Horror Literature through History

by Matt Cardin

  Straub has openly acknowledged the debt Ghost Story owes to Stephen King’s second novel, ’Salem’s Lot, which was published four years earlier, in 1975, and which likewise had a seismic impact on the shape of modern horror fiction. Although both books do share similar themes, plot points, and even settings—a small American town besieged by a supernatural horror—’Salem’s Lot seems to have provided a template of sorts, a kind of guide or catalyst that enabled Straub to intuit larger possibilities in the literary form of the horror novel. In the final analysis, Ghost Story may be seen as the marriage of two sensibilities: King’s, from which it derives its more operatic moments, and Straub’s, who used it to fulfill his ambition to enlarge the boundaries of the traditional ghost story. Notably, it also stands as the first example of Straub’s trademark exploration of the dormant power of secrets, and of the power of storytelling to uncover core truths. Much as King’s book pays homage to writers such as Bram Stoker and Richard Matheson, who had produced canonical vampire novels before him, Straub’s stands as a tribute to previous writers in the long tradition of ghost stories, including some who are specifically referenced in the book (such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James) and some who are not (such as Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, H. P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, and M. R. James).

  Hank Wagner

  See also: James, Henry; King, Stephen; Psychological Horror; Straub, Peter.

  Further Reading

  Andriano, Joseph. 1993. “From Fiend to Friend: The Daemonic Feminine in Modern Gothic.” In Our Ladies of Darkness: Feminine Daemonology in Male Gothic Fiction, 135–144. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.

  Bosky, Bernadette. 1999. “Peter Straub: From Academe to Shadowland.” In Discovering Modern Horror Fiction II, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, 3–17. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Wildside Press.

  King, Stephen. [1981] 2010. Danse Macabre. New York: Gallery Books.

  Neilson, Keith. 1980. “Ghost Story.” Magill’s Literary Annual 1980, 1–4.

  Straub, Peter. 1980. Ghost Story. New York: Pocket Books.

  THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

  The Girl Next Door is an extreme horror novel written by Jack Ketchum. It was first published by Warner Books in 1989; Leisure Books published the mass market paperback in 2005. Though it has elements of horror, particularly in the stark depictions of violence, Ketchum’s book is best categorized as crime fiction, as it is loosely based on the true-life events of the torture and eventual murder of Sylvia Likens in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1965. It has been called “Suburban Gothic,” given its setting and how Ketchum is able to describe such horrendous violence in what is otherwise considered a safe place.

  The novel is narrated by David, an adult who is remembering his youth in what appears to be a typical 1950s suburban neighborhood, not unlike many that can be found almost anywhere across the United States. The innocuous setting only serves to intensify the horrific events that happen. Teenager Meg, along with her younger sister, Susan, are sent to live with Ruth, a single mother who is raising three boys of her own. Ruth, struggling with poverty, stress, depression, and substance abuse, allows her sons—and eventually other boys from the neighborhood—to imprison Meg in the basement and perform increasingly vile acts of torture, including rape, on the captive girl.

  In 1996, a limited edition of the book was published, featuring an introduction from fellow horror writer Stephen King. In describing Ketchum, he wrote, “Jack Ketchum is a brilliantly visceral novelist whose bleak perception of human nature is perhaps only rivaled by that of Frank Norris and Malcolm Lowry” (quoted in Beahm 1998, 113). The extreme violence in Ketchum’s novel divides critics and readers. While some are turned off by the gore, some, like King, understand that Ketchum has a unique ability to look into the dark soul of humanity and to plumb the depths of human depravity in order to ask why evil exists in the world.

  In 2007 the novel was adapted into a film, Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door. Reviews were mixed, as most critics and audiences considered the violence too graphic to be shown on screen. The same year saw the release of another film inspired by the story of Sylvia Likens. Titled An American Crime, this one did not use Jack Ketchum as a source, instead choosing to go to the original murder case as inspiration.

  Lisa Kröger

  See also: Ketchum, Jack.

  Further Reading

  Beahm, George. 1998. Stephen King from A to Z: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Work. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel.

