Signifiers of Gothic Literature

Whenever I think of Gothic literature, a few authors' names pop into my head such as Samuel Coleridge, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. They gave us such works as Rime of The Ancient Mariner, The House of Seven Gables, Fall of The House of Usher, Frankenstein, and Prometheus Unbound. These works and the genre of Gothic literature all have signifiers, or characteristics, that are part of the genre itself. The list is broad and very long, but a few are: ancient castles, subterranean dungeons, secret passageways, flickering lamps, screams, moans, bloody hands, ghosts, graveyards, the supernatural, and even animals reacting to a supernatural event about to happen (i.e. dogs barking, horses neighing). We can even go as far to say the novel could take place in a "fallen world".
In The House of the Seven Gables, immediately upon reading the first chapter we are presented with witchcraft, curses on Colonel Pyncheon, and an excerpt in which Hawthorne personifies death as a person:

"Thus early had one guest-the only guest who is certain, at one time
or another. to find his way into every human dwelling-thus early
had Death stept across the threshold of the House of Seven Gables."
(pg. 16)

Unexplained events that could be causes of the supernatural occur also such as Maule's Well becoming disease stricken after his death and even "cursed ground" upon which Colonel Pyncheon decides to tear down Matthew Maule's old house and build The House on top of it. Maule curses the Colonel before being hung and uttering a prophecy that will eventually com true later in the story, another trait of a Gothic novel. Sleepless nights and things that go bump in the night occur also.
The Gothic genre of literature and the Romantic genre fuse together at times and present us with a world that is full of the unexplained and supernatural as well as plots that just dont make sense in which we will question our narrator's sanity and the words they speak. As readers we must analyze the book we are reading and break it down in order to fully understand it.