Why I love haunted houses

This is the speech I gave at my local library this past week. I’m still working on this week’s post, so please en

Hello. My name is Nicole Luttrell. I’m a local speculative fiction writer. That means I write about ghosts, dragons and spaceships. Sometimes I write about the ghosts of dragons on spaceships. 

I want to start by thanking Dianne and everyone here at the Butler Library for hosting this talk. And frankly, for being here and doing the job they do. Being a librarian has never been easy, but it seems to get harder all the time. 

I’ve written a fantasy series called Woven, which I have copies of today, about a prince who weaves visions and a princess who spins light. I also write a science fiction series called Sation 86. It’s about murder, politics and possibly the end of mankind on the station of First Contact. I have a QR code here so you can get the first book in that series free. 

But what I love writing most is horror. 

This month is my time to shine, yes. 

I became a writer for the same reason most people do. I love stories. I love reading. And that love has been well fed within these very walls for most of my life. One day it occured to me that someone had to write books the same way someone had to build cars or wait tables. Someone had to do it, so why couldn’t that be me? So I came to the library, and I found the section upstairs with the books about writing books. And there I found a copy of the Writer’s Market. 

If you’re not a writer yourself, or even if you’re just a writer who started submitting work after the internet was in everyone’s homes and pockets, you might not know about this book. It’s like a phonebook for the publishing world. Magazines, publishing companies and literary agents are all listed. Itwas a thing of beauty. An expensive thing of beauty that had to be replaced every year. But it made me feel like a real writer to use it. 

The Writer’s Market isn’t updated anymore because, again, internet. And while I certainly wouldn’t use it anymore, I’ll forever be grateful to it for helping me see that writing is a career as well as art. 

But it’s almost Halloween, and today, I want to talk about something scarrier than the publishing industry and a teenage girl’s flounderings through it. If there is anything scarrier than that. 

I wrote a book called Quiet Apocalypse. It’s about a witch named Sadie. She’s enjoying her quiet life as a school nurse, living in a cozy apartment with her dog Sage. 

Yes, Sage makes it.

Then a tree falls on her apartment building, and it lets something loose. Something bloody and dark. 

Allow me now to read the introduction. 

 The end of the world started on a dark winter night.

 Trees circled the apartment building at 437 Oakmont. They weren’t old trees, nor were they tall. Yet to look at them, one would think them ancient. They were twisted and gnarled. Every gust of wind found them, even when no other tree moved. The cold of winter clung in their branches, no matter the weather. Passersby didn’t like to dawdle along the sidewalk. The trees made them feel unwelcome. Children especially felt this, but of course, children always feel these things most keenly. 

 But we weren’t talking about children. We’ll come back to them. For now, we’re discussing the trees. 

 They’d been groaning and moaning for most of their lives. Sometimes you couldn’t hear them unless you were listening carefully. Other times the inhabitants of the apartment had to turn their TVs up to drown the trees out. But on one dark night in February, the sounds were unrelenting. There was a winter storm. The wind was hellacious, cutting through the town like a vengeful spirit. It took out hanging signs for stores on Main Street, brought down the old pine next to the library, and crashed Mr. Wallback’s patio table into his sliding glass window. Ashley Homestead regretted leaving her potted pine tree out for the night. It was thrown against the house from the back porch with such force that the pot shattered. 

Leslie Richard’s trampoline, covered over with a tarp for the season, was lifted and thrown into the yard of his next-door neighbor. 

 The wind rattled windows, pushed its way through cracks in the walls and around doors. Heaters couldn’t keep up with the sharp, blistering cold. The families in the apartment building were kept awake by it, huddled under blankets to keep warm.

The storm built up steam as it headed for Oakmont. It was as though those trees in a circle were its target, and it meant to have them. The storm came to a head at almost four in the morning. One of the trees, exhausted from a night’s battle, couldn’t hold on any longer. It came down, crashing into the roof and jutting sharp, dark branches into the attic apartment.

The wind died away almost at once. Gentle snow replaced it, covering the ice. The next morning this would cause several accidents. 

The trees that remained continued to scream, as though mourning their fallen brother.

I wrote Quiet Apocalypse for two reasons. First, I was starting to feel more comfortable as a witch. I wanted to write a character who was also a witch. A real world witch, not a magical creature one. 

