The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear...
Fear.
Once bitten, our eyes dilate. Our hair stands on end. Our skin becomes goose flesh. The heart thuds and the blood races. Like the vampires that make it their hunting ground, the gothic tale is paradox. It might scare us to death, but it also startles us to our senses, enlivens us: we take pleasure in terror. We feel true fear.
The gothic past is a prison of tyranny and superstition. It looms large, and its shadow blots out the present-hence family curses, ancient castles, crumbling parchment, decaying bodies, moaning ancestral portraits, and catacombs through which sinister aristocrats pursue vulnerable heroines.
Goth swarms with scheming heirs, dark twins, dread, claustrophobia, and persecution.-All presented in an atmosphere of brooding suspense, almost always in the maddening confines of some ruined dwelling.
There is melodrama, melancholy, and poetry to spare. Nature is no sympathetic reflection of human goodness-our romantic link to the divine-but a vile and twisted reflection of godless fears and anxieties.
Flowers pulse with poison; a cloud hovers over the mist; ancient trees are savaged and split by lightning; and the final resting place for the body, the good earth, becomes a worm-plagued torture chamber for the soul. There is no shortage of graveyards, hauntings, bewitching, and bitten necks as well.
The boundaries between the innocence and the malevolence are often marked in blood. As the child in you knows, its bitter sweet to be scared, no matter who you are...so catch your breath. That is true Fear.