Imagine two horror stories with vastly different settings: one takes place in a sleek research station on a beautiful and terrifying ocean-covered planet while the other is set in a crumbling Gothic castle surrounded by fog and darkness. Though the settings are worlds apart, in the hands of a skilled horror writer, each has the potential to ensnare the hapless reader who stumbles into the damned terrain, its willing sacrifice.

It’s not uncommon for the landscape itself to be a character in horror stories. It speaks to the latent animist in each of us, the nagging fear that everything is somehow horribly alive. In Solaris, Stanisław Lem takes this idea to the logical next level with a sentient planet capable of probing the minds of the humans who come to study it. Protagonist Kris Kelvin, a psychologist newly arrived to the eponymous planet, describes it in vivid detail in Chapter One, immediately putting readers off balance:

“The wave-crests glinted through the window, the colossal rollers rising and falling in slow-motion. Watching the ocean like this one had the illusion — it was surely an illusion — that the Station was moving imperceptibly, as though teetering on an invisible base; then it would seem to recover its equilibrium, only to lean the opposite way with the same lazy movement. Thick foam, the color of blood, gathered in the troughs of the waves.”

(That’s a big nope for me, folks.) As Kelvin grapples with the strange phenomena he encounters on the planet’s surface, the setting shifts and morphs to reflect his innermost fears and desires.

In Ray Russell’s anthology Haunted Castles, decaying Gothic palaces filled with secrets and shadows make up the stories’ backdrops. Each story in the collection takes place in a locale with all the requisite crumbling walls, creaky staircases, and ancient tapestries necessary to set the stage for Gothic terror. The opening tale “Sardonicus” gives us an early taste of Russell’s descriptive gusto:

“I sighed, for the desolate landscape and the thought of what might prove a holiday devoid of refreshing incident had combined to cloak my already wearied spirit in a melancholic humour.

It was when I was in this condition that Castle Sardonicus met my eye – a dense, hunched outline at first, then, with an instantaneous flicker of moonlight, a great gaping death’s head, the sight of which made me inhale sharply…

The castle is situated at the terminus of a long and upward-winding mountain road. It presents a somewhat forbidding aspect to the world, for there is little about it to suggest gaiety or warmth or any of those qualities that might assure a wayfarer of welcome.”

How do you create an effective setting in horror writing?

Whether it’s the sterile perfection of a research station or the creepy corners of a crumbling Gothic palace, the setting of a horror story is just as important as the monsters who inhabit it. A well-crafted setting creates an atmosphere so thick that it taps the reader on the shoulder and makes them shiver with dread. Here’s how Russell and Lem did it.

Use sensory details to create a vivid and immersive environment.

In Haunted Castles, Russell uses vivid imagery to evoke the gloriously debauched and degraded atmosphere of the Gothic mansions that serve as the settings for his stories. By using sensory details, you can create a setting that feels tangible, drawing readers more deeply into the world of the story. But what exactly are sensory details? Let’s look at some examples from Haunted Castles.

In the short story “Sardonicus,” Russell describes the castles at night as “a heavy blot upon the horizon, a shadow only, without feature save for its many-turreted outline; and should the moon be temporarily released from her cloudy confinement, her fugitive rays lend scant comfort, for they but serve to throw the castle into sudden, startling chiaroscuro, its windows fleetingly assuming the appearance of sightless though all-seeing orbs, its portcullis becoming for an instant a gaping mouth, its entire form striking the physical and the mental eye as would the sight of a giant skull.” Russell’s use of immersive sensory language like “heavy blot,” “many-turreted outline,” “fugitive rays,” and gaping mouth” place you squarely before the blighted castle right beside the trepidatious narrator Sir Robert Cargrave.

In the first paragraph of “Sanguinarius,” a reworking of the story of the bloody Countess Elizabeth Bathory, Russell’s narrator Elisabeth writes, “High on its jutting promontory, gaunt and austere, Castle Csejthe still stands, dark and muted now, its tenants none but rats and spiders, nesting birds, and one lone wretch, Elisabeth, Thy servant. In my sleepless desolation, I think upon those great rooms I am constrain’d to see no more, and roam in fancy through them, gliding like an insubstantial phantom through those high, broad, livid veils of dust that, when they catch the moonlight and a vagrant breeze, shimmer and ponderously sway, thus doubtless spawning village talk of ghosts.” In this passage, Russell conveys a haunted landscape through descriptions of dust and dark and rats and spiders as well as the hint that the house is a subject of fear in the local population, which brings us to our next lesson.

Incorporate history and mythology to create complexity.

