ABSTRACT
For some readers of Gothic fiction, it is not enough merely to consume Gothic narrative on the page (or latterly, the screen): they wish to live gothically, to extend their reading or viewing experience to everyday life. As goth musician and writer Voltaire recalls of his childhood,
I spent countless hours watching “monster movies” — as I called them — enveloped in a dark desire to escape to a fantasy realm such as theirs. A dark, romantic place filled with mystery and drama. A land far-removed and completely unlike the unbearably mundane location in which I lived: the sprawling suburbs of New Jersey.
(Voltaire 2006: vi)