Gothic Tales by Year 7

Year 7 boys enjoyed getting creative with their writing, Gothic Style, which was inspired by their use of The Hollow Woods Myriorama card. They worked collaboratively to create descriptions designed to encapsulate the Gothic Genre.

Check out their work below:

Cassius J, Byron H, Sam H

Discarded, lost, stolen – a pearl white crucifix lies on the ground. Strangely, the midnight black fence, creaks open. A distant castle lurks in the shadow.

A shiny silver sword is intertwined in emerald vines. Trees, like spears, surround a lone horse. Sucked into the abyss, it’s the end of a great hunting story.

An inky black raven perches on a rotten, pearl-white skull which is scratched and dented.  A few festering bones lie buried into the snowy ground. Confident bushes stand tall and proud, spreading their leaves and branches across like a puffer fish and its spikes.

A hooded girl calmly walks down to the tangled bush of blackberries. Its vines waving around in the gusty breeze. Tangled treetops twirl towards the twilight sky full of dark charcoal gloom. This poor lonely girl looks desperately for her deserted horse.

Ori B

Vines like tentacles curl up the path with sharp, deadly thorns at their tips. Large bushy black trees, overhanging the path, cast a large shadow. The vines are all muddled up like a puzzle amongst the trees, popping out randomly. Proudly standing, a knight in glistening, shining, shimmering armour gazes towards the huge, pitch-black silhouettes sent out by the castle. Winding and weaving, the path reaches the castle. No one knows what is in the mysterious buildings. Lightning beams down a deadly fearsome strike, a symbol of death and badness.

Lofty broad oaky trees towering over their roots, which weave from tree to tree. Small brushes of grass in potholes cover some of them.

Soot black trees align all in a row at the back. Strangely though, the sky is porcelain white. Large bushy trees block the sunlight from getting through the canopy. Thousands of white smudges sit in the trees. Vines drape down. Grass shoots up. Shadows emerge. Pitch black roses bend left to right, swaying in the wind. Crows shriek in the far distance, echoing around the sinister forest.

Muddy, tawny coloured ground squelches underweight. Rotting odour comes up from the mess. An anonymous body shape lives in the grass while another mysterious woman stands at the top of some steps.

Faint, curvy, swerved lines leave a luminous faint glow in the cool black sky. Disappearing, vanishing without a trace. Broad, lofty trees stand proudly opposite each other. Pitch black bushes create a canopy of black. Vines are hanging over the branches of the trees, clambering over the gigantic roots. They have seen everything that has walked through this black, dismal forest. A transparent, ghostly skeleton figure stands in the middle amongst weeds and shrubs.

William F, George G

Inside the ghostly cave, the pups wail out as they wait for their mother to return from the hunt. Around the cave, macabre looking bushes as high as the cave, engulf everything around it in a shroud of darkness. Outside the howling cave, a fire burned, boiling the blood inside the cauldron. On the other side of the dip was a grey coloured path leading to the gates of Hell. Its first victim was captured and all that was left was his fallen chain with the jewel encrusted cross upon it. People say that the castle at the top is where the Devil himself lives.

Grayson W, Oscar H, Henry L

Faintly, a sinister figure stands in the midnight glimmer. Trees rustle in the faint breeze. Rotting branches smell like a sewer. Intimidating creatures peak out of the trees, waiting for their next victim to come out, never to leave…

Laying dead, the pub has successfully fooled another victim: the girl lay still like sleeping beauty in the putrid rotten grass. Faintly, a sinister figure stands in the midnight glimmer, almost a shadow in the dim light of the night sky. The stars hang overhead, watching the scene below unfold like a hawk. Ancient trees watch every ruin crumble to the ground. A vile, strong smell of blood lays heavy in the gentle breeze.

Tree branches, the withered pale hands of the dead, reach out from Hell to grab the soul of the unfortunate passer-by. The pub itself, a decoy and the route to it. The path to Hell – the smell of blood heavy in the air. A shadowy black figure emerges through a slit in the rattling door, creaking as it goes. He observes the insanity of it all, and enters the lonely, isolated shack, pleased with himself.

A dark, ebony cave had no glimmer or shimmer, just an eerie sense to it. The cramped space had miniscule insects crawling all over the damp, ancient walls. Sounds of footsteps kept getting louder and louder until they stopped, and then everything was dead still. Not a single drop of sound. The never-ending cave was small and didn’t contain much space. The outside was draped in long, weaving vines that were scattered everywhere.

A nervous, lost and young king nervously trembles off his horse into a pit which looks habited. As the pebbles fall with him, he rests injured next to the fire, but then the fire slowly starts to go cold as the dark and shadowy figure starts to form over him, and then ‘CRACK’ the young king slowly checks behind him. A withered, unknown and dark figure stands there looking pleased as the black and withered grass wobbles around behind him, scared for his next move.

The grim reaper looks over his prey with a cunning grin, blood dripping down from his scythe, he takes a step closer. Trees blow behind him while the sinister figure waits in the pungent air for his prey. The isolated feeling of atmosphere gave a sense of solitude. There was no where to run. Blood glistened in the moonlight, while the young king shrieks with terror.

Slowly a gaping hole mysteriously appears in the rocks and the poor king sinks. As the king sinks the reaper is furious he chased the king to hell and back and yet he died but not from the scythe of the reaper but of the dark magic of this god forbidden forest. Blood starts to drown the hole. NEIGH goes the kings horse getting a deathly look from the reaper. After a while the reaper starts to fade. As the reaper fades he says in a deathly way “Goodbye”.