HorrorBuzz recently spoke with Selma Karayalçın, a screenwriter whose screenplay Witch Mother was named a Finalist in the 2025 13Horror.com Screenplay Competition. Writing from Cyprus and drawing on a background in English literature, Karayalçın discusses her path from academic scholarship to screenwriting, the films that shaped her creative outlook, and how folklore, history, and belief systems inform her approach to horror.
HorrorBuzz: Where are you located?
Selma Karayalçın: I live on the island of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean — but I was born and raised in London, England.
SK: I’ve always written — academically and creatively. I have a PhD in English Literature and I’ve published scholarly work, including an article in The Hemingway Review in 2016. After writing that piece, I realised the story had cinematic potential. I applied for and was awarded the Ernest Hemingway Research Grant from the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation in 2019, which allowed me to study Hemingway’s papers at the Hemingway Archives in Boston. That research developed into my first screenplay — and it began opening industry doors just before the pandemic paused everything. Today I balance screenwriting with my full-time work as a high school English teacher in Cyprus — and that real, everyday human world constantly fuels my storytelling. Screenwriting isn’t a side branch – it was the natural progression of my work.
HB: Are you a fan of any particular films? Which ones?
SK: I grew up watching the ‘70s horror films — Assault on Precinct 13, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Driller Killer. What I loved about that era was the sense of danger and unpredictability on screen — horror wasn’t polished, it was disruptive. Those films woke something in me. But the film that truly shaped me is The Wicker Man (1973). It stands apart from almost every other horror film — mythic, ritualistic, unsettling in ways that get under the skin rather than jump out at you. It showed me that horror could be intelligent, poetic and culturally rooted.
That is the lane I write in — psychological and folk horror — stories shaped by history, trauma, superstition and belief. Films like The Witch, Hereditary, The Others, The Innocents form that cinematic lineage. Witch Mother lives inside that space — but in the modern world, where livestream comments become a contemporary Greek chorus witnessing the horror unfold in real time.
HB: Why did you choose to write a horror screenplay?
SK: Originally, I never planned to write horror. But Witch Mother began with a personal connection: my brother-in-law is descended from the Pendle witches — specifically the Device family — from Pendle Hill in Lancashire, England. In 1612, a nine-year-old girl, Jennet Device, accused twelve people of witchcraft — including members of her own family — which led to the execution of her mother, Elizabeth, her siblings, and her grandmother.
At first I thought this would be a historical justice story — but as I researched, something darker emerged. I began to wonder: what if Elizabeth Device never truly rested? What if her rage returned centuries later to torment her own descendant — a modern young girl — as vengeance for what was done? That question pulled me directly into horror.
HB: How have people responded to your script?
SK: There’s been a very strong response, especially considering I only began actively sending Witch Mother out at the end of August. It was a Finalist in the 2025 13Horror Competition, which led to more readers and requests. Cyprus Mail just interviewed me. Several producers and managers are currently reading the script, and I’m already in active meetings. There is something about this story that people cannot ignore — it sticks.
HB: What are your hopes for Witch Mother?
SK: I want Witch Mother on the big screen — because this story is built for cinema: folklore colliding with modern digital culture, horror unfolding both inside the frame and through the eyes of the online world watching it. But beyond that, I want it to open a conversation about the real human beings destroyed by hysteria, fear and power. In Pendle, it wasn’t only women — men, boys, the elderly — whole families were torn apart. They were mothers, sons, daughters, brothers — not monsters. Horror can force the world to look again at the people history tried to erase.
Karayalçın reflected on the broader purpose behind Witch Mother. Beyond bringing the story to the screen, she hopes the project encourages audiences to reconsider the real people destroyed by fear, superstition, and power. By connecting historical injustice with modern digital culture, Witch Mother aims to examine how horror can revisit erased voices and confront the lasting consequences of collective hysteria.
The real lesson here is that film is everywhere. You don’t need to be in Hollywood to make a movie. To quote Mark Duplass, “The cavalry isn’t coming. You have to be your own cavalry.”
