

































!is article examines the de"ning traits of rural and urban settings in horror literature and compares their usage 
in H.P. Lovecra#'s$“!e Horror at Red Hook”$and Victor LaValle's rewrite !e Ballad of Black Tom. In these works, 
the urban landscape is used as a deliberate cra# tool to generate a unique atmosphere of fear and to reveal the truth 
about their authors' race-conscious intentions.

Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202430

Urban Horror Settings in the Works of Lovecra" and 
LaValle

by Johanna Ziegler

In analyses of horror literature, scholars give 
much attention to the monster and the cultural 
anxieties it represents. A secondary element of the 
genre, however, and critical to the monster’s terror, 
is the setting in which the action is played out. 
General discussions of horror settings typically 
conjure images of rural, isolated places, but of the 
horror genre’s many sub-categories and o%shoots, 
there appears to be a growing branch of urban-set 
horror, classi"ed according to its rejection of rural 
landmarks in favor of populated, man-made areas 
to serve as the story’s primary setting. Perhaps 
urban-set horror’s most infamous representative is 
H.P. Lovecra#’s “!e Horror at Red Hook” (1927), 
a short story in which Lovecra# racializes—and by 
extension, monsterizes—the urban setting. However, 
in Victor LaValle’s adaption of the Red Hook tale, 
!e Ballad of Black Tom (2016), LaValle subverts 
the role of the urban setting and de#ly explores 
the city according to its individual neighborhoods. 
!is paper will examine the de"ning traits of rural 
and urban horror settings in literature and compare 
how Lovecra# and LaValle deliberately choose the 
urban landscape as a cra# tool, not only to generate 
a unique atmosphere of fear but also to reveal truth 
about their authorial, race-conscious intentions.

!e horror genre largely relies on its settings to 
begin the chain reaction of psychological mechanisms 
triggered in the mind of the reader. In his study of 
psychological e%ects woven into well-known horror 
settings, Francis McAndrew de"nes the e%ectiveness 
of the setting by what it lacks and by what it activates. 
!e best horror settings, whether rural or urban or 
a combination of both, lack prospect and refuge; in 

other words, they lack a “clear, unobstructed view of 
the landscape” and a “secure, protected place to where 
one can be sheltered from danger” (McAndrew 48). 
Instead, horror settings will only o%er ambiguous 
information about their architecture, origin, and 
level of hazard. !is ambiguity activates one of the 
most crucial psychological e%ects in the horror 
genre: the agent detection mechanism, a heightened 
level of attention prompted by a sign or sound that 
cannot immediately be identi"ed as harmless (50-
51). Activating the agent detection mechanism is the 
essential device by which horror settings create their 
unsettling ambience. !e setting signals fear, yet 
perversely invites the reader further in to unmask its 
mysteries. 
 Psychological components like this are o#en why 
many stories of the horror genre gravitate toward 
rural landscapes for their settings. Caves, woods, 
lakes, farms, cabins, and other secluded locations 
like these easily meet McAndrew’s psychological 
criteria; their isolation and rugged, unpredictable 
terrain automatically disadvantage the protagonist, 
physically and psychologically, as well as present a 
myriad of opportunities to trigger the agent detection 
mechanism. 
 However, as Imar Koutchoukali asserts, rural 
landscapes cannot always capture and accurately 
represent the fears of modern audiences, therefore 
necessitating the rise of the urban horror setting. 
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, society “was 
de"ned by its existence on the border of the 
wilderness and its continuous struggle with nature. 
!e wilderness was replete of existential danger, 
such as wild animals or brigands. Nature itself posed 



