Horror Literature through History

by Matt Cardin

  Matt Cardin

  Soon Ward confides to the family physician, Marinus Willett, that his “triumph” has turned into unimaginable horror. Disturbing events ensue, both in Charles’s laboratory at home and then at the old Pawtuxet farm. His parents fear for his sanity, but Dr. Willett discovers far worse: that Curwen, who so resembles Ward that one can pass for the other, has murdered Charles and is impersonating him. Willett visits the farm and discovers pits inhabited by malformed horrors, left over from Curwen’s original resurrection experiments in the 1700s. He manages to have “Ward” committed to a madhouse, and there confronts him, as Curwen, with what he knows. Curwen attempts magic. Willett counters it and Curwen crumbles into dust. Curwen’s original scheme went well beyond cheating death. He and two colleagues, who are still alive in the present, were resurrecting learned men and compelling them to surrender their secrets, working toward some goal that threatened all of humanity, even the universe, if a panicked Charles Ward is to be believed.

  This is the one Lovecraft story that rises to the dignity of genuine tragedy, as the noble Dr. Willett strives unsuccessfully to save the innocent Charles from the consequences of his actions. Despite this, Lovecraft apparently thought the work a failure and never made any attempt to have it published even when, in the 1930s, publishers began to ask him for a novel-length work. It was only published posthumously, first abridged in Weird Tales in 1941 and then complete in Beyond the Wall of Sleep in 1943. It is in a slightly unpolished state, with some loose ends and inconsistencies, but it still contains some of his best writing and is, for Lovecraft, a rare triumph of characterization. It can be read as a story of the “Cthulhu Mythos.” Yog-Sothoth is mentioned and invoked for the first time in this tale, but the precise nature of the entities Curwen is trafficking with is never made clear.

  Darrell Schweitzer

  See also: Ancestral Curse; At the Mountains of Madness; Lovecraft, H. P; The Return.

  Further Reading

  Joshi, S. T. 2010. I Am Providence, The Life and Times of H. P. Lovecraft, 664–670. New York: Hippocampus Press.

  Joshi, S. T. 2014. “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” In Lovecraft and a World in Transition: Collected Essays on H. P. Lovecraft, 393–409. Tampa, FL: University of Tampa Press.

  Ward, Richard. 1997. “In Search of the Dread Ancestor: M. R. James’ ‘Count Magnus’ and Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” Lovecraft Studies 36: 14–17.

  “CASTING THE RUNES”

  This short story is one of the best-known works of Montague Rhodes (M. R.) James. It appeared in More Ghost Stories, published in 1911, as a follow-up to his first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary. With its subtle onset of “quiet horror” that creeps into the everyday and slowly builds in the imagination of the reader, it is a classic Jamesian tale.

  “Casting the Runes” tells of a malevolent scholar, Victor Karswell, who takes horrible revenge upon his critics by employing his occult expertise to conjure up an “awful demon creature” that pursues, terrifies, torments, and finally kills its target (James 1992, 142). Another scholar, named Edward Dunning, gives one of Karswell’s articles a poor review, setting in motion Karswell’s vengeance. Dunning receives a slip of paper from him with runes hidden within its contents. Upon learning that he has been cursed, Dunning, with the help of Henry Harrington, the brother of one of Karswell’s previous victims, eventually manages to turn the tables on Karswell by tricking him into taking back the paper, thereby consigning him to the same fate that he has meted out to others—a frightful and mysterious death.

  Like other Jamesian monsters, such as Count Magnus’s tentacled and hooded accomplice in “Count Magnus” (1904), or the billowing sheet-thing of “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” (1904), the demon that haunts first Harrington and then Dunning, the protagonist of “Runes,” is most effective for appearing only partially glimpsed in monstrous fragments, such as the “unnaturally rough and hot” (135) hand that thrusts a pamphlet with the name of Karswell’s victim Harrington at Dunning, who cannot afterwards recall the exact appearance of the pamphleteer. In one of the story’s most memorable scenes, Dunning puts his hand under his pillow, only to encounter “a mouth, with teeth, and with hair around it” (137). The demon is also alluded to in the excerpt from the Coleridge poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner that appears in the text. Finally, it appears as something stalking the doomed Karswell that is mistaken for a dog by a startled porter. At the story’s conclusion, its final appearance is in the unspeakable nightmares that Harrington apparently suffered before dying, which Dunning cannot bear to hear recounted.

