Imagine that you and I are settled in around a glowing campfire. It’s late here. The moon is hidden behind the clouds. We brought the makings for s’mores – but more than that, we’ve brought spooky stories to tell each other. The forest around us is thick and dark, and a wolf howls somewhere in the distance. At least…we think it’s a wolf….we hope it’s a wolf. 

But context here is important. Are we huddled around this campfire because the world has crashed and burned? If you stare hard enough into the dark, can you see the crumbling edges of a foreboding building in the distance? Is the nearest city…you and I and this small circle of stones we perch on around a firepit? Was it a virus that brought us to this lonely camp? Was it end-stage capitalism? Or was it some sort of global Brave New World/Hunger Games situation and the end result is just a couple of folx, a campfire, and what may be the last s’mores in the entire universe?

Which brings us to my main question today: 

What is it about a good gothic tale that enchants us so?

Is it the flickering flame of an unsteady candle, held in a quivering hand?

A forbidden touch?

Is it a mansion too big for its own good, or is it the places lurking within that you mustn’t go?

What is it about shadows and goosebumps that delights us?

Perhaps our thrilled shivers come from a full moon illuminating a ghostly specter as the hair on the back of our neck rises, or the rhythmic sound of a shovel in graveyard dirt, delivering a chill down our spine.

Or is it something…more? Something buried much deeper than any midnight shovel could find beneath freshly turned soil?

Gothic tales find their thumping heart in mystery, fear, suspense, and horror. They lick their lips at an atmosphere of quiet dread. Gothic tales specialize in the macabre and in the creeping sensation of grim inevitability. They love to play with spooky mansions, slow burn romance, bygone-era social norms, and the supernatural (a lethal combination of literary elements, to be sure).

Gothic tales and fairy tales share a similar core: the human need to explore what frightens us. Both gothic tales and fairy tales allow us to look at what we are afraid of, to imagine what it would be like to confront it, and to strategize a way to survive it, all within the safe confines of a story. These tales lay bare the parts of ourselves we meet in nightmares. Like a hooded guide shuffling us across the River Styx, these stories hold the lantern of our waking selves in front of us as we navigate dark waters.

Storytelling is a deeply embedded part of the human psyche. In a world full of ever-shifting dangers and perils, stories have always allowed us to examine our most haunting “what ifs”. And as our cultural and physical dangers change form, so too do our stories. Humans used to embody their fears of ostracization and death in tales of wolves, forests, and witches. Now we embody our fears of dehumanization, betrayal, and that ever present fear of death in tales of dystopias, mutation, and erasure.

Stories and the ways they shift have always been less about the tale, and more about the teller.

Stories are a mirror we hold up to ourselves, to our families and friends, to our communities, and to our world. We try to share with others what we think the monster under our bed truly looks like. We want to explain the specific fear that creeps over us at the sound of scratching just inside a dark closet door. And more than that, we want to show each other what it is to be alone, your back against the wall, danger descending upon you from every direction, and to suddenly find strength not in a hero, not in a lessening of danger, not in a rescue – but in yourself. We want to paint a picture where your eyes suddenly gleam, your shoulders square off, and your spine stretches taller as you cleverly change all of the dangers around you into things that are survivable, familiar, perhaps even wonderful. We want to show others a future where they have the power to navigate encroaching peril – a future where there is possibility and hope. 

In our pandemic saturated world, with global climate crisis at our doorstep, and more mainstream awareness (but never enough) of the systemic oppression built into the society around us, our tales are shifting to better reflect what we fear. As our culture rapidly evolves, I find it interesting to look at the stories we most crave, at the tales we create, and at the nightmares that we yearn to understand and survive.

And so, as we sit here around this fading campfire in the darkness, toasting our marshmallows while the shadows jump and dance, I wonder…have our fears changed so much? When we told stories of wolves and forests and witches, were we really telling stories about dehumanization, betrayal, and death? About the fear of the unknown and about knowing too much? And when we tell our tales now of dystopias, mutation, and erasure…are we really just renaming our ancient wolfish characters? Just wandering through a new forest? Just describing the same witch hunt from the other side of the story?

Thoughts like these often find me late at night, when I’m curled up with a spooky novel, reading in the orange glow of lamplight, wondering about our own fears and what they can help us understand. 

Zora’s recommendations for some delicious gothic tales:

• The Hacienda, by Isabel Cañas

• Vampires of El Norte, also by Isabel Cañas

• Quietus, by Vivian Schilling