Urban Horror Settings in the Works of Lovecra" and LaValle

Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202431

a serious threat” (Koutchoukali 8). Yet, with sudden 
and intense urbanization, Koutchoukali reasons 
that “lives were no longer threatened by spirits or 
beasts lurking in the bogs, woods, or steppes, but 
by other human beings. And so, as humans came 
to predominantly reside in cities, so did their fears” 
(8). Urban landscapes—a combination of man-
made structures and the crowds that inhabit them—
function as horror settings by relying on McAndrew’s 
psychological components but also by relying on 
characteristics unique only to them. Like rural areas, 
urban environments create a sense of isolation, 
ironically not by a lack of a population but by an 
overwhelming amount of it. With their towering 
structures and faceless crowds, urban locations are 
also better equipped to display the fears of invasion, 
loss of control and identity, and deception of what 
should and should not be safe—all considered 
modern fears because of their distinct link to rapid 
globalization, according to Koutchoukali.
 H.P. Lovecra#’s notorious short story “!e 
Horror at Red Hook” embraces the urban landscape, 
for better or for worse, to capitalize on its connection 
to the fear of invasion. However, because scholars 
have concluded the story is largely in&uenced by 
Lovecra#’s personal worldview, the invasion in 
question is clearly one of non-white populations. 
Lovecra# describes the neighborhood of Red Hook 
as “a hopeless tangle and enigma; Syrian, Spanish, 
Italian, and negro elements impinging upon one 
another” (Lovecra# II). More than once, Lovecra# 
uses phrases like “a babel of sound and "lth” (II) as 
he takes his time describing the local immigrants 
and the physical decay they cause in their streets, 
buildings, and water sources. As James Kneale points 
out, Lovecra# makes urban life itself monstrous by 
giving the crowds behavior akin to a mobile infection: 
“People swarm, or they spill out of buildings, like a 
‘semi-&uid rottenness’ that swells, threatening to 
burst and spread” (Kneale 118). !ough the literal 
monster of Red Hook may be Robert Suydam and/
or the arcane horrors he releases, Lovecra# spares 
no prose to establish that Suydam’s urban, ethnically 
diverse stomping grounds are equally, if not more, 
abhorrent.
 Lovecra# may not be the "rst major author 
in the horror canon to link racial anxiety to the 
urban landscape, but his reputation for doing so 
is well known. !e issue that arises, however, is 

when more than one author, across more genres 
than merely horror, begins to link racist fears to 
the same elements, like urban settings. In turn, this 
can translate into powerfully coded meanings in 
the minds of the author’s audience. To explain this 
e%ect, Casey Schmitt, an American folklorist, builds 
upon the theories of intertextuality as discussed by 
Julia Kristeva and Mikhail Bakhtin, by observing 
that intertextual theory may also be applied to 
“objects less traditionally examined as ‘texts’” (2), 
objects which include any biophysical or spatial 
environment. !ese non-authored objects, as Schmitt 
terms them, can become coded with meaning 
through intertextual relationships. For example, 
a mountain in the Paci"c Northwest can take on 
magical, spiritual, even religious meaning to a large 
demographic of people simply because, to them, the 
mountain is physically akin to its famous "ctional 
counterparts mentioned in J.R.R. Tolkien’s !e Lord 
of the Rings series. Schmitt makes an interesting 
observation that this phenomenon also applies to the 
people who live and work a majority of their lives in 
one particular environment; they will still interpret 
their home space “through the frame of some other, 
popular media form” (Schmitt 1). Using Schmitt’s 
theory of a non-authored objects like physical 
locations inheriting meaning from a separate media 
form, we can perhaps draw the conclusion that an 
urban landscape is a non-authored object of its own 
right, and the meaning it inherits can come from any 
number of potential literature/"lm sources: gritty 
ma"a tales that depict the city as a concrete jungle to 
be dominated, romantic comedies and musicals that 
depict the city as a place of opportunity and vivacity, 
or short stories like Lovecra#’s, which depict the city 
as a dangerous boiling pot of people he believes to 
be inferior. Should a large base of readers consume 
enough Lovecra#-adjacent content, they could 
unintentionally cement an intertextual relationship 
between urban landscapes and racist textual 
depictions of crime-ridden neighborhoods. To an 
extent, this relationship already has cemented.
 !ese troublesome associations are precisely 
what Victor LaValle counteracts in !e Ballad of 
Black Tom, a rewriting of “!e Horror at Red Hook.” 
LaValle revises the racist connotations Lovecra# 
imbues on the urban landscape and reclaims the 
city as a horror setting through new means. LaValle 
subverts Lovecra#’s setup that the citizens of color are 



