Here, there are several adjoining footpaths where you can safely drink in the misty views without falling victim to knee-deep sludge. One look at the bleak but beautiful Fox Tor Mire - an expanse of bogland - and it’s not hard to see why Doyle was inspired to write one of the darkest crime novels of all time when he visited the area in 1901.įox Tor Mire has a reputation with locals for being notoriously treacherous to navigate on foot, so if you’re going on the trail of Sherlock Holmes, avoid crossing them altogether and head to the solid land at Nun’s Cross Farm just south of the mires. The inspiration for: Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervillesīased on a local legend of a spectral hound that haunted Dartmoor, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles has been unsettling readers for decades with its ghostly happenings on the fictional moors of Grimpen Mire.
If you’re planning to read into the genre this Halloween, walking in the footsteps of these characters can evoke the existential madness that permeates the pages.
It takes its name from the architectural style of the Middle Ages, with desolate and gnarled ecclesiastical ruins from the era providing the ideal location for early gothic writers to set their supernatural stories and tales of terror.īeyond the brooding buildings in these novels, there’s a creeping sense of pathetic fallacy in these destinations and their inclement weather: as the remote landscape falls into physical ruin, so too does the protagonist’s grip on reality. The gothic genre emerged from the Romantic literary movement of Europe in the 18th century, and it’s beloved still today by horror fans for its unsettling sense of mystery and fear. Writers like the Brontë sisters and Mary Shelley were influenced by the darkly picturesque scenery of these isles’ dramatic landscapes, where bleak weather conditions gave otherwise painterly autumnal scenes a foreboding sense of doom. From isolated castles to wind-ravaged moors, the savage beauty of the UK countryside has inspired some of history’s most iconic works of gothic fiction.
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