Gothic is back.

But what exactly is it? The term’s meaning is slippery or, perhaps more appropriately, foggy. More often than not, it is used interchangeably with “atmospheric” or “haunting” or some other equally vague adjective. Usually, the phrase “Gothic horror” describes a creative work whose atmosphere is gloomy and whose main characters are brooding, moody, and most likely clad in black. A blend of romance, costume drama, and dreariness also comes to mind. Imagine a sad girl wearing velvet, hanging around her dismal manor house. Her boyfriend might be a vampire, or at least strongly resemble one. Also Gothic: if the aforementioned manor house is haunted by a bevy of ghosts.

However, as we discussed in Part One, Gothic fiction has both a strong literary tradition and a set of core characteristics that extends beyond moping around a dark, crumbling castle. Fiction that deals with themes of isolation, vulnerability, family strife, and the bubbling up of hidden secrets is undoubtedly Gothic, whether the story takes place on the moors, or in a country farmhouse, or in a city.

Modern stories based on this literary tradition, which we call the new Gothic, leave behind the strict rules of the eighteenth-century Gothic novel and instead center on the main character’s struggle to understand reality in a world that embraces the supernatural. In the traditional Gothic story, a female protagonist’s virginity was endangered; in the modern Gothic, the protagonist is still (usually) female, but what’s now at stake is her psyche, as she struggles against paranormal forces and risks losing her grip on reality.

New Gothic writers also offer a “fix” for some of the sins of their foremothers. In the Gothic novel of the eighteenth century, for instance, being Italian or Spanish (or non-English, or nonwhite) was shorthand for being the villain. Modern Gothic writers challenge this tradition by creating a broad spectrum of characters that resonate better with twenty-first-century readers.

The Gothic never really went out of style, but this new brand of Gothic horror began to emerge in the middle of the twentieth century, with novels like Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Viking, 1962), Michael McDowell’s The Elementals (Avon Books, 1981), and Stephen King’s The Shining (Doubleday 1977). The new Gothic is exemplified by films such as Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak and television series like Showtime’s Penny Dreadful and Netflix’s Alias Grace. The trend is also visible in comics and graphic novels, such as Emily Carroll’s highly praised Through the Woods (Faber & Faber, 2014), a collection of five graphic horror stories that read like dark fairy tales.

In literature, the most Gothic contemporary author is probably Anne Rice. Her work is full of the lush atmospheres of the old South (think manor houses decorated with candelabras, and tree-lined drives framed by hanging Spanish moss). But she updates the Gothic narrative by swapping the love story of the poetic hero and virginal damsel for a romance between two men, and she places stories in the grimy urban underbelly of New Orleans.

Writers like Helen Oyeyemi, Susan Hill, and Sarah Waters each create their own distinct versions of a Gothic heroine trapped inside a space with a mind of its own. Angela Carter has established herself as the reigning queen of fairy tale Gothic. And Jewelle Gomez, with her Afrofuturistic vampires, could be considered an heir to Anne Rice. In many ways, the rules no longer apply. Any place can be haunted by the supernatural, including the protagonist’s own mind.

That’s not to say that these writers forget where the Gothic got its start. In particular, new Gothic authors writing for young adults seem to embrace the connection of the Gothic to the teenage experience, with its surging hormones, changing emotions, and deep tendency toward brooding and melancholy. Kiersten White’s The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein (Delacorte Press, 2018) is a retelling of Mary Shelley’s classic novel for a young adult audience. Orphan Elizabeth has lost everything when she is brought to the Frankenstein home, where she befriends the lonely Victor. As they grow up, the friends grow closer, but Elizabeth finds that romance with Victor pulls her life into a dark spiral. White has revisited Gothic material before; she wrote the YA novels And I Darken, Now I Rise, and Bright We Burn (Delacorte, 2016, 2017, 2018), a trilogy that follows the Dracul siblings. We think Bram Stoker would be proud.

Another new Gothic author writing for young adults is Madeleine Roux. Her Asylum series (Asylum, Sanctum, and Catacomb; 2016, Harper Collins) is set in a dormitory, formerly a psychiatric hospital, that is haunted by the past. Her novels that most embrace the Gothic setting, however, are the House of Furies series (Harper Collins, 2017–19), in which a seventeen-year-old girl finds work as a maid at Coldthistle House, a manor that would be at home in any Charlotte Dacre or Mary Shelley novel. The house and its owner, Mr. Morningside, are full of secrets, and all guests are judged for past sins and punished, making the house a nightmare prison for its inhabitants.

For adult fiction that embraces the new Gothic, consider Ania Ahlborn. As a child, Ahlborn was fascinated by cemeteries and was concerned with making sure all the gravestones had flowers. (This sounds to us like a second coming of Mary Shelley, whose fascination with graveyards is well documented.) Ahlborn’s horror novels unmistakably reveal her Gothic sentimentalities. Brother (Gallery Books, 2015) is about an impoverished Appalachian family with dark secrets. The Bird Eater (47 North, 2014) and Within These Walls (Gallery Books, 2015) feature haunted homes, but the true Gothic nature of the books is at work in the haunted protagonists, who have pasts to overcome before they can confront anything supernatural. The renewed interest in Gothic horror may be a response to modern fears, especially as technology advances at such a dizzying a rate that it is difficult to predict what consequences these new innovations will have (hello, Black Mirror). Horror has always been cathartic; it allows a safe space for readers to experience fears and confront danger. Although the world is constantly changing (in sometimes frightening ways), in new Gothic fiction the ghosts that haunt us are familiar. So are the possessed spaces, which are overgrown and decaying reminders of the past that can distract us from worries about the future.

Whatever the reason, two and a half centuries after The Castle of Otranto, it seems that neither readers nor authors have tired of Gothic tropes yet.