Darklore Manor

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Darklore Manor

Studio album by Nox Arcana

Released

December 15, 2003

Genre

Gothic horror, Ambient

Label

Monolith Graphics

Professional reviews

Legends Magazine, Flames Rising, Chain DLK

Nox Arcana chronology

Darklore Manor (2003)

Necronomicon (2004)

Darklore Manor is an album released by gothic horror musical group Nox Arcana on Monolith Graphics in 2003. It features a style of music that bears a similarity to Joseph Vargo's earlier work on the album Born of the Night with Midnight Syndicate, a group that he helped to establish in 1998 prior to his founding of Nox Arcana.

The music on Darklore Manor consists of piano, violin, pipe organ, harpsichord, with vocal choirs and brief ghostly narrations that invite the listener to "embark on a musical journey throughout the haunted halls of a Victorian mansion." The accompanying booklet features a history about the Darklore family and their "stark and grim abode" of which its "former splendor was lost to the ravages of time" and where "spirits of the dead do not rest easy."

This album was inspired by a real-life haunted house located near Salem, Massachusetts, an old Victorian mansion built in 1889. According to local legend, a curse befell the Darklore family, resulting in many mysterious deaths. Then in 1941, the last of the bloodline, Damon Darklore, his wife Elizabeth, and their daughter Belladonna disappeared without any explanation.

Over the years, the abandoned Darklore Manor became a local haunt, something to scare kids on Halloween and a place for daring teenagers to hang out. In 1968, three teens disappeared after holding a seance there on Halloween. The old manor finally burned to the ground in 1971.

Midnight Syndicate, taking inspiration from Nox Arcana, wrote a very similar theme to their later album The 13th Hour in 2005. In their storyline, they refer to the Haverghast family—the young daughter Madeline Haverghast standing in for Belladonna Darklore, a curse that lingers over the ancestral home, and other imagery and text that mirrors Darklore Manor.^[1]