Previously in this series: Jack London
All animals are underfed, black, and vaguely eldritch. They all hate you.
You are a man. If you’re a woman, you are the love interest of the man, and you are dead.
All the women you know have died in childbirth. All the children you know are orphans. You are an orphan.
It’s foggy. If it’s not foggy, it’s smoggy. Or misty. Some form of particulate matter is in the air.
You are arranged to be married to someone sickly.
You tend to dismiss odd noises, prophetic ramblings of mad men, and the death of small animals en masse with a shrug and an offhand “It’s probably nothing.”
Everyone’s last name starts with “Van” or “Von Roth.”
One of your children is crushed to death by a humongous helmet on the day of their wedding.
Everything is gloomy, like that song “Blue” by Eiffel 65 but replace the word “blue” with “gloomy.” You are gloomy. Your life is gloomy and the castle you live in is gloomy. Your underfed black dog is gloomy.
Skulls feature prominently in all interior decorating.
You are in a small town. There is a deep dark secret that only the members of the town know. The outside world can never find out.
It is also a sleepy little town. “Nothing ever happens around here,” says one of the locals. It’s true. Only three people live there and they all died in childbirth.
You go wandering somewhere very cold, and almost freeze to death, but are saved by the fortuitous arrival of a crew of explorers.
You are in a monastery.
You are on a moor.
There is something in the walls (or the wallpaper, or the pipes, or the floors).
Your house has a garret, which is firmly locked for reasons you will not disclose.
You hate everyone, except for one woman you are incredibly attracted to. She hates you.
At least half of the people you know are mad. If you are not yet mad yourself, you are probably well on your way.
The other half are ghosts.
You have recently discovered an old document of some kind. Most likely a journal, but possibly a map or letters written by a dead family member.
All the portraits in your house have peepholes cut in the eyes.
Important events in your life are always preceded by a storm, or at least a stiff wind.
Your house is very dusty and there are cobwebs everywhere. Basically everything is either dust or a cobweb. There isn’t even anything under the dust anymore, just more dust.
You call your bedroom your “chambers.” There is something at your chamber door.
You are near, or on, the ocean.
Someone is keeping a captain’s log.
A book with a malicious spirit trapped inside was very well hidden somewhere no one should have ever found it, and definitely not ineffectually thrown in a chest or a tomb somewhere, but you found it anyway because you’re so curious and full of hubris.
The Evil Creature’s name is comprised entirely of consonants and punctuation.
There was a traumatic event in your childhood involving beach caves.
You are in love with your cousin.
Some form of Catholic imagery has just been appropriated and misused.
You have a love/hate relationship with a grotesquely malformed creature that you are repulsed by, but also pity.
Something is wrong. Something is terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly wrong.
You’re looking at something man was not meant to see. You can’t even comprehend it. It has parallel lines intersecting each other, and it goes on for infinity but you can see all of it, and other stuff that’s just really impossible. Like, think about M.C. Escher but then also scary and also your eyeballs are bleeding probably.
You have experienced unspeakable things. Everything has been resolved in the bleakest way possible. Your only hope is that you will take this secret to the grave.
Tags: abi inman, books, gothic novel, horror, how to tell what novel you’re in
Okay but at least Eric Clapton can play guitar.
How many of these do we have to check yes to in order to know for sure? Asking for a friend.
One could make the case that the 60’s kitchen-sink film “This Sporting Life” is actually a gothic horror tale: gorgeous, tortured, panther-like Richard Harris (sporting eyeliner) chasing the beautiful, haunted widow played by Rachel Roberts round the kitchen table and into eternity. It’s “Wuthering Heights” set in council flats.
I have no idea why that just came to mind, but figured I’d share. The movie is worth checking out.
I need to know what this one refers to, because it’s niggling at the back of my brain but my mental file cabinets need a lot of organizing i mean they aren’t even alphabetized.
Something is wrong. Something is terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly, terribly wrong.
(also, the helmet! of course it shows up in this list. it is one of my favorite things. and also right now i’m rereading The Monk because I can? and I’d TOTALLY forgotten how the ENTIRE PLOT is told in the very first chapter, at least in retrospect. I’m at the first grotto scene, which lol it’s a fake grotto made to look all mysterious and aesthetical, where The Monk learns that his favorite novice is actually a women, but he hasn’t yet learned that the painting of the Madonna he adores and tries really hard not to think sexy thoughts about is modeled after that very same novice. (wait, I think that’s this one, right, and not The Italian or something?) There’s so much good stuff yet to come! it’s my second favorite gothic novel of all time. But only because nothing surpasses the farting castle.)
