America's Most GothicAmerica's Most Gothic

"We often think of the enduring tropes of the Gothic in terms of fiction and film: breath-catching escapes that tap into our fears, anxieties, forbidden desires, and unsettling dreams. But what if some of these chilly vibes are rooted in the experiences of real and tragic people who danced a macabre waltz with love and death? That's why we're here. Take the case of teenage Mercy Brown, victim--or was it predator?--of Rhode Island's vampire hysteria of the 1890s. Marguerite de la Roque, a French noblewoman condemned for 'sexual crimes' to Canada's long-lost Isle of Demons. What happened to her and the barren landscape itself is the stuff of legend. And 'Mad Lucy' Ludwell, the decidedly peculiar eighteenth-century high-society hauteur driven mad in the Virginia estate she prowls to this day. President Helen Peabody's spirit still stringently watches over her Women's College, now part of Ohio's Miami University. Ghosts of workers lost in horrific conditions while building the Hoosac Tunnel warn of imminent danger. Settle in. There are more"--
"Brooding, atmospheric, chilling, and not always the product of a feverish imagination, the Bram Stoker-nominated authors of A Haunted History of Invisible Women bring us the first book of its kind to investigate Gothic tropes that define American lore to reveal the dark, hidden history of what frightens us--and why. Fog clinging to an isolated mansion. A dangerous patriarch or an overbearing matron. Locked doors and forbidden rooms. Whispers of murder and madness. And a woman shadowed by omnipresent threats. We often think of the enduring tropes of the Gothic in terms of fiction and film. But reality can be even stranger as borne out in this lush and ghostly look at real people who lived--and died--amidst the trappings of the American Gothic. In this fascinating journey through eerie history, paranormal connoisseurs Leanna Renee Hieber and Andrea Janes--founder of New York City's ghost tour company Boroughs of the Dead--reveal how the Gothic resurfaces in waves. It rises alongside seismic shifts like the Industrial Revolution, and today's whirlwind of social upheaval and rapid technological transformation. Gothic storytelling remains the perfect vessel for our collective anxiety and trauma. Welcome to the phantom ships, haunted academic halls, menacing landscapes, and family curses of America's Most Gothic. Crossing folklore, fantasy, reality, metaphor, and history, the Gothic presses its finger on the pulse of the anxieties of the age in which it is written, wandering through a strange and foreboding world. It is, by definition, a dark and scary place. Proceed through these pages with caution . . ." --