New England's Gothic Literature History and Folklore of the Supernatural from the Seventeenth Through the Twentieth Centuries

This comprehensive comparative approach to the folklore, fantasy, and horror literature of New England stretches from the earliest European exploration to Stephen King, John Updike, and Shirley Jackson. Along the way it examines the Puritan witch trials as examined by Hawthorne, Arthur Miller, H.P. Lovecraft, and others; folk tales of the Windham Frogs and ghost ships; Hawthorne in Salem, Poe in Providence; the flowering of spiritualism and mysticism from 1848-1900; the New England Vampire Belief in reality and fiction from Mary Wilkins Freeman and H.P. Lovecraft to Stephen King; to the present day - King, Charles Grant, Peter Straub, Rich Hautala, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson. Includes interviews with Les Daniels, Grant, and other horror writers who reside or set their stories in New England.