Hahahaha, The Monk! That shit was FUCKED. UP! I love how he’s a virgin who gets seduced by his novice and then is tired of her literally one week later. And then he makes a non-specific deal with Satan! How do you not know to be AS SPECIFIC AS POSSIBLE when making bargains with evil people?
But most especially I love the very literal overkill that concludes the bargain.
I have never laughed so hard (except for that helmet death in Otranto).
I feel like now is an appropriate time to say that last night I was half dreaming/about to fall asleep when I dreamed that I suddenly stopped breathing. No theatrics, or gasping for breath, I was just about to die when…I woke up. And then I was afraid to fall back asleep because I might stop breathing in my dream again and actually die this time.
Was I almost a man’s dead female love interest in a Gothic horror novel???!!
I was going to say that the helmet shout-out was the best thing, but then I got to “Only three people live there and they all died in childbirth.” And then “Important events in your life are always preceded by a storm, or at least a stiff wind.” This is all beautiful, basically.
As a Lovecraftian nightmare god, I approve of this article.
“But you must be aware that when a young lady is (by whatever means) introduced into a dwelling of this kind, she is always lodged apart from the rest of the family. While they snugly repair to their own end of the house, she is formally conducted by Dorothy, the ancient housekeeper, up a different staircase, and along many gloomy passages, into an apartment never used since some cousin or kin died in it about twenty years before. Can you stand such a ceremony as this? Will not your mind misgive you when you find yourself in this gloomy chamber—too lofty and extensive for you, with only the feeble rays of a single lamp to take in its size—its walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as large as life, and the bed, of dark green stuff or purple velvet, presenting even a funereal appearance? Will not your heart sink within you?”
“Oh! But this will not happen to me, I am sure.”
“How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! And what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fireplace the portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your eyes from it. Dorothy, meanwhile, no less struck by your appearance, gazes on you in great agitation, and drops a few unintelligible hints. To raise your spirits, moreover, she gives you reason to suppose that the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs you that you will not have a single domestic within call. With this parting cordial she curtsies off—you listen to the sound of her receding footsteps as long as the last echo can reach you—and when, with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover, with increased alarm, that it has no lock.”
I like to think about Jane sitting in her parlour and reading some of the more…campy? out-there? over-the-top? what is the adjective I want!??…examples of early gothic horror, tea and whatever passed for Regency-era popcorn at her side. It is a delicious image.
Also, you know she read Otranto. Did she also giggle at the massive helmet? did she snicker at poor Lucy of Udolpho’s utter weepiness and lack of spine? did she read The Monk and gasp in shock at the (invented) licentious horrors of Spanish Catholics while also peeking between her fingers to get to the good sexy bits involving incest?
Honestly, the hardest part of discussing the Spanish Inquisition is figuring out how much of it was invented by Gothic Novels.
Henry Tilney. So very eligible. <3
I USE SKULLS IN ALL OF MY DEEEEEEECORAAAAAAAAAAAATINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
I need more thumbs ups for this comment.
Damnit, beat me to it.
Are there people who don’t? How bizarre.
Me: I have a lot of skulls in my decor.
Friend: And how is that affecting your sex life?
Me: NO CHANGE
You’re a man?
Huh.
Carmilla would like a word with you.
When you were very small, you saw something nasty in the woodshed.
NICE
Oh bloody hell, that was what I was coming to say!
Darn! You beat me to it. I just hope the sukebine isn’t in bloom or we’re all in trouble.
I have a skinny clack cat who hates me, plenty of skulls, and lots of dust. But I have not yet died in childbirth (waiting instead for child to murder me by way of yelling all night; also spooky??). How close am I?
Do you have any hidden rooms or cupboards large enough to hide a person in your house? because that might be the tipping point. There’s always a hidden room or hallway or cupboard large enough to hide a person, even if it’s not so much hidden as “locked and then forgotten”.
There *is* a very frightening closet under the stairs. Which has a heavy-duty hook-type lock ON THE INSIDE…
Oh, dear.
You’d better keep an eye out for mysterious strangers, improbable coincidences, and long-lost relatives, then. Especially strangers who are coincidentally long-lost relatives.
