The Gothic Tradition

Why is film and TV so haunted - by ghosts, vampires, zombies, uncanny robots, and even screens themselves? Moving images evoked haunting since their invention in the 18th century. An inherently Gothic medium, film developed in tandem with Gothic literature, haunting the 21st century with the nightmares of the 18th. Why do they keep coming back? In the standard ghost story, something important has been lost or something left undone. What is the buried legacy or the cultural work unfinished that the 18th century Gothic mode keeps returning to perform? This is the question we will strive to answer by analyzing narratives in visual media.