  Night of the Demon: The Too-Explained Supernatural

  RKO, the Hollywood studio known for its elegant, sophisticated, and restrained suspense and horror films in the 1940s (which stood in marked contrast to the more garish horror films put out by Universal Studios), would have seemed the perfect studio for adapting James’s elegant, sophisticated, and restrained occult horror tale “Casting the Runes.” And indeed, more than 95 percent of director Jacques Tourneur and screenwriter Charles Bennett’s 1957 adaptation Night of the Demon (released in the United States as Curse of the Demon) lived up to that expectation (although the film ended up being made and released not by RKO, as that studio had originally hoped, but by Columbia). But the producer balked at Tourneur’s and Bennett’s plan to retain the ambiguity of James’s story by leaving the question of a natural or a supernatural explanation unanswered, and opted instead to show a giant demon clearly and unmistakably existing at the beginning and killing the villainous Karswell at the end, in scenes shot without Tourneur’s participation. Notwithstanding the fact that the creature’s design drew on demonic imagery from medieval woodcuts and delivered a fairly impressive moment of cinematic-demonological iconography, the final result betrayed the director’s, the screenwriter’s, and James’s visions. Night/Curse of the Demon remains one of the most notorious instances of a studio’s tampering with a filmmaker’s artistic intention.

  Matt Cardin

  “Casting the Runes” has frequently been adapted for television and radio, and was retold most famously in director Jacques Tourneur’s classic, atmospheric horror film Night of the Demon (1957). An amusing pastiche of this story, which yet retains somewhat of the horrific bite of the original, can be found in James Hynes’s Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror (1997), where a young assistant professor, Victoria Dunning, takes on the culture wars in the person of the senior professor Karswell, who plagiarizes her work and curses her for refusing to allow him to do so. Currently director Joe Dante is planning to re-adapt James’s story for a new film.

  Aalya Ahmad

  See also: Devils and Demons; James, M. R.

  Further Reading

  Cox, Michael. 1987. “Introduction.” In Casting the Runes, and Other Ghost Stories by M. R. James, xi–xxx. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  Hynes, James. 1997. Publish and Perish: Three Tales of Tenure and Terror.

  James, M. R. 1992. Collected Ghost Stories. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions.

  Joshi, S. T. 1990. The Weird Tale. Austin: University of Texas Press.

  Michalski, Robert. 1996. “The Malice of Inanimate Objects: Exchange in M. R. James’s Ghost Stories.” Extrapolation 37, no. 1: 46–62.

  THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO

  Written and published by Horace Walpole in 1764, The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story was an immediate success with the British reading public and established the genre of Gothic fiction as numerous writers in subsequent years were directly influenced to follow its haunted footsteps. Originally presented to the reading public as an actual sixteenth-century Italian manuscript in translation regarding events that occurred during the Crusades, The Castle of Otranto later received a second edition where Walpole added the subtitle “A Gothic Story” and claimed ownership of the text, explaining that he had been influenced by Shakespeare to create a new genre of romance by blending both the new and the old.
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br />   Focusing on Manfred, the prince of Otranto, The Castle of Otranto opens on the wedding day of Conrad, Manfred’s son, and Isabella. Conrad, however, is killed by a massive helmet that falls on him from the sky, stunning everyone. In shock over his son’s death and fearing the collapse of his bloodline, Manfred decides to divorce his wife Hippolita so that he can marry Isabella instead. Manfred jails a young man named Theodore and pursues Isabella against her will until a priest named Father Jerome appears who tells Manfred that the young maiden is under his protection. Jerome discovers that Theodore is his long-lost son and petitions Manfred not to execute him. Manfred demands that he will release Theodore only if Isabella is turned over to him. Meanwhile, Isabella’s father, Frederic, arrives to challenge Manfred’s rulership of Otranto. Eventually, after a series of supernatural occurrences that culminate with Manfred’s accidental murder of his daughter Matilda, it is revealed that Manfred’s line is illegitimate and Theodore is actually the true heir to Otranto. The young man marries Isabella, with Manfred retiring to a convent to atone for his sins.

