Horror in Literature and Film (NW): Home

These themes and tropes can serve as keywords while you search for sources:

• Anti-hero
• Black or Dark Humor Corruption (often of human nature)
• Body-snatching, grave-robbing
• Dark, often haunted settings (Abbeys, Graveyards, Castles, Crypts, Ruins)
• Disintegration of the American Dream (American/"California" Gothic)
• Doppelgangers
• Dreaming / nightmares
• Entrapment / imprisonment
• ​Fascination with death, decay
• Fascination with misdeeds of the past
• Incubus / male demon
• Madness
• Modern in conflict with past
• Not quite human (dolls, wax works, animals)
• Paranoia
• Power (over innocence or vulnerability, especially over females or children)
• Religious Misdeeds or Guilt (Southern Gothic)
• Spirits
• Supernatural Forces
• The Sublime (awesome, terrifying)
• The Supernatural/Ghosts
• The Vulnerable Young Woman
• Weird or violent, explicit or “unnatural” sexual behavior or innuendo / masochism