Jim: Hey honey, you know they have dead people in the backyard.
Sara: Well, some people have swimming pools, others have private cemeteries. It can happen.
A spooky house. A staple of
Horror. Where
Haunted Castles would appear in European tales, the
Haunted House takes its place in American stories. It is commonly associated with bumps in the night, strange lights, and a shady history involving violence and terror.
When you enter,
the "wind" closes the door behind you. Creepy portraits may adorn the walls and the eyes may
literally follow your every move. The house itself may seem alive, having
a mind of its own, yet it may be
surrounded by dead trees and blackened grass.
It might be a ramshackle abandoned shack standing alone. Or a
Big Fancy House maintained by a
Creepy Housekeeper. Or a typical
suburban home built on an
Indian Burial Ground.
This is somewhat a
Discredited Trope nowadays, with parodies and amusement park attractions being similarly popular to the straight portrayals. It's also an enduring trope, however, with stories of haunted houses going back at least to the
ancient Romans
, making it
Older Than Feudalism.
Compare
Haunted Headquarters, which is any haunted primary setting.
Big Boos Haunt is this trope in video games.
Examples
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Anime/Manga
- In the first episode of Keroro Gunsou, Fuyuki and Natsumi learn that the reason their mom was able to get their house for such a great price was because the spare room in the basement (which in this episode becomes Sergeant Keroro's quarters) is haunted by a mysterious ghost girl. This fact doesn't bother Keroro, mainly because he doesn't know about her.
- Anna and Yoh's house in Shaman King.
- Ghost Hunt had one, based on the Winchester Mystery House.
Film
Folklore
Literature
- In Myth Adventures Skeeve received from the natives (Deveels), notoriously canny businessmen, a big house on Deva as a part of a deal. Why do they give him a cheap house? It has a back door that leads to the Uberwald-like vampire dimension.
- And the native vampires avoid it as haunted. Some even say they saw humans there — just imagine it!
- The Shrieking Shack in the Harry Potter series. Arguably, Sirius Black's house as well.
- The Shrieking Shack wasn't really haunted, but peole thought it was due to the strange noises coming from it (which were caused by Lupin in his werewolf phase).
- In Shunned House by HP Lovecraft, the hero of the story becomes obsessed with a mysterious house that, since it was first built, wound up either driving its occupants insane or causing them a slow wasting death. It turned out that the house was built over the final resting place of a magician who slowly drained the Life Force from the people near him in the night.
- Also the titular house in The Dreams in the Witch-House, that has a haunted reputation, but is actually periodically visited by a living, immortal witch who used to live in the house, and still uses its sealed attic for her work.
- Arabian Nights: The story "Ali the Cairene and the Haunted House in Baghdad".
- Nick Arcade: The Creepyville board has a haunted house crawling with ghosts that scare Mikey (the player).
Live Action Television
- In Being Human, George and Mitchell are able to rent a city centre house on the cheap because it's haunted by a girl called Annie. George, being a werewolf, and Mitchell, being a vampire, don't have a problem with this.
- The haunted, gothic Collinwood Mansion is featured in Dark Shadows.
- The British domestic comedy So Haunt Me deals with a suburban home haunted by its previous resident, a Jewish Mother. While the father is mostly annoyed by her presence, the other family members generally enjoy her company.
- Buffy The Vampire Slayer had a couple of these in its time, such as in "Fear Itself" and "Where the Wild Things Are".
Close Live Action Television
Video Games
- Luigi's Mansion is basically the story of Mario's hapless younger brother getting a free house... which he then has to clear of ghosts. Apparently, the whole thing was a ghostly creation, and it disappears when he's done. For some reason, the money in it wasn't, so he buys a new one. Which is presumably not haunted.
- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has a quest which involves buying a haunted house and clearing it of ghosts.
- There's several of these in Simon's Quest.
- Might and Magic 7 had one.
Webcomics
- The Kesandru / Brie Meighsaton House in Sluggy Freelance.
- Stupidity In Magic has this. Twice, actually. Both times, the main cast is only called in to see why the house is haunted - they never get the house itself (they have their own place already, anyways). The first time, the ghosts were stuck in the house because of a curse, and most of them were happy to leave once the problem was fixed. The second time, the ghosts were haunting a house being rented out by a college - the rent was very reasonable, due to the haunting, and the college students only called for help because the ghosts had started possessing the occupants and were getting a bit violent; once things were fixed so that they wouldn't be in danger of getting hurt any more and they realized why the rent was so low, they were quite willing to let the ghosts stay - they preferred slightly-haunted accomodations that were within walking distance of the college to anything else they could've afforded.
Western Animation