Secondly, and what I really came here to talk about, I wanted to write a haunted house story. Haunted house stories have always been my favorite sort of story. The House Next Door, The Haunting of Hill House, The Amittyville Horror. These are the sort of books that keep me turning pages and rethinking every creak and groan in my own house. 

I’m not alone in my love of haunted houses. They’re a mainstay of the horror genre for a reason. We all want to think that our homes are our safe havens from the world. That our front door acts as a barrier to the bad things. The dark things.

So the thought of something lurking in the dark and dripping corners of our homes is viceral. But it’s also realistic. I would argue that haunted houses are the most realistic horror genre. 

Bad things happen in our homes. House fires from wires we didn’t even know were frayed. Carbon monoxide leaks. Storms large and powerful enough to rip and tear buildings apart. 

When was the last time you checked your smoke alarms? 

Quiet Apocalypse starts with a very mundane and realistic disaster. One that almost takes Sadie’s life before the story even starts. Allow me to read a passage.

 Sadie sat in the doorway of her ruined apartment. Her eyes were itchy, there were rivets of tears dried to her face. She had cried herself out the night before. Now she only wanted a shower and a good long rest. But, as a tree had crashed through the roof of her apartment, neither of those things could happen. 

 She knew she ought to be grateful. She’d been in the kitchen with Sage, her creamy colored lab mix when the tree came down. Branches seared through the exterior wall, crashing through her living room and bedroom. One had pierced right through her bed. It was still there, jammed right in the center of the quilt. If Sadie’d been asleep, she wouldn’t have survived. All she’d lost were things. She should be thankful for that. 

 When she was done mourning her things she would be. Her mother had made her that quilt. The crystals on the altar in her living room were all buried in the rubble. Her whole living room was a loss. What wasn’t destroyed in the crash or buried under the roof was damaged by the snow that had flooded in. 

And her books! Her family had given her irreplaceable books. Thank the Green Man Himself that her grandmother’s grimoire was at Aunt Helen’s place. But Sadie had her mother’s grimoire. And now it was destroyed. 

 She looked at the cardboard box that contained everything she now owned. There was her teapot, gray with a design of cherry blossoms. The cups that matched it had shaken loose from their shelf and shattered. 

There was her grimoire, a battered old sketchbook with a red cover. A french press, some herbs. A truly astounding assortment of tea. A handful of crystals and candles had been on her kitchen windowsill. Sage’s food and water bowl. That was all she had. 

 They were just things. Things that didn’t mean anything aside from everything. Ties to family members lost. Tools for her magical work and her mundane life. Decades of learning were destroyed in no time. 

A haunted house story can be seen as an alligory for accidents and natural disasters that threaten our families. But the ones that scare us the most, and stay with us the longest, are usually about family traumas and abuse. 

Amityville Horror is about a family tortured by dark entities until the father nearly kills everyone. But it’s also about dark financial worries. It’s about a man feeling like he failed as a provider and taking it out on his family. 

Poulterguist is about a house opening a portal to a horrific and hungry dimension. But it’s also about Suburban Sprawl and guilt. 

Quiet Apocalypse is about a demon trying to break free and cause the apocalypse. But it’s also about the fear of dying alone. Of having no one to leave behind a legacy for. 

I’ve been in a haunted house. And I bet you have too. If you’re fortunate enough to not have lived in one, you’ve visited one. It was the friend’s house where things got quiet when their mom came home from work. Or one that got way too loud. Maybe it was a family home after a funeral. 

Maybe it was just a place that didn’t feel right. It seems safe, but it doesn’t feel safe. Your instincts are screaming at you to run. To get the hell out of there despite no apparent danger. 

In my experience, it’s best to listen to those instincts. 

So we understand why cultures all over the world come back over and over to the haunted house story. But I want to go a step further and suggest that women in particular are drawn to reading and writing haunted house stories. We, along with children, tend to be the main characters and main victims of haunted house stories. 

It’s Eleanore who senses something wrong and eventually goes mad in Hill House. 

It’s Diana Freeling who insists to her husband that something’s wrong in the house, only to be dismissed until their daughter is sucked into the television. 

It’s Col Kennedy who has to convince her husband that there is something very wrong with the beautiful new house next door.

I think this is the case for a number of reasons. First, women historically spend more time at home than their spouses. Or, we at least spend more time caring for our homes and the people in them. So if the kids are talking to invisible playmates, we’re more likely to notice. If there’s blood dripping out of the ceiling, we’re probably the ones cleaning it up thinking it’s rust stains. 

