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Distinguished from mainstream horror by its reduced emphasis on explicit violence, dark fantasy typically comes in one of two varieties. The first variety explores the horrific potential of human encounters with surviving remnants of ancient myths and belief systems. The second exploits the horrific possibilities of intersections between our own reality and the fantastic secondary worlds more often associated with J. R. R. Tolkein and his imitators. Examples of the first approach include Ramsey Campbell's The Darkest Part of the Woods, Neil Gaiman' s American Gods, Elizabeth Hand's Mortal Love, James Herbert's Once, and Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood series. Clive Barker's Weaveworld, Sean Stewart's Resurrection Man, and Stephen King's Dark Tower series are examples of the second approach.

Tales of demonic possession focus on attempts to repel satanic powers as they invade everyday reality. William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist, which describes the possession of a teenage girl by a demonic spirit who may be Satan himself, is by far the most important such novel. Another variety of such tales focuses on the fulfillment of biblical prophecy of the end times, as signaled by the birth of a Satanic messiah figure. Examples of this variety include Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby and the best-selling Left Behind series, an explicitly evangelical sequence of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.

Almost certainly the most common kind of horror story, ghost stories focus on disembodied spirits that linger after death. Such spirits may be malevolent or benevolent, and ghost stories often range in tone from horrific to nostalgic. Examples include Richard Adams's The Girl in a Swing, Stewart O'Nan's The Night Country, Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones, Chet Williamson's Ash Wednesday, and a number of Peter Straub's novels, including Julia, If You Could See Me Now, and lost boy, lost girl. Straub's Ghost Story explicitly reimagines some of the classic ghost stories most central to the American tradition (including 'The Turn of the Screw'). Despite the title, however, it is not in fact a conventional ghost story.

Although haunted house stories often overlap significantly with ghost stories, they can usually be distinguished from ghost stories by their emphasis on the house as a locus of supernatural incursion. Examples include Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Stephen King's The Shining, Bentley Little's The House, Robert Marasco's Burnt Offerings, Susie Moloney's The Dwelling, Anne Rivers Siddons's The House Next Door, Chet Williamson's Soulstorm, and my own House of Bones. Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves is an important, if not wholly successful, attempt to reimagine the subgenre.

References:

1.         Barron, Neil, ed. Horror Literature: A Reader's Guide. New York: Garland, 1990.

2.         Carroll, Noel. The Philosophy of Horror: Or Paradoxes of the Heart. New York: Routledge, 1990.

3.         Edmundson, Mark. A Nightmare on Main Street: Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.

4.         Fiedler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. New York: Stein and Day, 1966.

5.         Jones, Ernest. On the Nightmare. London: Liveright, 1971.

6.         King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Berkley, 1981.

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