!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.