Gothic Horror
I’m enamored by gothic horror and its hallmarks: abandoned buildings, supernatural events, insanity, and the past hovering over the present. I’m particularly enamored by the gothic when writers and filmmakers transport its themes and motifs from their 18th and 19th century roots to contemporary times.
For example, Lucio Fulci’s Gates of Hell Trilogy (City of the Living Dead, The Beyond, and The House by the Cemetery) are all set in 1980s America and involve everything from black magic to creepy graveyards and undead corpses. The trilogy fascinates me. There’s just something I find intellectually interesting about the counterpoint between the supernatural and our rational age. In that story framework, it becomes clear that despite our advancements humanity still doesn’t know everything about our world and probably never will. Characters are forced to abandon their modern intellectual arrogance and revert to archaic ways of thinking and belief in order to survive.
For my next writing project, I want to fashion a contemporary gothic tale. I’ve written short stories in several horror subgenres, including slashers, science fiction, and psychological horror, but never anything gothic. I have an idea for a screenplay titled Here Comes the Bride, a ghost story with a voodoo twist.
Inspiration
Haunted Locations
In the fall of 2023, I was living in Atlanta, Georgia. One afternoon, I drifted into a bookstore and came across Chasing Ghosts by writer and historian Marc Hartzman. It’s a well-researched book that takes readers on a journey through supernatural history and examines infamous haunted locations. Two locations stood out to me above the rest: Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia.
The prisoners at Eastern State and patients at Trans-Allegheny encountered inhumane conditions. They endured unsanitary living conditions, disease, improper medical treatment and experiments, and torture. Many people claim to have seen shadows and spirits walking the abandoned halls of both places. That’s no surprise. According to supernatural folklore, spirits often linger where traumatic and intense emotional events occurred. Why? Some parapsychologists believe electrical discharges from these intense moments are captured in their surrounding area like memories and this residual energy is perceived as ghosts by those with paranormal sensitivities.
The dark history and folklore surrounding the prison and the asylum sparked my imagination. Eerie locations are great settings for horror novels. My mind specifically locked in on the concept of a haunted prison. That’s new. That’s different. It’s not part of the usual triad of haunted location tales we see: houses, castles, and hotels. A fresh setting brings limitless possibilities for an exciting, original ghost story.
Ghost of Bloody Mary
It didn’t take long before the concept of a haunted prison began to mix with another idea that had been brewing in my mind for a few months. To my knowledge, there isn’t much fiction floating around influenced by the legend of Bloody Mary. In American cinema, there have been a few attempts to bring the entity to the screen. Bernard Rose’s Candyman obviously has roots in Bloody Mary lore, but that isn’t a direct adaptation of the legend. Most films that tackle the subject directly are low-budget affairs suffering from poor scripts and boilerplate plots. So, I began toying with the idea of developing my own version of the story.
The story would revolve around Arcadia Island, a fictional island off the coast of Virginia. Arcadia is haunted by the legend of Mary Evergreen, a witch that terrorized the area almost two centuries ago. The legend warns everyone not to go near her old lair and say her name three times. To do so is to essentially sign your own death certificate.
But I didn’t know exactly where her lair was located. All I knew is I didn’t want it to be her house.
My discovery of Eastern State Penitentiary solved this problem. What if Mary had terrorized the community by feeding on children? What if she was caught and given a harsh prison sentence? And what if that prison was one of the most notorious in the nation? Maybe she died there at the hands of a few guards and her restless spirit has resided between the prison walls ever since. When she is summoned, she lures her victims to her old cell just like Pennywise lures children into the Derry sewage system.
Papa Doc
I didn’t want Here Comes the Bride to take the obvious route and revolve around paranormal investigators trapped inside Bloody Mary’s lair. I didn’t want it to be a slasher story about naive kids either. Daily, I spent hours thinking about how the plot should play out, but I couldn’t come up with anything. I grew frustrated fast and almost gave up on the entire concept.
