The Gothic and Its Influence

What is the typical gothic subject matter? The dark. The horrible. The grotesque. The mysterious… In a nutshell, the persistence, threat, and resurfacing of PAST sins—that is, how they are hidden (“buried”) and perpetuated in the present (which often fools itself into thinking the influence of those past sins is dead, gone, and can no longer touch them). How does this tend to manifest itself? Perversion, insanity, murder, sadism (persecution, torture), grotesquerie.