  Hipson, Richard. 2007. “Jack Ketchum Talks About the Horrors That Live ‘Next Door.’” Dark Scribe Magazine, November 15. http://www.darkscribemagazine.com/feature-interviews/jack-ketchum-talks-about-the-horrors-that-live-next-door.html.

  “Retold: Torture Death of Sylvia Likens.” 2015. Indianapolis Star, October 22. http://www.indystar.com/story/news/history/retroindy/2013/10/24/sylvia-likens/3178393.

  Rhyne, Leah. 2014. “Prose and Conversation: ‘The Girl Next Door’ by Jack Ketchum.” LitReactor, February 21. https://litreactor.com/columns/prose-conversation-the-girl-next-door-by-jack-ketchum.

  “THE GIRL WITH THE HUNGRY EYES”

  Fritz Leiber’s “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” (1949) is a classic vampire story that updates the genre’s conventions for the world of modern consumerism. Its protagonist—a lean young advertising model known simply as “The Girl”—is essentially the undead embodiment of consumer desire itself, of half-formed cravings that can never be fully satisfied. The narrator, a down-on-his-luck photographer who snaps the Girl’s first promotional glossies, almost succumbs to her eerie blandishments, yet manages at the last minute to shake free. Meanwhile, the Girl goes on to infest the urban marketplace, her face gazing down from billboards, her appetite as unquenchable as the inchoate longings of the hapless consumers upon whom she preys.

  “The Signal-man”: Urban Horror ahead of Its Time

  One of the first instances of urban horror, “The Signal-Man,” predates Fritz Leiber’s use of the form in “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” by nearly a century. If this 1866 ghost story by Charles Dickens, sometimes called “No. 1 Branch Line: The Signal-man,” had involved nautical signals or stagecoaches, it would have been effective, but unremarkable. A man is plagued by an apparition that warns of upcoming disaster. The third time, it presages his own death. What makes this more interesting is that it is about a railway signal operator and takes place among the soot and grime of early industrial England. Dickens builds up the atmosphere deftly, the setting being the signalman’s cabin in a low, dank, walled trench near the opening to a railway tunnel. The train, roaring out of the dark tunnel mouth, becomes an effective emblem of menace. The story may have been inspired by a real place, the Clayton Tunnel in England, where a notable collision occurred in 1861.

  The first time the “ghost” appears, there is a train wreck. The second time, a woman dies mysteriously aboard a train, and the third time the signalman himself is hit by one. On this final encounter it is unclear whether he actually saw a ghost or the operator of the third train, who is described as waving and shouting in exactly the same manner as the apparition. This could be read as a case of precognition, not haunting in the usual sense.

  Fictional ghosts had long haunted gloomy castles, remote crossroads, and lonely sea strands, but Dickens was one of the first to realize the potential of a modern, urban landscape for horror fiction. This was so far ahead of its time that it still seemed revolutionary when Fritz Leiber did something similar with “Smoke Ghost” and “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” eight decades later.

  Darrell Schweitzer

  Like a number of Leiber’s other works of the 1940s, such as “Smoke Ghost” (1941) and Conjure Wife (1943), “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” takes a perennial horror icon and situates it within a contemporary milieu. In essence, Leiber asks: what would a vampire look like in a world dominated not by the Gothic trappings of the past but by the most up-to-date technologies and ideologies? A major innovation of the story is
to see the vampire not as a physical predator, sucking blood, but as a psychological parasite, battening on and draining emotional energy. A possible influence was Mary Wilkins-Freeman’s “Luella Miller” (1902), with its eponymous psychic leech; yet “The Girl” in Leiber’s story is no shrinking violet but rather a boldly libidinous huntress stalking the modern world. Like Dracula in Bram Stoker’s novel (1897), who advances his undead campaign by means of real estate agents and railway timetables, Leiber’s “Girl” draws victims to her via photography agencies and fashion magazines.

  “The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” is the forerunner of an entire subgenre of contemporary vampire stories that link feral appetite with modern communications media and high-tech consumption. S. P. Somtow’s Vampire Junction (1984) and Anne Billson’s Suckers (1992), for example, both connect vampiric thirst with consumer desire, its undead creatures animated by marketing strategies. David J. Schow’s World Fantasy Award–winning story “Red Light” (1986) is virtually an homage to Leiber in its tale of a beautiful photographer’s model who is both a victim of male lust and a subtle predator upon it. Leiber’s tale has been filmed twice: in 1972 as an episode of Rod Serling’s anthology series Night Gallery, and then in 1995 as a low-budget horror movie directed by Jon Jacobs.

