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Comment by codeflo | Hacker News Reader

Showing a picture of Notre Dame photoshopped against unsettling clouds to make a point about the psychological effect of its architecture is borderline fraud. Any actual photo makes the building look a lot more majestic rather than scary: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Notre-Da...

Also, I wonder to what extent this is an American perspective. Of course, American culture is omnipresent in Europe, so the association of Gothic buildings with horror movies has been hammered into our minds as well. But still, I don't think any European would look at Cologne Cathedral and be reminded of Ghostbusters of all things. I think unfamiliarity plays a role here.

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Where's your evidence it's photoshopped? It's credited to "Pete Douglass/Getty Images" and Getty has a policy against photoshopped images.

It's just a photo on a day and time with particularly dramatic clouds. There's no "borderline fraud" here.

And of course it does have a lot to do with weather and lighting. Gothic horror is set in these environments at dusk and at night, in moonlight and in storms. Gothic horror doesn't generally utilize bright sunny days, so your photo isn't helping to illustrate the concept.

A building can be simultaneously majestic and inspiring during a warm sunny day, and become spooky and creepy in low light amidst the fog and cold damp.

My first thought when I read the article was that that image must have been run through something like a contrast-limited adaptive histogram equalization (CLAHE) process.

See here, for an example: https://imagemagick.org/script/clahe.php

I wonder if people think Milan cathedral also looks scary?

Even if I agree that Gothic architecture is the most appropriate setting for horror action, and I also agree with many of the arguments of the Italian Renaissance against what they have called as "Gothic", I still consider the great Gothic cathedrals as the most beautiful buildings that have ever been built.

the Duomo is a weird kind of gothic, most notably missing the tall proportions of most gothic cathedrals. I've never seen it described as scary, but it has its creepy details, like the statue depicting San Bartholomew after being skinned, wearing his own skin.

That statue is a vivid memory for me ever since I saw it 30 years ago.

As non-English speaker I do not consider Gothic architecture to be spooky. I saw Ghostbusters long time ago and have just vague memories. House in Adam's Family and similar revivals are not really Gothics for me.

On the other hand there is not much Gothics left except for few cathedrals. Everything has been reconstructed in Baroque here.

Your photo still looks spooky to me.

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