Monsters in the Classroom: Why Gothic Pedagogy Works (+ 13 No-Prep Activities)
Disclaimer: it’s an autumn kind of post. A kind of post where you make a cuppa before reading because that’s what we both deserve – I for writing, you for reading.
There comes a point every October when teachers decide that perhaps the only thing standing between them and mental collapse is a vaguely gothic classroom aesthetic. People blame Halloween, as suddenly students are drawing skulls in their notebooks, someone quotes Edgar Allan Poe in a dramatic voice (that would be me, aye), and half the internet starts romanticising the idea of studying in a candlelit library while suffering beautifully.
As the Evil Mistress of the World in the making, I wholeheartedly support it! Yet I know that the whole dark academia phenomenon isn’t really about Halloween. Halloween is simply the gateway drug. You see: it’s all about the gothic!
The gothic rules because it taps into something very old and very human: curiosity, fear, mystery, beauty, emotional chaos and the deeply suspicious desire to wander through metaphorical fog while making terrible decisions (and occasionally wailing Heathcliff! Heathcliff!).
Which, if we are being realistic, also describes learning English (especially Mixed Conditionals with Passive Voice in Reported Speech, hah!). So let’s try a bit of Gothic Pedagogy and create lessons that feel like something.
Gothic Pedagogy, or How to Romanticise Educational Suffering
The internet tries to prove that dark academia is mostly rainy windows, old books and emotionally unstable people translating Latin for fun… and yes, technically that is part of it. However, underneath the aesthetics lies something surprisingly useful: the idealisation of learning itself. Now, this is the part that sounds interesting, making us ask what if learning felt mysterious again? What if we stopped treating lessons like content delivery systems and allowed them to become discovery, atmosphere, intellectual curiosity… or, realistically speaking, at least adorable confusion?
When I was thinking about how the gothic influenced my own approach to teaching, I realised that the gothic had taught me a simple truth: people learn better when they are emotionally involved. And gothic fiction has survived for centuries because it understands emotional involvement particularly well.
After all, nobody truly reads Dracula for practical vampire management advice (unless you play Night’s Black Agents RPG campaign called The Dracula Dossier where you literally get a copy of Bram Stoker’s Dracula with extra tips and tricks!). We read good old Edgar Allan because tension is addictive (I’ve been scarred for the rest of my life with fear of waking up in a coffin, thank you), mystery creates momentum, symbolism makes stories memorable and clearly emotional discomfort is weirdly fascinating (I personally don’t get it, but how many film adaptations of Wuthering Heights do we have?..).
Why don’t we apply it to language learning? Students may forget the fifteenth worksheet or the vocabulary list entitled Travel and Tourism, but they will absolutely remember the cursed object lesson, the fake Victorian séance that somehow turned into speaking practice, or the magical moment the teacher dimmed the lights and announced Today we investigate a very unfortunate disappearance. Language attached to emotion survives longer in memory, and that is not mystical nonsense but good old cognitive science. And coincidentally, this is where the monsters enter dramatically through the fog.
Monsters Are Just Feelings in Fancy Costumes
One of the reasons gothic pedagogy works so well, especially with teenagers, is because gothic monsters are basically emotional metaphors with dramatic presentation skills. Let’s take a vampire: it isn’t an object of fascination because of being a pale bloodsucker, it’s a symbol of loneliness, unhealthy obsession, alienation and emotional dependency (and we love it, darlings, we love it, smh). And what about ghosts? If you’re not a ghostbuster, the swooning drape of white represents grief, feeling invisible and eternal memory. Frankenstein is not truly about a monster stitched together in a laboratory. It is about rejection, isolation, and the catastrophic consequences of emotional irresponsibility. The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde practically screams Hello, I am a metaphor for identity fragmentation!.
You get the idea, right?
Teenagers understand this instinctively, even if they cannot always articulate it directly. They will refuse to discuss their own emotions openly, but they will suddenly produce deeply philosophical insights the moment you ask them whether the monster in the story was actually misunderstood. Something we, adults, see as cringe, during adolescence feels very relatable.
Gothic Pedagogy Should Make Your Life Easier, Not Harder
Wait! Before anybody starts constructing a full Victorian cemetery in the classroom using papier-mâché and emotional instability, let me clarify something important: gothic pedagogy is not about doing more work. It’s just adding some flair, so that ordinary activities feel richer, more immersive and more emotionally engaging. That is a very important difference.
You don’t need elaborate decorations and expensive props to build the aesthetics (although if your IG-oriented students want to turn your classroom into their own dark academia go for it – and don’t forget to invite the admins to witness your amazingly engaged students!). You don’t even need a taxidermy raven named Percival, although I have to say, Percival would significantly improve staff meetings.
My idea of gothic pedagogy simply involves reframing activities you already use. Let discussions become investigations, turn writing prompts into diary entries, change roleplays into confessions, make vocabulary a pool of forbidden knowledge, and enjoy storytelling rituals instead of speaking practice. The methodology stays the same, just the atmosphere changes – and the effect is surprisingly magical.
