An entertaining fear

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is a perfect blend of romance and horror, and contains many other aspects of gothic literature.
This piece begins very ominously, with the mariner stopping the wedding guests to tell them his story. Although frightened, the guest seems spellbound, like a child, to listen to the mariner ("The Mariner hath his will"). The story continues with the frightening "land of ice, and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen" that the mariner's ship sails towards. This suspense contributes to the audience's entertaining fear. This suspense continues when the albatross, a good omen, appears and the reader is a little more settled, until the mariner kills it.
The poem comes into a more supernatural and evil feel when the albatross begins avenging itself against the mariner and his crew by causing them to be without drinking water, the still ocean is compared to "a witch's oils", and the crew is convinced a spirit is following them from beneath the sea.
In part 3, the madness begins when the mariner bites his own arm and sucks his blood. A ghost-ship then approaches, carrying the ultimate fear for all-Death. The presence of these supernatural ghosts is very unsettling to readers. All of the mariner's shipmates die before him, and lay in rot around him. But later, they come back to life and begin operating the ship.
The darkness of the poem is further enhanced by the phrases such as "black lips baked" and "slimy things" .
Also, throughout the mariner's story, the wedding guest continually interrupts him, pleading for him to stop because he is scared. This is interesting, because while the reader is entranced in the mariner's horrific story, they are also brought back to the present time of the story being told by the mariner himself, who is almost equally as scary to the wedding guest who is trapped by some spell listening to him.