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"A ghost," sniffs Clara Reeve, "must keep within certain limits of credibility."

She's complaining about The Castle of Otranto (1764), the original Gothic novel. Giant death helmets and moving paintings, she argues, "instead of attention, excite laughter." Which is true, and Castle of Otranto is silly - but it's also entertaining, unlike The Old English Baron (1778).

The story in this slim and forgettable book is a watered-down Hamlet. Ghosts cry out for vengeance; etc. Along the way we hit many of the standard Gothic tropes, which means that it's time for

The Gothic Novel Drinking Game!
for which I was helped by and also by my friend Dawn

One Drink
- Fainting
- Creepy noises
- Nasty weather
- Impenetrably ornate sentences
- Eyes are scary

Two Drinks
- A suit of armor makes an appearance without someone in it
---- +1 and falls over, making a racket
- Sinister paintings (lockets acceptable)
- A lady is in her nightgown
- Virginity is threatened

Three Drinks
- An "irruption of poems" (h/t Schmidt for phrasing)
- It's an epistolary
Characters
- Someone could be described as "Byronic"
- Surprise relative!
----- +1 almost incest
----- +2 actual incest
- relative turns out to be a villain
- There is a monster or ghost
---- +1 monster turns out to be villainous relative
                                                (the "Scooby Doo Bonus")
Setting
- There is a castle
---- +1 castle is from Gothic period
---- +1 castle is busted
---- +1 castle is in isolated location
---- +1 castle is cursed
---- +2 castle has secret passageways and/or forbidden wing

So. The first three quarters of the book will get you drunk as fuck, and it's fine. It's not bad. It's not really much of anything, to be honest. Unfortunately by the time you get through the last quarter you'll be hung over, because it's just everyone endlessly congratulating each other on figuring everything out. (A la the last third of Pamela, a book Reeve admired.) It's almost as boring as Mysteries of Udolpho, which also deals in sober, credible ghosts, and is also lame.

So here's the thing: if you didn't want to be silly, you shouldn't have written a Gothic. Give the choice between credibility and silliness, I'll take The Monk.