“Nature is a haunted house—but Art—is a house that tries to be haunted.”–Emily Dickinson

Restless moors. Brooding fogs. Eerie twilights.

While nature can awe, heal and give us a sense of grounding in the world, it can also unsettle us.

Haunted forests. Enraged storms. Desecrated rivers.

Ecogothic landscapes present us with unique experiences of nature. We are often drawn to them and yet may be wary at the same time. We may wish to keep our distance (that is, if we can) or, conversely, engage more deeply with them.

By definition, ecogothic nature refuses to act as a mere backdrop or setting for human action. “They” have a will of their own.

Out-of-control wildfires. Oil-fouled rivers and lakes. Plasticized oceans.

The ecogothic also includes landscapes embedded in the fraught histories of industrialization. The fragment of a lost-river imprisoned beneath a Manhattan expressway, a London sky choked with coal dust, or the sinister sewage seeping into a Toronto basement after an “extreme weather” event—these, too, are forms of ecogothic nature.

In ecogothic stories, landscapes who are alive in complex moral ways are among the main characters. They not only share a history with humans, but also shape it. Sometimes these landscapes merely unsettle us. Sometimes they are unwelcome. (Less and less are they strangers.) Yet they often provide us with insights about ourselves. Ideally these landscapes invite us into new, more meaningful relationships with the natural world.

Do ecogothic landscapes force us to question our assumptions about the superiority of humans and what it means to “control” nature? Perhaps they do. This, it would appear, is a vital task; especially as we eschew climate doomism and (humbly and effectively) take-on the tasks of fostering a flourishing future.

For everyone.

© Hilary Scharper, 2025.