that awful incubus hallucination sitting on your chest, preventing you from moving or breathing, and you feel trapped in a nightmare.
Our childhood fears tumble through the time, but some still stay with us till this day. And every horror story we read, stimulates our nerves, touching our deep down feelings, and even at times, bringing back our long avoided demons.
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