Then one day, I found myself thinking about Wes Craven’s Serpent and the Rainbow. It’s about an anthropologist who travels to Haiti to research a drug used in Haitian Vodou to create zombies. Haiti, with its complex history, unique culture, and physical geography, is an interesting setting for a horror film. There’s a lot for writers to mine there for plots and themes. I’m surprised there haven’t been more horror films set on the island.
My thoughts then drifted towards Francois Duvalier, also known as Papa Doc. He served as president of Haiti from 1957 to 1971. Duvalier was a dictator in the traditional sense of the word, maintaining power through rigged elections and creating a death squad known as Tonton Macoute to torture and kill his opponents. He also sought to solidify his power by incorporating elements of Haitian mythology into a personality cult. He claimed to be a Vodou priest and modeled his physical appearance on Baron Samedi, a prominent spirit in the religion, to create the impression he was one with the spirits and God himself. At one point, he ordered all the black dogs in the capital to be killed because he believed one of his enemies had the ability to shapeshift into a dog.
I wondered why Hollywood hasn’t made a biography film made about him yet? He’s definitely a complex character that lived an interesting life. Better yet, why not a political thriller about an opponent living underneath his regime? Papa Doc would definitely make a strong antagonist.
A strong antagonist. Those are the three words that cracked the code. Suddenly, I was pondering two questions. What if a political strongman ruled Arcadia Island and solidified his power through supernatural means? What if Bloody Mary and this politician had some sort of connection?
Jackpot! Before I knew it, the plot for Here Comes the Bride was beginning to take shape in my mind.
Plot Overview
Like most writers, I’m hesitant to release the full plot details of a work in progress. Initial plot details always change during the writing process, so documenting them now seems a bit pointless. But I’m feeling generous today, so I’ll provide a brief overview of what I have in mind so far.
The protagonist is Derek Danielson an F.B.I. agent working undercover on Arcadia Island. He is gathering intelligence for the bureau because the island is in political disarray. Arcadia has a distinct culture, one that differs vastly from the rest of the country. There have been reports that the mayor, Aquarius Knight, and other political leaders want to secede from the union. A string of missing person reports begin to plague the island. Derek begins hearing reports from locals that Bloody Mary has killed their children. At first, Derek brushes off the reports as mere superstition. But he soon discovers that the mayor has a bizarre connection to the supernatural and Bloody Mary may not be just a legend after all.
Final Thoughts
Here Comes the Bride will be my fourth attempt at writing a horror screenplay. I abandoned my first two attempts twenty pages in. My third screenplay was a ninety-six page Halloween themed horror story titled Forever Among the Dead. This is my best screenwriting effort to date.
When I was in Atlanta, I had one producer interested in it, but talks fell through because I wanted to direct the film. Most producers won’t let someone direct a film that has never done it before. So, I threw Forever Among the Dead in the trunk where it will remain for the foreseeable future. No big deal. Honestly, the script isn’t fully polished yet. It needs about two more rewrites.
It’s been five months since I’ve tried to write anything else. That’s a serious gap in time. I’m worried I might be a little rusty. That’s one of the main reasons I started writing blog posts. I have to work out those language muscles to keep them strong.
Still, I’ve got high hopes for Here Comes the Bride. There’s something about it that just feels different. I hope I’m not coming across as overconfident, but I think I’m ready to hit a home run.
I plan to post blog updates on Here Comes the Bride once or twice a month. My next post will be about outlining the story and its themes. I never write anything without an outline. I need a frame of reference to build upon. If I don’t have one, my writing process doesn’t progress as smoothly and my output appears unorganized and under-developed.
I’m considering self-publishing it when I finish the final draft. I’m aware the publishing market doesn’t hold screenplays in high regard unless they are adaptions of well-established intellectual property or a filmmaker with high market value.
But who cares. I don’t. Every story has at least one fan. Even the worst of them.
Someone out there will read my script and like it.
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