Below is a quick guide to the main differences between Gothic horror and horror, but scroll down to find a more in-depth overview of the genres.
| Feature | Horror | Gothic horror |
| Main goal | To shock, terrify or disgust the audience. | To create an atmosphere of dread and unease. Too unsettle. |
| Source of fear | Overt physical threat ie a monster, a demon, a murderer, a zombie. | Sometimes unknown. The environment or something psychological. |
| Gore | Explicit. Blood, gore, murder. | Implied often. Sometimes uses gore. Mysteries and shadows. |
| Setting | Anywhere, classic, contemporary or futuristic. | Somewhere isolated, sometimes decaying. Isolation can also just be the person who is isolated literally or psychologically. |
| Supernatural | Explicit, clear and lethal. | Implied, leaving the reader unsure if it’s real or imagined. Sometimes the supernatural is metaphorical. Sometimes explicit. |
| Core themes | Survival. Fight between good and evil. Overcoming disaster. | Emotional instability, family trauma, secrets, taboo, scandal, confinement, repressed desires. |
Is Gothic horror always slow?
Sometimes, a Gothic horror novel will come out and you’ll see reviews saying it was too slow, nothing happened, it wasn’t scary… and so on. It’s still horror. Let me explain why:
In traditional horror (think Stephen King’s The Shining or Cujo) the threat is usually really obvious, and it is embodied clearly: a monster, an alien, a mad man with a chainsaw. In Gothic horror, the threat can be completely unknown, it could be the atmosphere, something environmental, or something psychological. Both styles are still horror.
The Gothic focuses mostly on the eerie atmosphere, dread, the inability to escape something that haunts, and doesn’t let go. There is not always a vampire to throw holy water on, or an unhinged killer with a knife to handcuff. Gothic horror can leave the reader uncomfortable, unsettled and wondering: Did any of this actually happen, or was it all in the character’s mind?
Gothic horror is usually much, much slower than a slasher or even a cosmic horror novel. There is no big bang, or a reckoning. Sometimes, it is the very building or setting that is the main aggressor: not as exciting up front as a swamp monster or a xenomorph from space, but a haunted castle that consumes its inhabitants over time can still be a little bit scary, can’t it?
Gothic horror usually leaves out the eyeball squish and focuses on our deepest, innermost fears and desires: the things that drive us through life. Gothic horror usually leaves something unsaid. We don’t always get the answers we want.
Supernatural: Gothic or just horror?
Gothic horror sometimes employs the supernatural ie Dracula. There are plenty of ghosts featured in Gothic tales (The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell) and the antagonist in Susan Hill’s The Woman In Black is the ghost of a vengeful woman who once lived in the isolated house Arthur Kipps has to stay in. The supernatural sometimes serves the Gothic story brilliantly–the ghost actually representing something else.
When Mike Flanagan adapted The Haunting Of Hill House for Netflix, he really leaned into the idea of the ghost representing something else (repressed memories and childhood trauma), or the house being alive. The Crain family never escape the trauma of living in that house years before. It shatters their family bonds. Their trauma remains unresolved until they return years later for answers. I think the most harrowing part of this series was when the characters realised the house would never be satisfied until it had consumed every soul that occupies it, and those it had taken already would be chained to it for eternity. It just sits there, watching.
Sometimes the supernatural or paranormal character is more than just a ghost.
Did you know that one of the influences for Dracula was Stoker’s mother telling him about the time Ireland had a cholera outbreak?
In the days of my early youth (wrote Charlotte Stoker) the world was shaken with the dread of a new and terrible plague which was desolating all lands as it passed through them, and so regular was its march that men could tell where next it would appear and almost the day when it might be expected. It was the cholera, which for the first time appeared in Western Europe. Its bitter strange kiss, and man’s want of experience or knowledge of its nature, or how best to resist its attacks, added, if anything could, to its horrors. —A Biography Of Dracula: The Life Story Of Bram Stoker, Harry Ludlam.
The vampire, especially in Gothic horror, can be symbolic, like it is in Dracula. The vampire in this novel doesn’t actually appear as an overt monster: he is insidious, able to change form and escape capture when pursued by conventional means. Dracula and his kind can be interpreted as a disease on the living, or the power imbalance of the aristocratic land owner and the peasants who rent their houses and businesses on it. Vampires within Gothic horror can also represent lust, desire, corruption of the innocence and invasion of another influence (for example, the town in Salem’s Lot being swallowed up by a foreign presence).
In Shirley Jackson’s novel The Haunting Of Hill House, it is never clear whether the house is indeed haunted. Strange phenomena does occur around the house, and the characters are mostly frightening themselves, but we do wonder as readers if most of this is a figment of Eleanor Vance’s overactive imagination. Eleanor doubts herself, she wishes she belonged. A young woman who has spent all of her prime caring for her sick mother, Eleanor is a thirty-something who jumps at the chance of staying in a supposedly haunted house up in Vermont.
Eleanor thinks of the Shakespeare line ‘journeys end in lovers meeting’ constantly, and this shows us as readers that her desire is to meet someone, belong somewhere, be happy. Her psychological vulnerability to the house is portrayed through her desire to be wanted, to be needed, to have a family. She falls in love with the house and never wants to leave. It’s a creepy house, but is it really calling to her? We never get the answer.
Sometimes the ghosts are easier to believe in than the reality.
It’s not strictly a Gothic horror novel, but elements of Jane Eyre call to that side of our brains that wants to choose the irrational over the rational. When Jane senses something else is in the house (and it’s not just Grace Poole laughing) she wants to believe it’s a ghost. It must be a haunted mansion! It can’t be that the man she loves is harbouring a dark secret from her and will hold on to the lie even when they’re walking the altar on their wedding day. It would be easier in this situation to believe there’s a ghost, because the scandal will be life-altering.
With this being a Victorian novel, it would be unthinkable that the romantic interest of the main character is a bad man, who has done bad things and got away with it.
Sometimes, the line between Gothic horror and horror blurs.
In both The Hacienda and Mexican Gothic there is a strong sense of eerie tension and atmosphere, but the horror is also explicit in parts. In Isabel Canas’ The Hacienda, we have the atmosphere of a Gothic house but also occult rituals and a relentless supernatural threat. In Mexican Gothic we have mystery, dread, a heavy atmosphere and a hallucinogenic fungus. These aren’t the only novels that blend an explicit threat with an insidious threat:
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Considered the first science fiction novel, the creature that Dr Frankenstein creates is a physical, threatening, hideous monster, but the Gothic elements are the isolated scenes in the Arctic and the theme of man playing God, and man vs nature.
The Terror by Dan Simmons. This is one of the most atmospheric horror books I have ever read. While not strictly Gothic, it does contain plenty of Gothic elements including the sense of dread, the mystery of what’s eating the sailors as they sit trapped in the ice floes of the Arctic. The men on the Terror and the Erebus know they’re going to die as they remain on these decaying ships with no hope of sailing away. There are some elements of gore as sailors are attacked by polar bears, murdered or injured, but the overarching atmosphere and Captain Crozier’s psychological vulnerability and paranoia carries the story.
In conclusion:
The Gothic is usually more focused on terror: the slow, seeping dread. Horror is generally about repulsion and disgust. Plenty of horror books can terrify you without an ounce of gore.
Have you read any books that you feel blend Gothic horror elements with horror elements well?
Let me know in the comments!
Hanna Delaney is the author of several books including the Muldoon supernatural thriller series, Oceanus and The Shade In the Sands And Other Stories. She has a BA and an MA in English Literature from Liverpool Hope University and resides in Liverpool with her family.
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