Dark Places : Ecology, Place, and the Metaphysics of Horror Fiction

This article deals with the generally underestimated importance of horror fiction for eco-critical thinking about place. It looks at three major horror writers, Poe, Lovecraft, and VanderMeer, exploring the ways that each plays with and deepens our understanding of what it means to be in a place. Contrary to popular opinion, which would claim that horror writers both use stock backgrounds, and in any case deal only with fictions, I argue that horror fiction is in many ways more realist than other forms of writing, and as such deserving of far more critical attention than it has thus far been accorded by eco-critics.