Holy HorrorSummer 2025I have spent a significant amount of time this year working on a large linocut of Samson.If you are unfamiliar with Samson’s story, or just haven’t read it for a while, you can find it in Judges 13-16 in the Old Testament of the Bible. Reading it should take about half an hour, if that. It isn’t a boring one, I promise.There are two modern stories that both remind me of Samson and I think help us moderns better grasp what this story is and what it is for.These tales are the story of Túrin from JRR Tolkien’s published Silmarillion, and the 2024 remake of the vampire story Nosferatu, directed by Robert Eggers.Túrin is the main character in multiple versions of a story Tolkien tells as an integral part of the mythical First Age of his legendarium.Túrin’s father is a great captain of men who is taken prisoner by the Dark Lord Morgoth, bound to a seat high above the earth and forced, like we the reader, to watch the lives of his children tragically unfold.As we journey through Túrin’s life, we witness someone dealt an incredibly difficult hand by circumstance, who also continually makes really terrible decisions. Chances are, you may know someone in real life like this.Both tales force readers to confront whether they can root for a protagonist that displays remarkable bravery and resilience whilst also committing appalling acts of mass murder (in Samson’s case) or accidental incest and amicide in Turin’s.As with Samson, readers are often drawn into interpreting the story of Túrin as a morality tale; primarily a lesson about how or how not to live our lives.These same readers are often divided on whether Túrin is a mere victim of his circumstances and of the malice of Morgoth, or whether he is an antihero or even a villain who damns his friends and family and causes the collapse of an Elven kingdom through his arrogance and stubbornness.Samson is often presented as a cautionary tale about what happens if you don’t respect your parents and don’t obey God, or sometimes more maliciously as a warning against trusting women.I believe both tales actively resist being read so simply and are much deeper stories that engage with (but don’t necessarily resolve) some of the most essential and troubling parts of being human.Túrin’s story is a masterpiece in Tolkien’s exploration of the dance between fate, the defining force in Northern paganism, free will and divine providence, a distinctly Christian belief.Fate and free will are also at the forefront of Nosferatu, a tale set in enlightened 19th-Century Germany, where Ellen Hutter, in the loneliness of her youth, unwisely prays for a spirit of comfort to visit her from ‘any celestial sphere’. Her prayer is answered, but in the form of an ancient demon - Nosferatu.Years later, Ellen’s husband Thomas becomes entangled in the story as he journeys East to meet a Count Orlok - the physical embodiment of Nosferatu, who ships himself to Wisberg and wreaks a terrible plague on the town as he searches for Ellen.Like Túrin, Ellen Hutter’s choices have been central in getting us here and will play the vital role in the tale’s conclusion.While it is unfair to blame the suffering of Wisberg on Ellen for her part in inviting Nosferatu into the story, it is perhaps only more unfair to deny her the agency she had in setting these dark events in motion.Yet, as Eggers’ Nosferatu draws inexorably towards its conclusion, we are faced with the terrifying sense that there is only one way it can end - that perhaps there has only ever been one way it could ever end.This dance between the protagonists’ wills and the sense of a much larger and darker hand at work (literally, in the case of Nosferatu’s most striking scene) is an essential part of all three stories.If our hearts are aligned properly we should root for Ellen and Thomas, hope against hope for Túrin and Finduilas; even desire Samson’s deliverance, perhaps against our better judgment.We want things to end happily, but also sense that they won’t - that this isn’t one of those stories.All three narratives communicate this through a strong sense of foreboding. In Samson, we are told that he gives his parents honey to eat from the body of a dead (and therefore ritually unclean) lion. The writer adds that Samson does not tell his parents where the honey has come from. The story then abruptly continues and we are left with the feeling that this cannot possibly end well.Túrin’s friends joke that the red flowers on the hill of Amon Rûdh look like blood. Again the narrative abruptly continues - but nothing good will occur on Amon Rûdh.In an early scene in Nosferatu we see the two young daughters of Friedrich, Ellen and Thomas’ wealthy friend, say their bedtime prayers bathed in golden candlelight - one of the few scenes not shot in ghostly moonlight or living darkness. From this moment you can be almost certain that the vampire is going to drink them like a couple of Capri-Suns.Turambar, the name Túrin gives himself, means ‘master of fate’ - a boast that his choices are ultimately what determine his reality. But it is a title Morgoth also takes, and the story largely serves as evidence that Morgoth’s will is stronger than Túrin’s. It forces us to confront a dark question, and one that Tolkien asks elsewhere in his writing; are we not cast off finally? Is not the Nameless the Lord of the World?The same is true in Samson and Nosferatu, where we see even strong and resolute wills ultimately succumb to darkness. The tales themselves seem equivocal, as can our own battles against interior and exterior darkness.What is the point of telling stories like these, that unsettle and even depress us? Why did Tolkien, capable of writing such fun and whimsical material spend so much time on this one? Why is Samson in th Bible, let alone a story we tell to children?
