This book provides a comprehensive reading of a space/place-based experience from the birth of the American horror genre (nineteenth century American Romanticism) to its rise and evolution in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Exploring a series of narratives, this study focuses on the role of space and place as key elements for successful articulation of horror. The analysis, therefore, employs different theoretical premises and concepts belonging to human geography, which, while being part of the larger discipline of geography, predominantly directs its attention towards the presence and activities of humans. By connecting such theoretical readings with the continuously evolving American horror genre, this book offers a unique insight into the academically unexplored trans-disciplinary spatially based reading of the genre.

This 100,000-word collection of stories, supernatural and crime essays, and interviews brings together work from the two out of print hardback collections, Shadows at Midnight and Echoes of Darkness, as well as other stories published, and unpublished, over recent years. With the companion volume Selling Dark Miracles, this is the complete Maynard-Sims story to 2000. Together they feature work never before published in USA. This is Bram Stoker Award nominated work from two first class writers of style and quality.

Horror Guide to Northern New England is a map to geographical locations, real and fictional, utilized in horror tales and films set in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. And just for good measure, they've included some true stories and events that should be horror stories or at least the inspiration for future ones. Sea serpents, ancient sacrificial tables, Barnabas Collins, Stephen King, Rick Hautala, and Shirley Jackson all call the area home - small wonder that the weird and horrific find sanctuary the shadow-choked forests, decrepit doomed villages, and fog-shrouded mountains of Northern New England. Join the brothers Goudsward as they offer the latest volume of their Horror Guides. ADVANCED PRAISE FOR HORROR GUIDE TO NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND "David and Scott Goudsward's book is a gem. ... crammed full of stuff you never knew and probably seldom thought about. It is a book about the places fictional horror happened. It is also a book about the places real horror happened. Real places. Places you can get to in the car. And along with the geography, there is a history about these stories. Yes, this is a book for fans of the horror genre. But it is also a book for writers and researchers and students and people who just love this place. What fun." - Fritz Wetherbee, historian, writer, iconic television host ..". shines a spotlight on the darkest, creepiest corners of Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire --- states that harbor mysteries, curses, and locations for some of the spookiest, weirdest tales in the U.S. This encyclopedic guide is endlessly entertaining and bursting with surprising macabre tidbits from some of the oldest parts of our country." - Izzy Lee, writer, director, producer of RITES OF VENGEANCE, INNSMOUTH, and POSTPARTUM ..". a perfect horrorscape of New England's North Country, guiding you to a delightful assortment of shunned places, dark destinations, and frightening facts. Every page is brimming with a who's who or a what's what of Yankee marvels and menace -- history, literary and movie trivia, and things that man was never meant for to know. I am certain this would have been in Lovecraft's library. It's an essential addition to my own. " - Joseph A. Citro, author of SHADOW CHILD and PASSING STRANGE, TRUE TALES OF NEW ENGLAND HAUNTINGS AND HORRORS "What I like most about Dave and Scott Goudsward's Horror Guide series is that while they are informative and involved, they are - unlike many reference works - a lot of fun to read and easy to navigate. The newest installment, HORROR GUIDE TO NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND: MAINE, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND VERMONT (HGNNE) is, like its Massachusetts and Florida companion editions, an extensive and intensive display of research from the Goudsward brothers. It is especially sweet for me because I was born and raised in New Hampshire and had lived there for forty years, until 2002. I had spent my formative years traipsing between the three states that are the focus of this book and recognized many of the towns, sites, and sights covered within these pages. But you don't have to be native to these states to enjoy this book...or its predecessors. For horror fans, non-horror fans, writers, researchers, or joy readers, HGNNE (and its companions) are a valuable and enjoyable guide and reference of all things fact and fictional related to horror (or spooky for the more sensitive reader), from the renowned to the obscure. It takes you on an alphabetical tour through each state, geographically correlating each town and site (both real and fictional) to works of popular fiction. As one would guess, the Maine section is loaded with Stephen King and Rick Hautala mentions, but for me - having read most of their works - it was a nostalgic trip that made me yearn to read these stories again. Thank you, Dave and Scott, for another fine Guide...now how about New York...or D.C.'" - John McIlveen - award-winning author of HANNAHWHERE

This is the first major full-length study of Victorian Gothic fiction. Combining original readings of familiar texts with a rich store of historical sources, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction is an historicist survey of nineteenth-century Gothic writing--from Dickens to Stoker, Wilkie Collins to Conan Doyle, through European travelogues, sexological textbooks, ecclesiastic histories and pamphlets on the perils of self-abuse. Critics have thus far tended to concentrate on specific angles of Gothic writing (gender or race), or the belief that the Gothic 'returned' at the so-called fin de siècle. Robert Mighall, by contrast, demonstrates how the Gothic mode was active throughout the Victorian period, and provides historical explanations for its development from late eighteenth century, through the 'Urban Gothic' fictions of the mid-Victorian period, the 'Suburban Gothic' of the Sensation vogue, through to the somatic horrors of Stevenson, Machen, Stoker, and Doyle at the century's close. Mighall challenges the psychological approach to Gothic fiction which currently prevails, demonstrating the importance of geographical, historical, and discursive factors that have been largely neglected by critics, and employing a variety of original sources to demonstrate the contexts of Gothic fiction and explain its development in the Victorian period.

