The Gothic veil of October

The Gothic veil of October

In college, I was introduced to the study of Gothic Literature, and those courses reshaped how I understood narrative and the art of storytelling. My professors were sincere and serious, and my classes were full of dreamy, thoughtful girls and cute, brooding boys. We all had impressive fountain pen collections and our own unique melodramatic sigh.

I’d been a reader of Mary Shelley and Emily Dickinson since middle school, copying their most overwrought lines into my AIM away messages, feeling the weight of their words even when I couldn’t articulate why they mattered. These Gothic literature seminars gave me an expanded lens, teaching me there was substance in mood, resonance in motifs, and meaning in the kind of ornate diction that to this day, makes my friends roll their eyes.

In these classes, we discussed ruined passageways, rattling chains, moonlight through windowpanes, and torn white dresses as if they were the codes to help us understand the world that we peered out at from behind our very own haunted cloisters.

Keating Hall at Fordham University: the place of many hauntings, including my own

Gothic literature is about weight. Atmosphere presses down until ordinary things—gardens, portraits, staircases—become charged with meaning. Architecture acts like memory, the chime of a bell registers despair or desire, and language itself can be lush enough to blur the border between sincerity and absurdity.

In Gothic literature, the uncanny is not indulgence, but a way of attending to reality’s hidden layers. These stories are an education in taking madness and the mind seriously.

They also beg us to read texture. The creak of floorboards carry as much significance as dialogue. Weather became psychology externalized, emotion made visible. A house can be a character. Cobwebs hold narrative weight. The world is seeping with meaning, and learning to read it’s dimensions is essential, beyond analyzing the Gothic texts.

This Gothic instinct developed into an invisible string in the work I do now with children’s books.

The twilight depth of kidlit

At first glance, Gothic novels and children’s books seem like distant cousins at best. One dwelling in doom, curses, and Byronic heroes, the other in hope, unicorns, and happy endings. But spend enough time with children’s stories, and you’ll notice that children already live in a Gothic register.

They understand that mirrors don’t always reflect what’s expected. Gloomy forests loom with an equal measure of magic and mayhem. Closets breathe differently after dark. Grown-ups trade glances like riddles and they speak in hushed tones behind bolted doors. The world, from a child’s perspective, is already excessive, strange, and heavy with both wonder and warning.

Consider Coraline’s button-eyed Other Mother, who offers love with strings literally attached. Or Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things, who roar their terrible roars and gnash their terrible teeth. Or Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which children are forced to be resourceful in the face of absurd, endless menace. And then there’s Edward Gorey, who understood this Gothic-children’s literature connection better than anyone. His pen-and-ink illustrations are miniature Gothic cathedrals—all cross-hatching and elaborate Victorian detail, where children in Edwardian dress meet unfortunate ends with deadpan wit.

Children don’t need to be shielded from the shadows; they’re already navigating them. The Gothic, as found in kidlit, validates the reality of young readers. It whispers: “yes, the world is vast and uneasy, the edges murky with threat. Yes, your fears have form. Yes, the darkness is real—and so is your courage in meeting it.”

The best children’s books understand what the Gothic has always known: unease is a form of knowledge. The uncanny offers a looking glass. Emotion that swells past containment reveals something authentic about being human. These stories teach us that what unsettles also illuminates, that strangeness and tenderness can live in the same basket, and that we can recognize the depth of our feelings and hold them without fear.

Daydreams and nightmares

October is the season that embodies the lessons of the Gothic.

The air thickens. There’s a shift in density, in the way golden light bends, and in how sound carries differently. Leaves ritualistically change color. Decay surrounds us. Dusk stretches longer, reaches farther. Even mundane errands feel charged with significance. October insists that atmosphere matters. That mood is substance. That the shift in the wind means something, even if we can’t name what.

October is a rich time to dream, envision, and make.

The creative process itself is entirely Gothic: first drafts are sprawling castles with too many rooms. Ideas arrive ridiculous and unruly, refusing to be tamed into neat outlines. Characters wail at all hours of the night. Plots twist through hidden hedge mazes we didn’t know existed.

Sketchbooks are murky with unfinished figures and faceless apparitions. A single smudge tells the story of heartbreak. Color palettes bleed murkier than intended. Compositions stretch across the page like dubious landscapes, some collapsing under their own weight. Images arrive like cracks in the wall.

And yet, there is always a lantern. There is clarity that cuts through the mist: a line that gleams truer than the rest, a shape that insists on being seen, a phrase that carries the whole unwieldy mess toward meaning.

Creativity may be labyrinthine, dramatic, and storm-weathered, but it is never without a beacon.

The through line connecting Gothic literature, children’s books, and creative work runs deeper than aesthetics. It’s about acknowledgment.

The Gothic validates what we sense but often dismiss—that the world holds more than its surface reveals. Terror and awe can occupy the same space. Whether it’s a ghost in the attic or a specter from a childhood dream, we can name what we feel, even if it can’t be measured.

Children’s literature understands this, too. These stories tell children what the Gothic told me: courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s carrying a light into the dark because something there needs witnessing.

The creative process asks the same of us. Every blank page is an abandoned manor. Every new project, a sealed chamber. Every risk is a descent into uncertainty, with only a candelabra to guide us.

October makes this visible, beckoning down a jack-o’-lantern-lit passage through lengthening nights, the graveyards of our hearts, the haunted houses of our minds, and the ever-insistent creative process.

A Gothic Literature Primer

The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole

Often considered the first Gothic novel, it introduces haunted castles, dark prophecies, and doom-laden corridors.

The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe

Romantic suspense set in crumbling castles, where the line between terror and sublimity blurs.

The Monk (1796) by Matthew Lewis

Infamous for its blend of lust, corruption, and demonic pacts.

Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley

A tale of hubris and creation in which a scientist’s attempt to play God unleashes a monster that reshapes his life and legacy.

Uncle Silas (1864) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

A tale of inheritance, sinister relatives, and psychological menace.

Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë

A story of obsession and revenge played out on storm-tossed moors, where love itself becomes spectral.

Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Brontë

A Gothic romance of passion and selfhood.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) by Oscar Wilde

A parable in which a portrait ages and decays while its subject remains eternally young.

Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker

Told through letters and journals, this novel cemented the vampire mythos.

The Phantom of the Opera (1910) by Gaston Leroux

A masked figure haunts the Paris Opera House, fusing romance, horror, and obsession into one spectacle.

Gothic Tales (published 20th century) by Elizabeth Gaskell

Short stories that blend the supernatural with domestic spaces, where the eerie creeps into the everyday.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962) by Shirley Jackson

Two sisters live in isolation in their rotting home.

Mexican Gothic (2020) by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

A modern reimagining of Gothic tropes set in 1950s Mexico, where an old mansion hides monstrous secrets.

Glimmers to share

✨The Twisted Spine, a new horror bookstore in Brooklyn.

✨Walks through Green-Wood Cemetery.

✨P U M P K I N S !