This single-session class explores how psychology shapes horror on the page, examining the ways fear, repression, memory, obsession, and perception transform both characters and the worlds they inhabit—perhaps even their homes.

We’ll explore how setting often functions as an extension of the mind, externalizing internal conflicts through architecture, space, atmosphere, and even syntax. From Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher to Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House and River Solomon’s Model Home, we’ll look at the relationship between character psychology and environment, and how horror emerges from both.

Writers will leave with practical tools for crafting psychologically rich horror, creating atmosphere that lingers long after the story ends, and generating new material through guided writing exercises designed to put these concepts into practice.