Twenty-five years ago, Dr. Robert Bork, a professor of art history at the University of Iowa and a specialist in the study of Gothic architecture, was working in his office when a student knocked on the door. Throughout the room were pictures of Cologne Cathedral, an 1880 church in Germany and one of Dr. Bork’s favorite buildings. The images, seemingly, caught the student’s attention. “Dr. Bork,” he said. “Why does it look so evil?”
There is nothing inherently scary or sinister about the structure. As an example of Gothic architecture, it bears many iconic elements of the style: pointed arches, flying buttresses, tall spires, rib vaults, window tracery, and stained glass. But it was never meant to invoke fear. So the student’s question was interesting to the professor. “I asked him why he said that,” Dr. Bork tells AD. “And he replied, ‘Well, it looks just like the skyscraper in Ghostbusters.’”
For decades, Gothic architecture has been a go-to style for production designers, writers, and even musicians looking to convey terror through physical spaces. In Dracula (1931) Carfax Abbey is based on Whitby Abbey, a Gothic monastery; Manderly from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1939) pulls inspiration from Gothic houses; and more modern films and shows like Crimson Peak (2015) and Wednesday (2022) keep the trope alive.
“The idea of Gothic buildings being scary or haunted is fairly recent,” says Michael Crosbie, an architect and professor of the course Architecture in Film at Hartford University. “In the early to mid 20th century, there were a lot of Gothic buildings in movies that showed them as haunted places.”
One could argue that repetition has perhaps conditioned viewers to think of the style as scary, so creators continue using it, prompting something of a never-ending loop. But their original introduction into horror media was always a deliberate choice. “It’s not random,” Dr. Bork says. “There are good reasons.”
Gothic architecture first emerged in the 12th century and was most closely related with church architecture, though other uses did exist. In religious settings, it was meant to suggest the superhuman. “Buildings were supposed to make you feel like you were in the presence of a bigger, more mysterious God,” Dr. Bork says. Architects did this by circumventing many of the “rules” previously established in Romanesque architecture, which had been widespread in the decades before and has roots in Greek and Roman classicism.
This forebear was uniform and symmetrical, regulated by harmony, ratios, and scale. In fact, each order of Greek design—Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—was based on the human body, and therefore felt safe, approachable, and familiar. As Gothic architecture emerged, many classical traditions receded. “In the Middle Ages, [architects] left behind the human metaphor and moved to the superhuman,” Dr. Bork adds.
Suddenly, columns became arbitrarily tall and stretched, ornamentation grew bolder, and interiors felt more cavernous thanks to new construction techniques that allowed higher ceilings and required less interior columns. Architects pushed the envelope and were willing to experiment outside of what was previously deemed correct or right. The general vertical presence through elongated columns and high ceilings was meant to evoke a heavenly reach.
Though perhaps intimidating in their grandeur, they weren’t intended to inspire fear. “It was supposed to be positive, transcendent, and godly, not scary,” Dr. Bork explains. However, the designs assumed a less favorable association in the early 16th century during the Renaissance, when there was once again a desire for the rules, order, and “perfection” of classical antiquity. “It was perceived as lawless, chaotic, and disorderly because it didn’t follow the rules of classicism,” Dr. Bork explains. “It got stuck with that association.”
Throughout the next two centuries, the style largely lost favor, until Horace Walpole, a writer, decided he wanted his own “little Gothic castle.” In 1749, he built his estate in London, called Strawberry Hill, modeled off of Gothic cathedrals and medieval castles. Defined by arched windows, stained glass, turrets, and battlements, the residence is largely considered the first Gothic Revival building and contributed to the widespread re-interest in the historic aesthetic.
The 18th century then saw a boom in neo-Gothic buildings, many of which were residences. Today, they are recognizable for their use of pointed arches (seen on doors, windows, and gables), high-pitched roofs, and vergeboard (wooden trim attached to gables).
Perhaps coincidentally, philosopher Edmund Burke published A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful around this same time, in 1757, which became an extremely an influential text that detailed what he called sublime art. “Whatever is in any sort terrible or is conversant about terrible objects or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime,” he wrote. Burke separated the beautiful from the sublime, and aesthetic theories generally classify the sublime as work that showcases greatness beyond measurement, comprehension, or experience; its magnitude is both awe-inspiring and terrifying.
Other important literature that was published during this time was work by Watpole himself. His novel, Castle of Otranto, was reportedly inspired by a dream he had while living at Strawberry Hill. Set in a castle in the Middle Ages, the epic details a lord and his family living in a haunted mansion. “In the late 18th and 19th century, Gothic became associated with spookiness, which got wound into ideas of the exotic and sublime,” Dr. Bork says. “By the 20th century, you have movies and mass media that start using this.”
Today, filmmakers—and, more broadly, storytellers—use these ingrained historical associations to great effect. “When I teach my course, I approach architecture as a character in a film,” Crosbie says. “The character has a role, which is to get across and reinforce themes.” If the idea is to express something otherworldly or beyond comprehension—say, a ghost—what better style to use than Gothic? Of course, not every viewer will know its history, but, subconsciously, these messages may still come across.
Jennifer Spence, a production designer who has worked on movies such as The Nun (2018), Splinter (2008), and those in the Insidious (2013, 2015), Paranormal Activity (2010, 2011, 2012), and Annabelle (2017, 2019) franchises, notes that the style’s age is also compelling. “If you’re writing a story with a ghost, there has to be an origin,” she says. “An older home offers decades of opportunities for backstories to happen, maybe they got murdered or something else happened to them in the home.”
Further, the scale and layout of Gothic buildings can emphasize elements prone to terror. “In Gothic architecture, especially when it’s domestic, the rooms can be very small and you can’t see everything the way you might be able to with an open floor plan in a modern house,” Crosbie says. “A contemporary residence could take away some of the shadows and the creepiness of not knowing what’s around the corner.”
During units on “haunted architecture,” Crosbie has his students watch The Haunting (1963), set in a Gothic mansion in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. “It’s all about how architecture hides things, and the whole movie is a hide-and-seek game between the family that lives there and the house itself,” Crosbie says. “The people get lost going down long hallways, they get disoriented, which is a big theme.”
Dr. Bork points out film series like Lord of the Rings, in which the good kingdom, Gondor, is represented using motifs from Roman and Romanesque architecture, featuring round arches and simple proportions. On the other hand, Mordor, the evil kingdom, pulls from a Gothic vocabulary and includes pointed arches, pinnacles, and diagonal forms. “They were absolutely riffing on a well-informed knowledge of Romanesque and Gothic style when they put those films together,” he says. “And so, generations of kids have seen that by now and that colors their views.”
Spence agrees that perceptions continue to play a role in the choice that set designers use today. “I remember looking back at some of the scary movies that I watched as a kid, like Vincent Price movies, and they were always in a Gothic house or some kind of castle. So you’re almost taught that they’re scary,” she says. “Now, it just seems like the kind of place a ghost or horror could be.”
Though Gothic may have evolved from something heavenly to sinister, its original intentions remain. “It has flipped from light to dark, but what stays constant is the realisation that it’s superhuman or unearthly,” Dr. Bork says. Today this may have a different effect, but “there’s a reason these things stick. It’s because they’re designed that way.”
This story originally featured on architecturaldigest.com