At first. 

If our loved one is suddenly spending an uncomfortable amount of time with their axe collection or singing in a language we don’t recognize, we’ll probably be the ones to point it out. 

In addition to this, haunted house stories are cathartic to women. Consider how often in a horror movie the main character starts out trying like hell to convince someone, usually her partner, that something is wrong. Blood’s coming out of the faucets, there’s a spot in the back yard that’s never warm, bottles are popping and spilling with no one in the room. But no one is listening! No one else seems to see it all happen. It’s almost like they’re looking away at just the wrong time on purpose. Only to calmly and condecendingly explain the shape and color of the trees while missing the forest entirely. 

What else does that sound like to you? Maybe like trying to explain medical symptoms to your partner, or doctor? 

You just need to lose weight.

It’s the house settling.

You’re just getting older.

You didn’t hear a child screaming, it was just these old pipes. 

You’re overreacting.

You’re being histerical. 

Finally, I think women are most often main characters in haunted house stories because home is a place of guilt for us. We feel more responsible for our homes because we’re taught that we’re responsible. At least, I was. So if something is wrong with our house, it’s our fault. 

The dishes aren’t done. It doesn’t matter if we dirtied them, it’s still our fault. The laundry’s piling up, our fault. An ancient demom is cracking through the basement floor, our fault. 

Of course, as society changes so do the stories we tell. A great modern haunted house story is How To Sell A Haunted House by Grady Hendrix. The main character is acutally the one who needs convinced that something is wrong, and it’s her younger brother who does the convincing.

That book, by the way, is a great example of siblings being raised by the same people but very different parents. 

All of that being said, haunted house stories appeal to everyone. There isn’t a culture in the world that doesn’t have haunted house stories. The Himuro Mansion in Japan. The Wolfsegg Castle in Germany. Every community, neighborhood and village has a haunted house. I’m willing to bet our cave dwelling ancestors had certain caves they didn’t want to go into because they were jsut too creepy.

Finally, I would argue that haunted houses are more frightening than other supernatural elements because they are so incredibly intimate. If houses are alive, and as a witch I believe they are, they know us. They see us at our best and our worst. They see us in moments that we manage to hide from everyone else. And so if your home wanted to scare you, wanted to harm you, they’d know just how to do it. 

This is something that Sadie learns in Quiet Apocalypse. Allow me to read one final passage. 

 “Do you know where my mommy is?” the child asked. 

“I don’t know,” Sadie said. “What’s your name?” 

 The child didn’t respond. She just shook her head.

 “Where am I?” 

 Sadie swirled around. There was a little boy, standing in the middle of the main room. He looked terrified. 

 “Oh, it’s okay,” Sadie said. “Here, come over here. I’ll try to help you. I mean, I’m not really good with spirits, but I can-.” 

 “Mommy? Where am I, why can’t I see you?” 

 Another child was coming out of the bathroom. Then another. Suddenly there were two sitting on the futon, and three more standing in the middle of the room. They were all covered in blood. In their hair, on their shoes, on their clothes. It dripped onto the floor, smearing from their feet and dropping from toys or blankets they clutched.

 Sadie spun, looking around at all of the children. There were so many of them, and every moment there were more. Sage stood next to her, gasping out sharp, panicked barks. 

 “Sage, stop barking,” Sadie said. She whirled around again. “Please, calm down. I can help you, but I, I need a minute to think about what to do.” 

 They crowded towards her, reaching out with bloody hands. Crying out for her, reaching for her and pulling at her clothes. “Help, help us,” they cried. 

 “I’ll help you, I will,” Sadie said, but the children were pulling her down. 

 “Help us. You have to help us!” 

 Sadie couldn’t answer. She could barely breathe, drowning in the sea of bloody hands and crying screaming faces. She couldn’t see Sage anymore, couldn’t see anything. There were only the children, clawing at her. Killing her. 

Sadie is a school nurse. As I’m sure you can imagine, that carries an emotional burden. 

Now, unfortunately I don’t have any personal really good haunted house stories to share with you. Most of my experiences are subtle. I saw a shadowy figure out of the corner of my eye. I felt someone staring at me when there wasn’t anyone there. I found myself in a terrible mood, or unable to control my anxiety in certain parts of a house. This is all scary to live with but not overly interesting. And since you’ve all been listening to me ramble for a while now, it’s your turn. Tell us about your haunted house story in the comments below.