In the 1990s, the mainstream image of the Gargoyle, like that of the mouse and mermaid before it, has largely been coopted and corrupted by the Disney corporation. First Disney peppered its Hunchback of Notre Dame with singing, dancing gargoylettes who weren't so much scary as cutely piggish. In 1994, Disney's Buena Vista Television branch unleashed a darker, more threatening, and more modern take on fanged winged sculpture. Gargoyles , the TV show, has as much to do with gargoyles, the belfry-bestriding misfits, as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have to do with turtles. They're gargoyles, but they might as well be the stone lions who sleep at the entrances to big libraries, or the Scales of Justice woman, or any other noble and well-socialized sculptures.
Some writers know where the horror lies, and play by the rules according to gargoyle.
But over the years, the lines get blurred. Brennan, who lived most of his life in New Haven and died in 1990, wrote numerous short stories and poems about the supernatural powers innate in old buildings. To Brennan's alarm, the organist turns out to be embodied by a hellish demon, who chases the terrified author all about the Elm City until an undamned church can be found to beat him back. And therein lies the problem. From the Exorcist and Poltergeist onward, we've lost sight of demons that have their own form, and gotten used to ghostly inhabitations of human receptacles.