From hotels to houses, cabins to carnivals, horror has a soft spot for great settings. You could, perhaps, go as far to say that the mark of a successful horror is as dependent on setting as anything else. But what makes a setting memorable and what elevates one from good to great?
Some would say there’s something in isolation; derelict, abandoned places cut off from civilization. I would agree that presents an ideal playground for terror but Shirley Jackson reminds us that there’s as much to fear in tidy lawns and sweet suburbia as there is in middle of nowhere.
Some may say the best are ones that are claustrophobic, like Alien’s Nostromo, and others may say it all comes down to just having enough corners for something to hide.
For me, successful setting happens when it’s so well crafted it feels like a standalone character. I love it when a setting has moods, personalities, and such a profound influence on humans you can almost hear what it would sound like if it could speak.
Hell House, Diavola, Mexican Gothic, House of Leaves, The Haunting of Hill House, and Episode Thirteen all feature different haunted houses but there’s something distinct and dynamic about the atmosphere of each. They all have their own tone, voice, and personality. They have doors and windows, but also arcs that push the story forward. In short? They feel alive.
Sometimes, writers take that further to create whole towns with personality. Josh Malerman created Goblin, a small town where people are buried standing up and it’s always raining, and I’m sure we’ve all heard of the horrors that live in Stephen King’s Derry.
I recently finished Still Wakes the Deep, a psychological, Lovecraftian horror game about being trapped on an oil drilling platform in the North Sea. While the ocean’s stretching waves and endless darkness was rich in atmosphere, I was gripped more by the constant groans of the platform’s moving metal. It was like the thing you were navigating was breathing; moving waves with its own sharp teeth.
I’ve talked before about Adam Nevill’s The Ritual and its description of the forest. I still think about how relentless it felt for the poor characters stuck in its grip and it remains a great example of setting done right. The Blair Witch Project is another. In the day, that forest feels overbearing and stressful, but its mood changes at night. Suddenly, every tree becomes more sinister and every branch becomes a threat.
When I’m writing my own fiction, all of this stays top of mind. I want my settings to be strong, I want the surroundings to feel atmospheric, and I want the air to taste like something’s wrong.
In Buried by Sunset, I hope the desert heat feels overbearing and claustrophobic. In Waxwing Creek, I hope the motel feels so eerie, oppressive, with such presence that you believe it could alter the trajectory of your life if you encounter it.
There’s a lot that has to coalesce to create a memorable horror story but the ones that stick with me are the ones that get setting right. So, maybe when you’re crafting your next story, don’t just think about what your setting looks like. Think about what it smells like. What it feels like. What it would say to you if it could speak.
Before you go
My latest book, Waxwing Creek, is out now. It’s a collection of interconnected horror stories about a haunted motel in a small town called Hunt. It’s available in paperback and on Kindle (including Kindle Unlimited).
Feel free to check out reviews on Goodreads or click the button below to grab a copy.
If you want to read some of my fiction for free, check out:
💡 Lightbulb: A short horror story about a haunted lamp.
🔒 483: A short horror story about the things we keep locked up.
🌧️ A Gentle Rain: A short horror story about loss.
If you want to connect, I love hearing from readers. I keep an Instagram updated and post regularly to Threads and Notes. You can also find me on TikTok.
/ JJW
Atmosphere is everything: lighting and even colour. I love how this got me thinking more about my future stories and their atmosphere. Mexican Gothic had me thinking so much about colour schemes for some reason...
Love this post and agree entirely with it.
Shameless plug but In my anthology there is a story about a woman who falls asleep on a train only to wake up in a town that seemingly shouldn't exist, at one stage she enters a hotel looking for solace only to find it as unsettling as the town outside. With this, I tried to set an errie tone with the use of liminal space and everything being slightly out of date and just off, shadowly corners and windows of the rooms that look in over the lobby giving a constant feeling of being watched from one of the many glass panels.
House of Leaves is one of my favourite books of all time and I can only dream of crafting an atmosphere like that.