The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life.
You describe something such as an event or story as macabre when it is strange and horrible or upsetting, usually because it involves death or injury. Police have made a macabre discovery = chilling. very strange and unpleasant and connected with death or with people being seriously hurt ((danse) macabre , from earlier (danse de) Macabré, perhaps from chorea Maccabaeorum , a representation of the killing of the Maccabees, a Jewish family of Bible times)
shockingly repellent; inspiring horror; "ghastly wounds"; "the grim aftermath of the bombing"; "the grim task of burying the victims"; "a grisly murder"; "gruesome evidence of human sacrifice"; "macabre tales of war and plague in the Middle ages"; "macabre tortures conceived by madmen"