Let’s take a quick look at the distinctively gothic words in this snippet.
A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the Baskervilles. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Charles's South African gold.
Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads. Baskerville shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end.
Look at how evenly spaced these words are. The only real gap is in the description of the new building, which is an anti-gothic image, hence the lack of dire words.
By themselves none of these words are not distinctively gothic, but put them all together in a passage, and apply them to the description of an old house on a distant moor, and that’s gothic.
