In Horace Walpole’s novel, The Castle of Ontranto, he pioneers in joining two works of literature, the romance and the novel. In doing this however, he doesn’t let the reader’s imagination be persuaded too much, by the idea of fantasy. Walpole tries to portray the novelistic aspects of his fantastical story by including a lot of detail to explain supernatural events. In doing this, he is attempting to create a vivid picture of what he is trying to convey to the reader. There is no need for the reader to use their imagination to create pictures of these fantastical creatures, because Walpole gives distinct details of what these creatures look like. “… and the figure, turning slowly round, discovered to Frederic the fleshless jaws and empty sockets of a skeleton, wrapt in a hermits cowl”. (99) Here, Walpole is giving readers the descriptive details they need to mentally picture the ghost that Frederic sees. However, in doing this, he eliminates the obscurity of the ghost to the readers. In turn, he explains the fear and terror Frederic feels from experiencing this ghost, but this causes the readers to lose that same sense of fright. All the details of the ghost makes the reader lose that sublime feeling Walpole created during the anticipation of Frederic meeting Hippolita at the altar. “”Hippolita!” replied a hollow voice…” (99) Walpole did not use any description for the ghost before it was fully seen by Frederic. Walpole’s description of the voice as hollow, allowed the reader to assume that the voice was not that of Hippolita. This allowed the reader to anticipate a revelation of something other than Hippolita being in front of the altar. He also explains, “… the evening gloomy, and overcast”. (99) His description of this dark setting helps readers anticipate something eerie, or extraordinary. Darkness often leads to fear because of the inability to see, and the reader can feel the same fear as Frederic at this moment. As the reader, I felt a sense of suspense for a moment, only for it to be ruined by the overly descriptive details of what the ghost looked like once it was discovered by Frederic. Throughout this novel, Walpole is constantly battling between introducing full-fledged fantasy and realism.