Also, definitely don’t touch any books that promise arcane knowledge or have weird symbols on the cover. That might be tempting fate a bit too much.
pretty sure it’s unprofessional to sing at the reference desk “I’m gloomy da ba dee da ba die, da ba dee da ba die, da ba dee da ba die” but yolo as the kids used to say.
I had always heard “I’m blue, if I was green I would die” but YMMV.
This was definitely an ongoing debate in my jr. high school. Friendships ended over those lyrics.
I always heard them as nonsense syllables but was surprised to find out that these are commonly considered the “official” lyrics. It makes sense, since the song is about being blue, and I have yet to hear a more reasonable suggestion than “green” for the second half.
The helmet scene is from the Castle of Otranto! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Castle_of_Otrant…. My husband just read it because it’s considered the first gothic novel.
Every place near you is named after an animal and an inury/natural thing. Ravenscar. Hawkmoor. Kittenhangnail.
Kitten Air.
But surely you are not a man! You are an exquisitely beautiful, tremendously virginal and accomplished woman prone to fainting. You are being creeped on by your uncle. Your MOTHER probably died in childbirth, true, but you prefer rhapsodic contemplation of nature. There are in fact, quite likely two of you and only one of you will die.
I LOL’d at Kittenhangnail. And now my condo has a name.
Now I really want to play Arkham Horror.
There *seems* to be a rational explanation for the strange things that keep happening, and yet… strange things continue to happen.
It takes you longer and longer to come up with a rational explanation with each new event.
Now I wish to write a story filled with these tropes/terrible things. It will be ghastly, macabre, eldritch, and other purple prosey descriptors.
I use antlers in all of my DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECORATING!!!!!!!!
So much goodness here. I mean terribleness. Terrible terribleness. Hilarious terrible terribleness.
One of my hands-down favourite bits in any Austen is in Northanger Abbey where the Heroine is staying at the titular Abbey and in her room is a Mysterious Cabinet that she’s Never Noticed Before and it’s Mysteriously Locked and then Mysteriously Opens and there’s Mysterious Documents and she tremblingly opens them and it’s a Mysterious dry-cleaning bill someone shoved in an old cabinet in a spare room
Oh, and then she realised that it was actually unlocked to begin with (who locks a spare cabinet?) but because she assumed it was locked she actually turned the key the wrong way.
I think that’s when I realised that Austen was actually funny. Never give those books to bookish children because they won’t really understand them.
Every time I read Northanger Abbey I laugh harder. It really grows on you.
If you number among your acquaintance a Professor, he is well-travelled and male, trained in one of: mathematics, chemistry, the natural sciences, anthropology. No matter his field, he will develop a gripping fascination with a new subject (an object brought or sent from overseas, possibly only a series of equations if the Professor is a mathematician) and will begin to have debilitating headaches and screaming nightmares but will be unable to stop studying the subject. You will discover all this only after he goes mad and dies from lack of food and rest.
Ain't nothing wrong with oblong.
What’s everyone’s favorite gothic horror novel? I need to expand my reading list.
I love all of Le Fanu’s In a Glass Darkly, but those are short stories. Favorite novels include:
Edgar Huntly by Charles Brockden Brown
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg
And for the most insane and over-the-top example of American Gothic, The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monks Hall by George Lippard. It’s AMAZING.
The Monk by Matthew Lewis was pretty fun.
I love this list (and I love these lists in general, especially How to Tell if You Are in a Bronte Novel), but I must lodge a formal protest, by the power invested in me (by myself) as someone who wrote a dissertation on Gothic fiction, to this item: “You are a man. If you’re a woman, you are the love interest of the man, and you are dead.”
Gothic fiction, starting with Otranto, going through Radcliffe, taking a pit stop in Austen, before proceeding to the likes of Jane Eyre and Uncle Silas, has consistently featured heroines. Isabelle, Emily St. Aubert, Catherine Moreland, Jane Eyre, Maud Ruthyn, etc. etc. Many critics argue that Gothic stories are allegories of patriarchal oppression intended to help their predominantly female readerships understand it.
Thus, “You are a woman. You are an orphan. You are being chased by a man twice your age with unsavory sexual and financial intentions. You’ve just discovered the patriarchy.”
The villain uses multiple anagrammatical aliases.
Or, if referring to the moon, gibbous.