After 9/11, the world felt the "shock and awe" of the War on Terror. But that war also exploded inside novels, films, comics, and gaming. Danel Olson investigates why the paranormal, ghostly, and conspiratorial entered such media between 2002-2022, and how this Gothic presence connects to the most recent theories on PTSD. Set in New York/Gotham, Afghanistan, Iraq, and CIA black sites, the traumatic and weird works interrogated here ask how killing affects the killers. Their protagonists are haunted combat soldiers and mortar gunners, Abrams tank crews and Air Force pilots, and Batman and counter-terrorism officers of the NCIS, FBI, and CIA.

Danel Olson is Professor of film, argument, and literature at Lone Star College, Houston, Texas, USA. He has edited twelve books on fiction and film including 21st Century Gothic (2010), The Shining: Studies in the Horror Film (2015), and Writing Madness: Short Fiction of Patrick McGrath (2018).