  Rob Latham

  See also: Conjure Wife; Dark Fantasy; Incubi and Succubi; Leiber, Fritz; Psychological Horror; Vampires.

  Further Reading

  Auerbach, Nina. 1995. “Vampires and Vampires.” In Our Vampires, Ourselves, 101–111. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

  Langan, John. 2008. “Feed Me, Baby, Feed Me: Beyond the Pleasure Principle in Fritz Leiber’s ‘The Girl with the Hungry Eyes.’” In Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays, edited by Benjamin Szumskyj, 101–115. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

  GOGOL, NIKOLAI (1809–1852)

  Nikolai Gogol was a Ukrainian Russian writer and dramatist. Best known for his tales set in St. Petersburg, Russia, and for his macabre, absurdist, and grotesque style, Gogol also achieved literary prominence in his lifetime for stories inspired by Ukrainian folklore. His work demonstrates a profound attention to psychological complexity, everyday life, and the common person, prompting nineteenth-century critic Vissarion Belinsky to name him the father of the “natural school” of Russian literary realism. However, Romantic writers such as Aleksandr Pushkin and E. T. A. Hoffmann also influenced Gogol’s writing, resulting in an idiosyncratic fantastic realism in which the supernatural, grotesque, and surreal violently intrude upon the banal realities of everyday life.

  A tendency toward chaos, a preoccupation with the vulgarity of life, an overriding belief in evil as a ubiquitous presence, and a characteristic dark humor permeate Gogol’s work from his earliest collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka (1831–1832). Heavily influenced by Gogol’s Ukrainian childhood and by traditional Ukrainian culture and folklore, Evenings contains eight stories that present the Ukrainian countryside as a place of myth, magic, and the supernatural. Cossacks, maidens, witches, devils, sorcerers, ghosts, and deadly acts of vengeance haunt its pages, combining folkloric figures with Gothic literary tropes, a highly developed dark wit, and a Romantic sense of the sublime. “A Terrible Vengeance”—an unsettling tale of sorcery, dark magic, and obsession—offers an early example of Gogol’s talent for depicting the grotesque, while “Christmas Eve,” with its humorous portrayals of vanquished devils and comely maidens, exhibit Gogol’s absurdist, cynical dark humor.

  Evenings was followed by the short story collections Mirgorod (1835) and Arabesques (1835). Ranging from satire to the Gothic to the absurd, these tales demonstrate both Gogol’s expansive talent and his tendency to defy classification. With Mirgorod, Gogol presented a cycle of tales that returned to rural Ukrainian settings and folklore. “Viy,” a tale of witchcraft, demons, vengeance, and a less-than-pious clergyman, has left a particularly pronounced impression on both the Soviet and Russian Gothic-horror traditions and has been adapted for film numerous times both within and outside Russia. With Arabesques, Gogol moved his tales from rural Ukraine to his adopted city of St. Petersburg. “The Portrait,” “Nevsky Prospect,” and “Diary of a Madman” are perhaps the most Gothic tales in this collection, presenting a labyrinthine city dominated by rigid social hierarchies, pettiness, and vice. Gogol’s characters in these tales are often young and relatively powerless artists and petty bureaucrats, easily overwhelmed by the temptations of—and social barriers to—a luxurious urban lifestyle. Here, it is both the urban environment and a pervasive bureaucracy that destroys the common person: “Diary of a Madman” and “Nevsky Prospect,” for instance, depict St. Petersburg as a disorienting force overlaid by a mechanical, pointless bureaucracy that crushes the individual, while “The Portrait” is a tale of demonic ambition that recalls earlier themes from Evenings.