Haunted Landscapes offers a fresh and innovative approach to contemporary debates about landscape and the supernatural. Landscapes are often uncanny spaces embroiled in the past; associated with absence, memory and nostalgia. Yet experiences of haunting must in some way always belong to the present: they must be felt. This collection of essays opens up new and compelling areas of debate around the concepts of haunting, affect and landscape. Landscape studies, supernatural studies, haunting and memory are all rapidly growing fields of enquiry and this book synthesises ideas from several critical approaches – spectral, affective and spatial – to provide a new route into these subjects. Examining urban and rural landscapes, haunted domestic spaces, landscapes of trauma, and borderlands, this collection of essays is designed to cross disciplines and combine seemingly disparate academic approaches under the coherent locus of landscape and haunting. Presenting a timely intervention in some of the most pressing scholarly debates of our time, Haunted Landscapes offers an attractive array of essays that cover topics from Victorian times to the present.

This entertaining collection of essays shows that Sherlock Holmes sees things others don’t. He sees the world in a different way, and by so doing, allows us to see that same world – and human behavior – in different ways as well. Oh, sure, there have been countless detectives who have followed in his footsteps and who seem to rival his abilities. Just turn on the TV or browse the local bookshop and you’ll find idiosyncratic super sleuths using forensics and reasoning to solve a whole host of crimes and misdeeds. And yet no one rivals our dear, dear Holmes. Why does Sherlock reign, even more than a century later, as king? Can this mystery be solved? Unable to reach either Holmes or Watson (or Doyle for that matter, though we’ve tried every medium we can think of), we’ve been forced to gather our own team of investigators to practice their powers of observation and perception, to apply their own reasoning and methodologies to the task at hand. The results, I fear, have led us to a number of cases that must be solved first. Is Holmes simply eccentric or a sociopath? Is he human or something from the holodeck? Is he as dangerous on the page as he is in person? Wait – does he even exist? For that matter, do you? (I fear several investigators have been forced to take a much needed holiday after wrestling with that one.) What is the source of his faculty of observation and facility for deduction? Systematic training as Watson surmises? Genetic? Or is he just really lucky? And is this whole logic thing compatible with emotions? Are Holmes and Watson good friends or soul mates? Just what is the nature of friendship? Do they complete each other or just get on each other’s nerves? And why all the secrecy? Disguises? Deceptions? The plot thickens. What is the essence of consciousness? Is the observable world subject to our intentions? Why does Holmes debunk mysticism when Doyle so readily embraces it? Why is Holmes our favorite drug user? Our notebooks are filled with clues and, dare I say, answers. Is there more than one way to define the concept, justice? Is hope necessary in the world? Is boredom? Play? Can any thing really be understood? Objectively? And just what is the last unresolved mystery involving Sherlock Holmes? The game that's afoot isn't just the thing being pursued but the fun to be had as well.

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,0, Ernst Moritz Arndt University of Greifswald (Institut für Angelistik und Amerikanistik), course: American Beliefs and Popular Culture, language: English, abstract: “Fear is the most powerful emotion in the human race and fear of the unknown is probably the most ancient. You are dealing with stuff everybody has felt...If you are making a horror film, you get to play with the audiences feelings.” John Carpenter Horror movies originate from fictional work that portrays the dark side of life with the primary aim of frightening and terrifying its audience. By presenting horrifying images, of several incorporating sub-genres and repeated themes, such as vampires and werewolves, demonic possessions, evil children, cannibals and zombies, alien invasion and mindcontrol, film makers like John Carpenter create a world where the worst nightmares become true. According to the adolescents who are providing the genre’s target group, monster movies always deal with the irresistible temptation of the unknown and forbidden, and therefore shock with a horrific impact of terrifying elements. (...) Since horror and monster movies stand for an important part of the American film industry and with it of its popular culture throughout the last eight decades, it is useful to look at the development of the horror genre in its historical and cultural context, and thus to focus again on the question of interpretive perspective. As horror movies, despite all obscurity, still deal with real fears of a society or the urge to break with social conventions, concentrating on the change of themes, styles and characters of the genre, means to learn more about the American collective consciousness and what was bothering a whole society during the 20th century.