Urban Horror Settings in the Works of Lovecra" and LaValle

Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202432

what contribute to the setting’s monstrosity; instead, 
LaValle shows that those citizens are the victims of 
the monstrosity. !e novella’s protagonist Tom—a 
young, clever black man—is the lens through 
which readers are shown the urban landscape, not 
as a homogeneous setting but as a patchwork of 
neighborhoods that undulate in ambiance as the 
story progresses. !e ethnic crowds Lovecra# ugli"es 
LaValle now describes as a safe haven for Tom: “Late 
night in Harlem on a Friday and the streets more 
full than at rush hour. Tommy Tester cherished the 
closeness, to his father and to all the bodies on the 
sidewalks, in their cars, riding buses, perched on 
stoops” (36). 
 In direct and purposeful contrast to “!e 
Horror at Red Hook,” New York’s suburban, all-
white neighborhoods are what evoke true horror 
for LaValle’s black protagonist. Ironically, these 
neighborhoods are described as more rural, at 
least relative to Tom’s point of view: “!ough the 
borough had grown, modernized greatly…to a boy 
like Tommy, raised in Harlem, all this appeared 
rustic and bewilderingly open. !e open arms of 
the natural world worried him as much as the white 
people, both so alien to him” (LaValle 13). While 
Lovecra# creates urban fear through a combination 
of cramped buildings and crowds of people of color, 
LaValle writes the exact opposite: urban fear is 
orderly neighborhoods and a vigilant community 
of white people. !e monstrosity of the story is no 
longer intertwined with the fear of foreigners; the 
monstrosity is intertwined with the problem of 
racism itself. 
 It is noteworthy to mention that other major 
characters besides LaValle’s black protagonist 
also perceive the city’s communities of color in a 
positive, or at least neutral, light. !e white detective 
Malone does not initially perceive the Red Hook 
neighborhood as a place of horror in LaValle’s 
rewrite: “So Malone returned to the neighborhood. 
He’d missed the place. He doubted there was 
another white man on earth who would ever think 
the same” (91). !e Red Hook community, despite 
preexisting tensions between the locals and the 
white NYPD police squads, accepts Malone as a 
regular visitor, speaking “…freely around him, if 
not always to him, and Malone’s notepad "lled with 
their lore” (92). Because of LaValle’s sensitivity to 
racial relations, however, Malone has a noticeably 

di%erent experience than Tom when walking 
through suburban white neighborhoods. !e scene 
is described as “a pleasant morning for travel” and 
nothing more than “a short walk” (95) for Malone. 
!e detective is not intimidated by the openness of 
the neighborhood, nor is he hyper-aware of what 
groups of men may walk past him or eye him at the 
train station. !ere is no ambiance of unease for 
Malone because what he fears is inherently di%erent 
than from what Tom fears. Any horror setting, 
urban or rural, is only as e%ective as the fears it can 
trigger in both the characters’ and readers’ minds, 
but LaValle’s work is evidence that some fears are not 
universal; rather, speci"c communities feel speci"c 
fears. 
 !ough seen less o#en in the horror genre, urban 
settings contain traits that can trigger the same 
psychological mechanisms as traditional horror 
settings, and the urban landscape represents its 
own unique set of fears associated with the modern, 
globalizing world. However, as Schmitt’s intertextual 
theory regarding non-authored objects suggests, the 
urban landscape is at constant risk for storytellers 
like H.P. Lovecra# associating them with racist 
attitudes, using urbanity to amplify the fear of the 
foreigner. It is the work of authors like Victor LaValle 
which counteract these dangerous associations and 
instead utilize the urban landscape as a shi#ing, 
complex setting to point to one of the true horrors 
of an urban world: the us versus them mentality that 
keeps both dominant and oppressed classes afraid.

Works Cited
Kneale, James. “From Beyond: H. P. Lovecra# and the 

Place of Horror.” Cultural Geographies, vol. 13, 
no. 1, 2006, pp. 106–26, https://doi.org/10.1191/
l474474005eu353oa. 

Koutchoukali, Imar. “!e Signi"cance of Space: !e 
Rural-Urban Dichotomy in Modern and 
Pre-Modern Horror Stories.” Tallinn University, 
2017, www.academia.edu/33592205/!e_signif-
icance_of_space_!e_rural_urban_dichotomy_
in_modern_and_pre_modern_horror_stories. 

LaValle, Victor. !e Ballad of Black Tom. Tor. 
Publishing Group. Kindle Edition, 2016.



Urban Horror Settings in the Works of Lovecra" and LaValle

Aisthesis      Volume 15,  202433

Lovecra#, H. P. “!e Horror at Red Hook.” !e H.P. 
Lovecra" Archive, 2009, www.hplovecra#.com/
writings/texts/"ction/hrh.aspx.

McAndrew, Francis T. “!e Psychology, Geography, 
and Architecture of Horror: How Places Creep 
Us Out.” Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative 
Culture, vol. 4, no. 2, 2020, pp. 47–61, https://doi.
org/10.26613/esic.4.2.189.

Schmitt, Casey R. “If a Text Falls in the Woods...: 
Intertextuality, Environmental Perception, and 
the Non-Authored Text.” Cultural Analysis, vol. 
11, 2012.