We’ve already covered some of the similarities between Samson and Túrin. But perhaps the most important thing that connects the two is how their stories are interpreted by those who come after them.In The Fellowship of the Ring, which takes place many ages after the events of the Silmarillion, Elrond refers to Túrin as one of the ‘mighty elf-friends of old’, alongside heroes such as Beren and Hador.This title seems on some level to be earned in spite of Túrin's actions, which include him becoming estranged from his elvish foster-father, accidentally murdering the elf Beleg, by some distance Turin’s best friend, and ultimately result in the downfall of at least two of the three great elvish kingdoms of Beleriand.Similarly, the writer of Hebrews in the New Testament lists Samson as one of a long line of the faithful from the Hebrew Bible alongside figures like Gideon and Moses. He isn’t the only rogue selection in this list; Jephthah is also listed, another character from Judges mostly famous for unwittingly making an oath that results in him having to sacrifice his own daughter.It is perhaps easier to accept flawed heroes like King David who achieve great good despite their obvious flaws, but Jephthah and Samson’s stories feel harder to redeem as exemplars of lives lived faithfully. Similarly, we might ask of Lord Elrond; “with elf-friends like these, who needs elf-enemies?”It is perhaps easier to accept flawed heroes like King David who achieve great good despite their obvious flaws, but Jephthah and Samson’s stories feel harder to redeem as exemplars of lives lived faithfully. Similarly, we might ask of Lord Elrond; “with elf-friends like these, who needs elf-enemies?”There is an ancient tradition within Christian exegesis called typology, which seeks to interpret people, events and images from the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament) as prefigures or signs of things fulfilled in the New Testament.Jonah’s three-night stay in the belly of the whale is a type of Christ’s descent into the tomb. Adam is a pre-cursor to a Second Adam (also Christ). Augustine even went as far as to refer to the door of Noah’s ark - a gateway to life and an escape from the waters of chaos - as a type of the side-wound (of Christ). You get the picture.I’ve heard similar interpretation applied to Samson - and to Túrin. When I told a Christian a few months ago that I had been spending so much time wrestling with the equivocality and darkness of Samson’s story, they cheerfully told me that the meaning was simple; Samson’s eventual defeat of the Philistines was a gateway to life and freedom for his own people, and in this sense we can conclude that he redeemed himself and can be considered a good judge of Israel. In this sense, Samson is also a type of Christ.One might similarly conclude that Túrin's eventual defeat of the great dragon Glaurung is enough to redeem his story and secure his status as elf-friend.This would be fine except for the fact that it is enormously unsatisfying. It doesn’t resolve Samson’s unrepentance, the way God’s presence seems to suddenly leave and then return to him, or the fact that his great, final act of mass murder is achieved by suicide.It is especially troubling at this time, given the familiar geography of Samson’s exploits. In one episode he spends the night with a prostitute and then carries the gates of Gaza on his shoulders all the way to Hebron. The way in which his retaliatory mass-murder of thousands of people is reframed as a righteous and life-giving act is depressingly current.It also doesn’t really help poor Ellen. Her story occurs after Easter Sunday, and although we can also see Christological types after the resurrection as much as we can before, one of the greatest discomforts for a Christian watching Nosferatu, or indeed Eggers’ The VVitch, is seeing the apparent triumph of darkness as people’s prayers go unanswered.The cross or the steeple of Wisberg’s church are rarely out of sight in Nosferatu, but unlike Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where the sacrament is a powerful weapon, in Nosferatu we are faced for most of the film with a largely silent God whose actions and purposes are hidden to us.The orthodox schema nuns we encounter at the start of the film seem to know what’s going on, but the enlightened Western Christians of Germany apparently don’t, and the main characters have to turn to an occultist for help.Ellen’s final sacrifice to save the world is desperately sad, deeply Wagnerian in its flavour and I believe essentially Christological - the cleansing, fiery light of dawn on the third day has to be one of the most familiar symbols in human history.But it remains uncomfortable to accept. Ellen still dies in horrific circumstances. And who wants to admit that a woman having to spend an entire night in the embrace of a demonic animated corpse reminds them of God?The world is strange. Sometimes it seems to make a little bit of sense. Then I find myself asking something like “where did the meaning go? It was here yesterday!” It is in this place that faith is actually exercised.In this sense all three of these stories are unflinching, deeply honest and actually helpful explorations of what it is like to experience the divine in a broken world; less a paradisic vision, more a journey between fragmented islands of deep meaning in a vast ocean of apparently total meaninglessness.The longer I’ve spent with Samson, especially that final scene, the more I recognise our similarities. I too, was aware of God’s presence from a young age, but like Samson this unfortunately wasn’t enough to prevent me from making really bad decisions. I’m reminded of the times I’ve found it easier to just tear down whole places, friendships - even entire years - in an attempt to cover my tracks rather than seek some kind of redemption.The longer I spend with the image from the Morgan Bible, the more I notice that Samson doesn’t really look angry or vengeful or even triumphant in his final act. He just looks sad. Sadder than the sea.That sadness is the easiest thing to relate to. Who can behold what is happening today in Gaza and still hold to some kind of ultimate meaning? How many long years of meaningless are compressed into Abraham’s story? Or as Flaubert supposedly said; “Few will be able to guess how sad one must be to resuscitate Carthage.”Perhaps, amid the rubble of my own mistakes - or in Tolkien’s words “the darkness of my life, so much frustrated”, there still lies something for someone to find that they might by some strange grace consider worthy of a place among the faithful, or of being called a friend of the elves.The tales of Samson, Ellen and Túrin attempt in small, beautiful and deeply effective ways to provoke these questions in our hearts. There is meaning to be discovered in them, but it is not easily found, and promises no easy answers.