13 No-Prep Gothic Activities for the EFL Classroom
I wouldn’t leave you without some simple no-prep activities you may try to make your academia a little bit darker – here’s my favourite set of slightly gothic tasks!
The Cursed Object
Tell your students they have purchased something deeply suspicious from an antique shop that definitely should not have been legally available to the public. Perhaps it is a mirror that whispers at night, a music box that only plays during thunderstorms or an ordinary spoon that fills everybody nearby with existential dread. Their task is to explain what the object does, why it is cursed and, most importantly, why they still decided to keep it despite several catastrophic warning signs. Human beings consistently ignoring obvious danger is, frankly, one of the strongest foundations of both gothic fiction and speaking practice.
The Ghost Interview
Pairwork. One student acts as a ghost haunting a building, while the other attempts to uncover the tragic backstory behind their eternal suffering. Encourage maximum melodrama. The ghost was betrayed, poisoned, locked in a tower, and on top of that emotionally damaged by a group project in 1847. Bonus points if the ghost sighs heavily before answering every question.
Victorian Problems Hotline
Students roleplay dramatic 19th-century characters desperately seeking advice. Examples may include: Dear sir, I fear my beloved may secretly be a vampire, My neighbour has been wandering the moors at midnight again. Should I be concerned? or I accidentally awakened something ancient beneath the family estate. Still healthier than some Reddit relationships.
The Monster Debate
Which gothic creature would function best in modern society? Students must defend vampires, ghosts, witches, werewolves or eldritch horrors using logic, persuasion and unnecessarily passionate arguments. Personally, I am absolutely sure Nyarlathotep thrives in corporate environments.
Build a Ridiculous Curse
Students invent absurd curses that sound simultaneously horrifying and mildly inconvenient. For example, May every time you sneeze, a choir sing ominously in Latin or May all your dramatic exits be interrupted by automatic doors. An unexpectedly effective way to practise conditionals while emotionally descending into chaotic mirth.
Urban Legends Exchange
Invite students to share local myths, paranormal stories, unexplained events or bizarre regional legends from their culture. The classroom immediately becomes approximately 400% more interesting. This works especially well because students stop trying to perform correct English and start trying to tell a genuinely compelling story instead.
The Doppelgänger Problem
A perfect copy of somebody has appeared at school. Students must explain who the real person is, what the double wants, and why this situation somehow still feels less stressful than end-of-term assessment week. The more suspicious and psychologically unstable the explanations become, the better.
Soundtrack the Scene
A storm lashes dramatically against the windows. Somebody has uncovered a terrible family secret. A lone figure wanders through candlelit corridors making catastrophically emotional decisions… And students choose the soundtrack. It’s an excellent activity for descriptive language, emotional vocabulary and revealing which students are one minor inconvenience away from becoming gothic protagonists themselves.
The Candlelight Monologue
Students complain about homework as though they are tragic heroes in a deeply overwrought gothic adaptation. Encourage dramatic sighing, meaningful pauses, staring mournfully into the middle distance. Finally: authentic educational communication.
Write a Supernatural Headline
Students invent sensational gothic newspaper headlines. For example Local Librarian Accidentally Summons Ancient Evil During Book Club, Mysterious Fog Somehow Linked to Upcoming Grammar Test or Residents Concerned About Screaming Coming From Staff Room. Perfect for creativity, wordplay and revealing how deeply haunted the average teacher already is by October.
The Haunted Group Chat
Students create text conversations between supernatural characters. Dracula absolutely uses passive-aggressive punctuation, Frankenstein’s monster types painfully long emotional paragraphs nobody knows how to respond to, and the ghost keeps disappearing offline mid-conversation for obvious reasons.
The Monster Therapist
A therapist attempts to help classic gothic monsters with emotional regulation and interpersonal communication. Questions may include And when did you first begin feeling this overwhelming desire to curse sailors forever?. To be fair, this activity becomes alarmingly insightful surprisingly quickly.
The Academic Secret Society
Students invent an elite and deeply suspicious academic society hidden somewhere within the school. They must create bizarre rituals, forbidden books, secret phrases, strange initiation ceremonies and dramatically unnecessary cloaks.
So basically university administration, but with significantly better aesthetics.
Final Thoughts from the Educational Crypt
Students don’t need every lesson to become a theatrical masterpiece performed beneath candlelight while somebody quotes H. P. Lovecraft dramatically in the background.
Although that does sound delightful.
But they do need curiosity, emotional engagement, atmosphere, imagination and stories worth remembering. And we deserve classrooms that feel alive instead of mechanically efficient all the time. So, if you want to begin experimenting with Gothic Pedagogy, start small: tell one story differently, turn one worksheet into a mystery, add suspense to one speaking task. Let students be strange, dramatic and imaginative for forty-five minutes.
And if you would like more gloriously cursed lesson ideas, storytelling frameworks and dark-academia teaching inspiration, subscribe to the That Is Evil newsletter and receive a free gothic storytelling lesson plan directly from the educational abyss.
