ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the development of the haunted castle through disintegration to new paths. The haunted castle has two actual sources of terror at command—its supernatural element and its dungeons. In planning his romantic settings Lord Byron adheres in general to the ground-plan of the haunted castle; though in his Oriental legends he is compelled to deck it with Oriental properties, for the most part easily recognizable as products of the scene-painter’s art. Poe based his work on the old haunted castle of the terror-romanticists, revivifying it with the aid of his rare imagination to serve his own purposes. In the historical novel it survives and in romantic stories depending for their material on the past it is easily recognizable; in the pictures drawn by later romanticists of scenes intended to evoke a sensation of horror, its influence can be sensed in the background.
