Welcome! Please note this site deals with adult themes.
This blog is the often amusing, sometimes dangerous den of two British writers of contemporary and paranormal romance, and urban fantasy. Most of our stories are based in the UK and our heroes and heroines are passionate Brits - yes, passionate Brits exist! Come on in out of the cold, pull up a chair and see for yourself...

Monday 26 August 2013

Favourite spooky setting for a book?

Taken from google images: http://www.shadowmillproductions.com/haunted_house.htm


Today's question from Dianna: Favourite spooky setting for a book? And have you used it in your own book?

I think my favourite spooky place for a story would be a mansion, a castle, or a forest. I know, it seems a little cliche to choose those three particular backdrops, but what can I say, my mother has brought me up watching horrors, Ghost stories, fairytales and Gothic period dramas etc

These particular places don't frighten me, but I feel the vastness and size of any of the above are wonderfully atmospheric no matter what hour of the day or night the story would take place. I suppose it's the idea of the history behind such places, mixed with the isolation. 

Don't get me wrong, in a book the castle or mansion might be flooded with people living in these places, but there is always a room, a crook somewhere that seems to be shrounded in secrecy. The hairs stand up on the back of your neck at the slightest noise. They're just built for spook-filled fun.

And a forest, snow white anyone? Who the hell knows what lurks in the deep death of never ending nature. Getting lost in a forest is definitely not something I would want to go through.

Moors would be another place, which I have used in The Blood Series, along with a forest actually. But you aren't really afraid or freaked out by these desolate places when you have Werewolves running around filling the night with their howls. Still, the moors is not somewhere I would want to be on my own even during the day.

One spooky setting I did recently use for a book was a Motel in the middle of nowhere - yet again the middle of nowhere  wide open space. Is anyone getting the feeling I'm not a fan of isolation? Well, if it is chosen isolation, but still, I don't think I would be cut off in such a way from society. I don't think I would cope.

I have never stayed in a Motel, but I have to say I wouldn't want to. I understand the convenience of them, but the idea that anyone can walk past your from door, or the back window . . .  stop their car right outside your room . . . the walls are paper thin . . . no, gives me creeps. There feels like their is no privacy.

Naturally it doesn't help that I have seen films such as Road Kill, Psycho, and No Vacancy. . . Oh, and Wolf Creek, talk about being isolated. Holy hell. Anyway, those films don't really restore my faith in such establishments or adventures, but hey, that's just me.

I suppose anywhere could be spooky, it is all dependant on the atmosphere that is set up, the history behind it, and the character(s) finding themselves there. A dark alleyway, basement, attic, hospital, school, a street at night . . .

What about you; what's one of your favourite spooky settings for/from a book?

No comments:

Post a Comment