It Was a Dreary Night of November: The Importance of Setting in Horror Fiction
If you’ve read Dracula or Frankenstein, you’re probably already aware of how important setting is to the Gothic novel. If Dracula had lived in a cottage by the sea, it would have been a much different story. Unlike other stories at the time, Gothic literature was a place where setting played just as much importance as character and usually involved desolate landscapes in wild and mountainous locations, rambling castles, foggy moors, and decaying ruins.
In contemporary horror fiction—the successor of Gothic literature—setting plays an equal role. But where the Gothic’s settings reflect the fear of giving in to social vices and desires, the horror of the modern reader is focused on realities that are closer to home. While haunted houses and dark forests still have their place in horror, it can also be just as effective to scare readers by using settings that are unexpected or mundane.
Simone St. James set her novel The Sun Down Motel in a dilapidated roadside inn, one you might see on every highway, exploring the idea of who would haunt its carpeted halls. The setting is so ordinary that its intimacy is what makes it spooky. Who hasn’t spent the night in an unfamiliar room—whether a hotel, a motel, an Airbnb, or just a strange bed—and thought we heard something go bump in the night?
Photo of two ghosts looking out of a greenhouse, one holding a candle, and the other a lit jack-o’-lantern, by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels.
The Upstairs House by Julia Fine opens in a maternity ward where the main character just gave birth. The hospital is normal, the nurses are accommodating, and her husband is excited, there is nothing particularly off about the scene, yet it feels unsettling. This is because of the main character’s observations of what is happening around her. She pictures her baby being pieced together on a conveyor belt, sees herself connected to “a massive computer… behind a jumble of tubes and wires”, and is tormented by the presence of a “lost balloon with [a] leering Mylar smile”. To the reader, the hospital becomes sterile and creepy without an obvious reason and suddenly we don’t trust the nurse’s smiles.
A scene can also be made scarier by isolating the character. In The Sun Down Motel, the character works the night shift alone and in The Upstairs House, her husband is often away. This is reflective of Gothic themes, but where we’d normally see a reclusive monster or exiled antagonist, we are viewing the main character or narrator in their stead. In Stephanie Perkins’ There’s Someone Inside Your House, Perkins uses isolation to magnify the fear in her scene: “The sun hung low on the horizon. It shone through the cornfields, making the brittle stalks appear soft and dull. Her father was still out there. Somewhere… The world looked abandoned.” She uses words like “brittle” and “dull” to create a feeling of dystopia. The main character’s father is there but as a reader we can feel the enormousness of the farm, and how no one would hear us if we screamed.
Though I love the beauty of old mansions creeping with ghosts and hidden passageways, there is something scarier in the familiar. I am afraid of walking in the dark not because of a monster in a faraway castle but because of a stranger in the shadows. Framing horror stories in places where we should feel safe exploits our private fears that we are never safe and that there is always someone or something watching.
Books I’m Excited About
As a horror and mystery editor, one of the things I’m asked is for recommendations on some good spooky books. 2021 was a great year for horror novels and a bad year for my TBR (to be read) pile. Here are some recent releases to help get you prepared for the colder, shorter days ahead.
If you want to be scared but also want romance
Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo
If you like the classics but want something new
A Dowry of Blood by S T Gibson
If you like your horror stories short
The Ghost Sequences by A C Wise
If haunted houses are more your thing
The Family Plot by Megan Collins
If you want young adult
The Taking of Jake by Ryan Douglass