  Walpole’s novel is striking for the way it almost single-handedly invented an entire genre. Common characteristics of Gothic novels—not to mention the multitude of stories, poems, and movies that have descended from the same source—include:

  •A setting in a gloomy castle or mansion

  •A plethora of fantastic, strange, and often supernatural-seeming events

  •Inflated melodrama accompanied by breathless emotions heightened to a fever pitch

  •Lovely, virginal women threatened, menaced, manipulated, and pursued by a dark, powerful, tyrannical king, lord, or other authority figure

  •A chase through murky catacombs or hidden passageways in or beneath the castle or mansion

  •Disturbing dreams and/or other ominous portents of an ancient curse’s or prophecy’s imminent fulfillment

  These all abound in The Castle of Otranto, which synthesized them into a singular form for the very first time, and which, although it is not the greatest of novels in terms of pure literary quality, must therefore be acknowledged as one of the single most influential works of literature ever written.

  Matt Cardin

  At the center of The Castle of Otranto’s narrative is its concern with legitimacy. The text explains that Manfred’s line has ruled for three generations, starting with his grandfather and continuing to the present day. The ruler previous to Manfred’s grandfather was Alfonso, a man who is spoken of as having been kind and just. As the novel opens and introduces the reader to Manfred’s family, the narrator notes a cryptic prophecy that will result in the end of Manfred’s line when the ruler becomes too large to inhabit his castle. As the narrative progresses, strange supernatural events take place that involve giant pieces of armor, the first being the helmet that crushes Conrad. When Theodore is shown as Alfonso’s heir, and thus the true lord of Otranto, it is also revealed that Manfred’s grandfather had committed murder and forgery to take control of Otranto. The supernatural powers at play in the text, while horrific at times, are divine in nature and act to restore the legitimate order, casting aside the usurping force of Manfred’s family in favor of Theodore’s authentic bloodline.

  Almost the entirety of Walpole’s text can be looked at in terms of legitimacy. It was composed in a mock-castle that appeared ancient but was actually quite modern (Walpole’s famous Strawberry Hill House). When first published, its author declared it to be a medieval work from the Crusades in translation. Neither Walpole’s castle at Strawberry Hill nor the text’s origins as a medieval work are authentic. Likewise, the plot’s focus on one group of aristocrats who are illegitimate compared to another group who are legitimate raises questions as to Walpole’s intent. Prior to the elevation of Walpole’s father as prime minister in 1721, the family had been well-off country gentry. By the time of The Castle of Otranto’s publication in 1764, the family’s wealth had put it on the level of some of the most lucrative dukedoms in the nation. The circumstance of being aristocratic in terms of power and influence but not in blood is something Walpole would certainly have been aware of, and this concern seems to have psychologically manifested in his Gothic novel.

  In the two and a half centuries since its first publication, The Castle of Otranto has continued to have an impact on the horror genre. Not only was it the first Gothic novel, but numerous tropes, such as the uncanny portrait, weeping statues, and haunted castle, originated with Walpole’s novel and are now considered commonplace. Indeed, the use of the haunted castle, which over time has been expanded on to include locations such as houses, forests, ships, schools, and even dreamscapes, is probably the most important contribution The Castle of Otranto has made to the modern horror genre that would be instantly recognizable by anyone who has ever seen a scary movie or read a work of Gothic fiction.

