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Characteristics of the Gothic Novel Gloomy, decaying setting (haunted houses or castles with secret passages, trapdoors, and other mysterious architecture) Supernatural beings or monsters (ghosts, vampires, zombies, giants) Curses or prophecies. Damsels in distress. Heroes. Romance. Intense emotions.

There are many aspects of Gothic literature that make it compelling to audiences both then and now, which include mystery and suspense, atmosphere and setting, and omens and curses.

1. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764) Some sources say that the Gothic truly began with The Castle of Otranto, an 18th-century melodrama by the English writer and politician Horace Walpole.

Gothic elements include the following: Setting in a castle. ... An atmosphere of mystery and suspense. ... An ancient prophecy is connected with the castle or its inhabitants (either former or present). ... Omens, portents, visions. ... Supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events. ... High, even overwrought emotion. ... Women in distress.

American gothic fiction is a subgenre of gothic fiction. Elements specific to American Gothic include: rationality versus the irrational, puritanism, guilt, the uncanny (das unheimliche), ab-humans, ghosts, and monsters.

The stock characters of Gothic fiction include tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.

This genre is dark, eerie, and mysterious, often containing elements of terror, horror, and the macabre and the bizarre. Common themes and motifs of the Gothic include power, confinement, and isolation.