Author-specific essays will be found on the appropriate author pages.

This essay includes a brief consideration of the origins of Gothicism.

At PBS's website for the 2000 production of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu's The Wyvern Mystery (starring my man Derek Jacobi), this essay is an overview of the "spooky old house," finding its origins in works by Poe and Hawthorne. The focus here is largely on early C20 film treatments of the theme; no mention is made of the true precursors of the Victorian haunted house/spooky house story, which would of course be the classic Gothic novel, with its ruined castles and abbeys. The Victorians, and their American counterparts, simply domesticated the architecture.