  The Castle of Otranto directly inspired other writers, such as Clara Reeve, who wrote the second Gothic novel, The Old English Baron (1777/1778), to try their hand at this new species of romance, which continues to thrive in the present day. Other writers such as Ann Radcliffe, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King have all acknowledged The Castle of Otranto’s significance in their own discussions of the horror genre. While it is true that several scenes in The Castle of Otranto could be considered laughable by today’s horror standards, such as the gargantuan-sized helmet that falls from the sky and crushes a man to death, this is nonetheless a work that has rightfully earned its place as historically important and should be read at least once by anyone who studies the horror genre.

  Joel T. Terranova

  See also: Ancestral Curse; Byronic Hero; Gothic Hero/Villain; The Haunted House or Castle; Radcliffe, Ann; Walpole, Horace.

  Further Reading

  Clemens, Valdine. 1999. The Return of the Repressed: Gothic Horror from Castle of Otranto to Alien. New York: State University of New York Press.

  Clery, E. J. 1995. The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1762–1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Ellis, Markman. 2000. The History of Gothic Fiction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

  Mack, Ruth. 2008. “Horace Walpole and the Objects of Literary History.” ELH 75 (2): 367–387.

  Rumore, Michael Angelo. 2016. “The Terror of Translation: Ruins of the Translatio in The Castle of Otranto and Vathek.” Studies in the Fantastic 3: 3–22.

  THE CEREMONIES

  T. E. D. Klein has been described as “one of the twentieth-century masters of the horror genre” (Mariconda 1986, 28) despite the fact that he has written very little in this field. His fame stems primarily from his singular novel, The Ceremonies (1984), and his collection of short stories in Dark Gods (1985)—both of which have been widely regarded as modern classics.

  The Ceremonies is based on a 1971 short story by Klein entitled “The Events at Poroth Farm.” Over several years, Klein developed this much more simplistic tale into a 600-page novel, which is now the classic that we have today. The Ceremonies is a thoroughly layered and richly textured work, but its essential narrative elements are as follows. The story centers on a young academic named Jeremy Friers, who visits an isolated community on the edge of the forests outside of New York, in order to pursue an extensive reading list in Gothic studies. Here, in the fictional and devoutly religious setting of Gilead, New Jersey, he stays with a married couple named Deborah and Sarr Poroth, who are part of a vaguely Amish-like religious sect called the Brethren of the Redeemer. He stays in a small cabin at the edge of their garden, immediately beside the woods, in a situation that is, interestingly, very similar to Henry David Thoreau’s when writing Walden (1854). Jeremy is later visited there by his girlfriend Carol, who is meanwhile employed back in New York City by a man named Rosie (or Rosebottom), who has her researching the darkest origins of people’s everyday games and rituals. It transpires that Rosie is in league with mysterious forces in the woods and requires both Jeremy and Carol for an elaborate series of ceremonies. His ultimate aim
is to sacrifice this couple in the woods, as this will result in the awakening of a primordial monster that resides, hidden, inside Earth itself. The Poroths become possessed and ultimately killed by the evil forces at hand, but Jeremy and Carol survive their tribulations. The final sacrifice is interrupted just in time, and so the monster slumbers on, temporarily undisturbed. Its presence, however, undercuts this happy end; with the novel’s final imagery, there is a tangible sense of the chaos and horror that dwells just beneath human existence.

  A Stealth Course in Literary Horror History

  The Ceremonies not only stands as an effective (and momentous) horror novel in its own right, but it also offers the reader what amounts to a mini-course in the history of weird, Gothic, and supernatural horror literature. In making Jeremy, the protagonist, a graduate student and college instructor who is preparing to write his dissertation on Gothic and weird literature, Klein creates a narrative vehicle for conveying reflections on many classic texts, presented as entries in Jeremy’s journal. These encompass the likes of Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho, Lewis’s The Monk, Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer, Stoker’s Dracula, Le Fanu’s Carmilla and “Green Tea,” Blackwood’s “Ancient Sorceries,” Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow, H. P. Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in Literature, and Arthur Machen’s “The White People.” These same works—especially the last—also form a thematic background to the cosmic horror at the center of Klein’s novel.