Culture
Author Neil Sater on merging real-life tragedy and supernatural fiction in ‘Atrocity’
By: Emily Votaw
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) – In this episode of Conversations from Studio B, WOUB’s Emily Votaw talks with Cleveland-based author Neil Sater about his most recent novel, Atrocity: The Haunting of Moravian Village.
The book tells the story of Sean Davidson, a teenager whose life takes a sudden, nightmarish turn after a mysterious stranger emerges from the night and intrudes on a deliberately strange campfire gathering with his best friend.
The supernatural forces that terrorize Sean are fictional, but their roots lie in a very real historical tragedy: the Gnadenhutten Massacre, also known as the Moravian Massacre.
On March 8, 1782—towards the end of the American Revolutionary War—Pennsylvania militiamen led by David Williamson brutally killed 96 unarmed and pacifist Native Americans, nearly two-thirds of them women and children, at the Christian mission village of Gnadenhütten, near present-day New Philadelphia, Ohio.
In the interview, Sater discusses working with members of a Native American community that descended from many of the massacre survivors. He also discusses his efforts to raise awareness of this history and the inspiration he finds in rural Ohio—specifically, Tuscarawas, Coshocton, and Holmes Counties—which he fictionalizes as Homer County, the setting for Atrocity, as well as his two other horror novels: Phantom Realm: the Haunting of Misery Mansion (2023) and Mercy Killing: the Haunting of Ghoul House (2024).
Listen to the conversation by clicking “play” in the Soundcloud embed above. Keep tabs on Sater’s work by following him on Facebook.