My First Encounter With the Gothic, by Kaylee Lamb
Growing up on a small reservation in the States, it was almost impossible to pinpoint when I first encountered the Gothic. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly encountered it at my university, where I took an independent ‘Gothic Literature’ course; however, upon reading works like The Monk, The Castle of Otranto, and A Sicilian Romance, I realized that perhaps I had been far more familiar with that eerie and anxiety-inducing affect than I had initially thought.
Spending all of my childhood and teenage years on a rez (Indian reservation) that stretches 4,267 mi² (11,051 km²), I always had a childlike curiosity about what lay in wait on the dark plains, and sometimes my own imagination ran amok with what could be watching and waiting.
On the rez, one becomes accustomed to marking out distances for survival but also for potential help; for example, being bitten by a poisonous rattlesnake when the nearest hospital is 40 miles (64 km) away and the closest thing to cell service reception is 20 miles (32 km).
The rules and regulations of the land bend for no one, and while having a landline can certainly aid the hospital in preparing the serum, your quickest way to get there is not by ambulance but through your own rez-beater (a rusty car, often found on the rez, with many dents and an unmentionable amount of rust and dirt, as well as missing numerous key elements like a license plate and tags). One just has to make sure your trusty rez-beater can hightail it on the dirt roads without running into a deer, hitchhiker, cow, or something else.
But driving on the rez isn’t just about practicality—it is also about navigating the land’s unseen forces. There’s an unspoken awareness that the land holds memories, and that not every presence you encounter is entirely human. The isolation of the rez stretches beyond physical distances; it carries an eerie quietness, a sense that something lingers just beyond your headlights. Given that the reservation is so vast and isolated, driving becomes second nature wherein an 80-mile (128km) drive can seem like nothing to most. Herein, lies my perception of where I can first remember encountering something akin to the Gothic.
On a long night drive home from town, my aunt shared with me and my sister the complications of driving alone and to never stop for a hitchhiker we did not know. On the rez, everyone knows everyone. It is unlikely you’ll encounter someone you are not related to or someone your family does not know, thus encountering a stranger is often unheard of. She warned us early to not pick up hitchhikers, but she also inspired a sense of awe in us when she revealed that we as young women should expect to be protected by the spirit of Deer Woman.
Deer Woman’s origins are often drawn to the Great Plains of North America, but her story stretches farther than most realize and can be found in various forms of Indigenous storytelling. My aunt then recounted that a young man, a bad one at that, once drove the same road as we were driving when he spotted an old woman walking on the shoulder at night. He pulled over and questioned if she needed a lift, to which she gave no response other than simply opening the car door and stepping in.
The man continued his drive, attempting to conversate with her, but she gave no responses. He tried to look at her features but a shroud was covering her head and much of her face. Continually peeking at her, he then noticed to his horror that where her feet should have been were in fact deer hooves. Jerking his eyes back to the road, he barely had time to stop the car when a herd of deer crossed over the road. The animals began running down the barbed wire fence line, and when he turned to look at the old woman—she was gone. He was all more horrified when the end of the herd came by and the woman’s face was on one of the deer’s, her eyes looking straight into his.
Make no mistake, Deer Woman is no monster. It is here where I see a separation between the Gothic and what could be horror. Instead, Deer Woman is an entity of protection and restorative justice, specifically for women and children.
“So, what happened to the man?” I remember questioning my aunt.
She laughed and said that the man who had often targeted young women traveling alone never did again after his encounter with Deer Woman.
Stories vary when it comes to people’s individual encounters with her, with some being bloodier than the next, as can be seen in the Hulu series Reservation Dogs. However, it can be said that even on the isolated, dark frontier of the Great Plains, one is far from ever truly alone.
