Horror Dressed in Black – A Look at Gothic Horror
Horror Dressed in Black – A Look at Gothic Horror by Lauren Carter
Fancy walking into shadows? Gothic horror will take you there, gladly.
Gothic horror looks at the fear we feel and the hauntings that may happen in between all of that. The genre dates back as far as the 1700’s with The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, with many classics following closely behind such as The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde or Dracula by Bram Stoker. We all know gothic horror to be a certain aesthetic, dark castles in remote areas, candle lit rooms with portraits overlooking it all, creepy gargoyles, and bats just outside. The genre, however, is always evolving, sometimes separating more for its close cousin of gothic romance or even, in some cases, pairing the two together – which is true in the case of my novelette “Your Darling Death.”
While gothic horror tends to focus on the setting on the book, there are many out there that look further than that and even don’t write much about where the characters are, instead they focus on the terror of the characters or just the story itself. Especially in the last few years, gothic horror has started to expand even more and taking more (what might be considered) risks to branch out from the norm of gothic template.
Let’s take a look at ten of my personal recommendations that I not only love but helped inspire parts of Your Darling Death.