In both Solaris and Haunted Castles, the settings have a rich lore right from jump that adds to the overall horror of the stories. In Solaris, the planet’s mysterious origins, a decades-long history of research preceding the story’s events, and the strange visitors that haunt the researchers stationed there create a sense of unease that permeates the entire story. Similarly, in Haunted Castles, the decaying ancestral estates are imbued with a sense of ancient history and generational tragedy. In the opening story, Sardonicus himself drops not-so-subtle hints about family lore that goes back to the days of Rome, and in “Sagittarius,” the tale-bearer Terrence Glencannon, familiarly known as Lord Terry, weaves a tapestry of fiction and fact to connect characters within the story to the legends of Bluebeard, Gilles de Rais, Mr Hyde and even Jack the Ripper, a measure that makes the setting feel more “real.”

For an exemplar in this particular strategy, we’ve got to look to H.P. Lovecraft. His Cthulu Mythos is so compelling that many of the greatest horror writers of the 20th and 21st centuries, including Stephen King, Matt Ruff, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and have explored it in their own world-building, contributing to its enduring legacy. In popular culture, his expansive lore is still plumbed by game designers and brilliant modern podcasts like BBC’s The Lovecraft Investigations. (In more obscure pop culture, I participated in the Chewbacchus talent show Set Your Phasers to Stunning in 2016 as Cthulu-cille Ball, a cosmic horror of a comedy-song performance.) That’s the kind of world-building that actually builds a world smack dab in the middle of our own via the fertile minds of readers.

Use the setting to reflect the characters’ emotions.

Both Russell and Lem use the setting as a kind of barometer of their characters’ internal states. The first passage from Russell cited above offers one example. Likewise, in Solaris, the silent desolation of the research station that meets the newly arrived Kelvin mirrors the sense of isolation you’d have to feel showing up for your first day at work on a haunted planet. Note the carefully chosen sensory details that add to the reality of the scene:

“I went down a small stairway. The metal floor below had been coated with a heavy-duty plastic. In places, the wheels of trolleys carrying rockets had worn through this plastic covering to expose the bare steel beneath.

The throbbing of the ventilators ceased abruptly and there was total silence. I looked around me, a little uncertain, waiting for someone to appear; but there was no sign of life. Only a neon arrow glowed, pointing towards a moving walkway which was silently unreeling. I allowed myself to be carried forward.

The ceiling of the hall descended in a fine parabolic arc until it reached the entrance to a gallery, in whose recesses gas cylinders, gauges, parachutes, crates and a quantity of other objects were scattered about in untidy heaps.”

In my own novel-in-progress Queen Hag or (The Other Side of Yonder, I’m still hammering out details), the island of Yonder is very much a main character, and the setting plays a crucial role in setting the tone and building tension. Late in the opening scene, my protagonist Savannah, a newcomer to Yonder, finds herself at a waterfront diner, bantering with the locals and watching the sunrise. As her optimism is battered by a peevish old man, the landscape reflects her dampening spirits as “gray-green clouds bloomed in the east like a new bruise, probably as far out as the Atlantic, but near enough to creep like a patina across the copper coin of morning sun – just when it was breaking free of the deep pockets of the stingy horizon.”

Create a sense of tension and unease that builds over time.

In Solaris, the planet’s increasingly disturbing behavior and its uncanny visitors become progressively more unsettling as the story unfolds, leading the characters to question their own sanity and the true nature of their home away from home. This sense of uncertainty and dread is heightened by the fact that the characters are isolated on a space station with no means of escape, leaving them trapped and vulnerable.

In Haunted Castles, Russell builds tension through the gradual revelation of dark secrets about the setting. As the characters explore the bleak baronial estates, they uncover only more disturbing histories and psychological torment. This creates a sense of mounting distress, as the characters become more and more entangled in mystery and suffering. The use of gothic imagery, such as the crumbling architecture and twisted trees, adds to the sense of foreboding and builds the dark dwellings up around the reader in her imagination, holding her captive in the story.

What’s your favorite horror setting?

Whether you’re writing about a haunted castle descending into decay or a research station descending into chaos, the setting of a horror story is as important to your readers as it is to your characters and your plot. Taking the time to let that world grow, like creeping moss or strangling vines or sentient fog, is going to make your story every bit as inescapable for readers as the bleakness that so frequently holds us hostage in our own lives (but in a good way). Happy thoughts!

About the Featured Image

I took this photo of the historic Hoffman-Bowers-Josey-Riddick House in Scotland Neck, North Carolina while visiting with high school pals in the neighboring town of Tarboro, my own haunted native territory.