  Gogol’s later work prominently featured St. Petersburg as an indifferent, imposing city largely controlled by the administrative class. “The Nose” (1836) and “The Overcoat” (1842) are perhaps Gogol’s most well-known short works and are both exemplars of Gogol’s late absurdist, grotesque style. “The Nose,” a masterful tale of pure absurdity and dark humor, depicts a civil servant of average rank who awakens to discover that his nose has not only gone missing but has also begun to pose as a human and, to his horror, has even surpassed him in rank. In “The Overcoat,” obsessions with rank, social status, and the meanness of urban life drive a lowly civil servant to increase his social standing by saving for a new overcoat. When the coat is finally purchased and immediately stolen, the civil servant falls into a fever and dies, returning as a ghost to haunt—and steal overcoats from—passersby on the city streets. The tale is considered a masterwork of Russian literature and exerted a profound influence on later writers, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, who is famously said to have proclaimed, “We all come out from Gogol’s ‘Overcoat.’”

  Though Gogol’s oeuvre was composed over the relatively short period of 1830–1842, ending with his satirical and widely praised novel-poem Dead Souls (1842), Gogol’s influence on writers, directors, and composers has been monumental and long-lasting, resulting in numerous cinematic and operatic adaptations of his work, including the famous Soviet horror film Viy (1967). Gogol died in 1852 after falling into a deep depression, during which time he burned his final manuscript.

  Brittany Roberts

  See also: The Grotesque; Surrealism.

  Further Reading

  Fanger, Donald. 1979. The Creation of Nikolai Gogol. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  Gippius, Vasilii. 1981. Gogol. Translated by Robert A. Maguire. Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis.

  Nabokov, Vladimir. 1944. Nikolai Gogol. Norfolk, CT: New Directions.

  THE GOLEM

  The Golem is a novel by Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink (1868–1932). Written in German under the title Der Golem, it was published first as a serial between 1913 and 1914, and then as a book in 1915. The first English translation appeared in 1928.

  The setting is Prague, a city with a large Jewish population and a reputation for alchemy and sorcery. Meyrink draws on a Jewish legend about a wonder-working rabbi who is able to bring to life the massive clay statue of a man, the Golem, who protects the Jews of Prague from persecution. (This same legend inspired several silent films by the German Expressionist director Paul Wegener, but despite the identical titles, his films are not adaptations of Meyrink’s novel.)

  While Prague is the setting of the novel, it is also almost a character as well, actually manifesting itself as the Golem. The novel is alive with Meyrink’s own preoccupations, involving the blending of psychology and mysticism in a way that aligns him with other contemporary writers such as Carl Jung and William Butler Yeats. The plot does not follow conventional lines of cause and effect, preferring instead to connect events using a subtle inner logic of correspondences that hints at the unfolding of an ineffable cosmic plan. This plan is impossible to understand for those who lack some form of spiritual enlightenment.
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  The first section of the book tells the story of a young man named Athanasius Pernath, who is framed for murder and loses everything. In the second section, however, the reader learns that Pernath’s story is all a dream; the dreamer, who is also the narrator, has taken Pernath’s hat away with him from a restaurant by mistake, and evidently for this reason has dreamed about him. Haunted by the dream, the narrator begins searching for Pernath. In his search, he seems to become lost in a phantasmagorical delirium of Prague. He meets the Golem, who is like the spirit of the city, a man-made thing animated by human activity but somehow lacking human consciousness. Eventually, the narrator finds Pernath, and, through him, a higher spiritual plane of existence.

  The Golem is an example of the artistic movement known as expressionism. Expressionist art tries to capture the ways in which a single person’s point of view alters, or distorts, experience. In painting, film, poetry, and fiction, the result is typically a work that tries to make the audience aware of the way an individual’s desires shape his or her perspective. In effect, expressionism sacrifices conventional realism, the attempt to record events objectively, in order to be more realistic about the experience of an event for an individual. For this reason, much expressionist fiction is structured by affinities, rather than modeled on everyday events. Instead of depicting the way one event leads to another, expressionist novels like The Golem will often set events side by side because they share the same mood, or seem to point to the same mysterious idea beyond experience.

  It may be noted that The Golem is also an important novel for its Jewish characters, some of whom correspond to the viciously anti-Semitic stereotypes of the time. Others, as if in compensation, have an equally exaggerated saintliness.