Regional Gothic is a Tumblr trend in the mid-2010s wherein users would write bullet-pointed lists of eerie moments related to the region in which they grew up in or other seemingly benign moments in life, such as college. Visually, all regional gothic aesthetics include photography of towns or townspeople with eerie overlays/weather. Imagery of houses, neighborhoods, streets, apartments, and farms are common motifs of this aesthetic. Photos inside houses, schools, and similar buildings are also common. However, cities and more developed, populated areas are less common to see in this aesthetic, if not included at all. Regional gothic emphasizes architecture and people as a collective.
History[]
The creator, Tumblr user clive-gershwin-palmer, invented the trend in January 2015, in a post that has now been deleted.[1] The trend was relatively dormant until March 2015, when Tumblr user korvidian created a post entitled "south-east queensland gothic"[2] that created the template for all future Regional Gothic lists here on after. In these posts, they took inspiration from the podcast Welcome to Nightvale, which presents fictional eerie moments in a Mojave Desert town. They would create bullet points using the same language style as the podcast, except detailing their own region rather than the Southwest United States. After these users created these posts, multiple followed, with changes based on their own region.
This led to the inclusion of visual elements, which users took from pre-existing photography, movies, etc., as well as some users traveling to take their own photos. In the case of some variants, there was also a musical component, as multiple regions (especially the Southern United States) are known for a regional musical genre. Playlists on 8tracks.com are the most common way of finding such music.
Despite its origin from the Tumblr community, the aesthetic is a continuation of the Gothic literary genre, with multiple authors such as H.P. Lovecraft and William Faulkner combining horror with their local culture and history. The largest influence appears to have come from the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, where a radio host describes eerie events in their paranormal and unusual town with the same diction as the later Tumblr posts.
Anglo Gothic[]
Anglo Gothic is an aesthetic based on the atmosphere of dingy suburban English areas with an emphasis on overcast skies, drizzling rain, council estates, grime, the colour blue, and melancholy. Works that fall under this category tend to explore the themes of class, industrialism, and feature English staples such as cheap tea and biscuits.
Other common themes are the hardships of labour occupations such as coal or steel mining and factory work that are common among those in the working class in England. A lot of Anglo Gothic media is influenced by the boom in council estates being built in the 1960s in England, hence a lot of imagery being evocative of that time.
Appalachian Gothic[]
Appalachian Gothic is an aesthetic centering around the culture, landscape, and media of the American Appalachian mountains and the surrounding area from New York to Alabama. It has recently become popular on TikTok, but it has roots in the culture of the first non-native American settlers from as early as the 1700's.
Midwest Gothic[]
Midwest Gothic is a type of Regional Gothic aesthetic characterized by the portrayal of common facets of the Midwestern American lifestyle in a macabre light. Like many other Regional Gothic aesthetics, it originated and rose to popularity in the mid 2010s on Tumblr.
Common themes found in Midwest Gothic works include the indifferent and mysterious qualities of nature, references to local folklore, exaggerations of Midwestern traditions, and a sense of isolation and disconnection, as well as poor weather and depressing lives. The aesthetic is often linked to cottagecore and liminal spaces.
New England Gothic[]
New England Gothic revolves around strange and sinister secrets and occurrences in the New England region of the United States. It typically draws upon local history, folklore, imagery, and values, often relating to Protestantism and the region's colonial period. It commonly features the supernatural, such as witches, ghosts, demons, the Devil, and other strange entities.
Like other Regional Gothic aesthetics, its popularity resurged during the mid 2010s, with added aspects of liminal space and specifically formatted text posts, but it has origins in Dark Romantic literature of the early 19th century.
Southern Gothic[]
Southern Gothic is a literary genre encompassing fashion inspired by the culture of the American South. It originated in works by 19th-20th century Southern authors criticizing their society's racism, sexism, classism, fixation on the past, and decaying economy.
Later the aesthetic deviated from literature with the "regional gothic" trend on tumblr in the mid-2010s, which places greater emphasis on Liminal Space, modern American iconography, evangelicalism, and controversially, hillbilly horror.
Suburban Gothic[]
Suburban Gothic is an aesthetic based around feelings of alienation and the uncanny, usually represented in being alone in suburban neighborhoods. Common motifs include coming-of-age, familial/generational trauma, facades, and the shallowness of capitalistic culture. The motifs and photographs are American-centric, with parodies and dark interpretations of the 1950s nuclear family and 1980s economic boom. Those characters and locations tend to have a dark secret, such as drug addiction or infidelity, to emphasize the darker nature of the restrictiveness of social norms.
