The House of Witchs

This Week’s Prompt: 99. Salem story—the cottage of an aged witch—wherein after her death are found sundry terrible things.

The Prior Research:Salem

I’d been house hunting for the last four days, when Alex finally agreed to take me to the house on 35^th and Main. He grumbled and sighed the entire drive, before we pulled up to the slightly overrun yard. It was a nice, two story house—clean windows, nice door, fresh wallpaper.

“It’s just a bit pricey, you know, and there are better places.” He said, sighing as we walked through the house. “I mean, and you know, it’s got a history.”

“And that’s why we’ve got to check it out!” I said. The house was the exact same, top to bottom—okay, not quiet the same. The kitchen down stairs was the exact shape of the guest room right above it, the bedroom and living room perfectly mirrored each other.

“I mean, it’s not like this is the same house they hanged her in.” I said, flicking a light switch on.

“No…Okay, no it’s not.” Alex admitted. “Got rebuilt a few times after fires and the like. Last time was back in the 70s I think. Some freak earthquake or something broke the foundation and they had to fix it. And then there was a wave of renovations.”

I walked through the halls. I wonder how much of this place had actually stayed the same after three centuries—were the rooms always like this? Did they shift and change? The attic upstairs was entirely empty except some boxes—what had they once held? Was the living room the same one where they tried her, searched her entire body for where the creatures of the night drank blood?

“I think it’s the one.” I said, smiling as we left.

“Of course you do.” Alex sighed. “Of course the witch house halfway out of town is the perfect one—no, can’t be any of the ones down town or near a train station, nope, crazy house.”

“So it really is the same, top to bottom?” Cheryl asked. She was at the desk across from me, peering over the screen.

“Yep.”

“Doesn’t that get…confusing?” She said, clattering away at the keyboard.

“Not as bad as you’d think—I mean, I’ve gotten mixed up once or twice when putting stuff away.” I said with a shrug. “You know, I’ll come home, get ready for shower and whoops! Walked into the walk in closet, bathrooms on the other floor.”

“Wow. I mean, that’s not too bad.”

“No, like—unless it’s late at night, it’s pretty easy to navigate around. When I’m like half asleep, it gets worse.” If I’m drunk it is an actual nightmare. I once spent an hour racing up and down the stairs, trying to figure out which one had the living room and which one had the bedroom, before just sleeping on the couch.

“Seen any…” Cheryl, pausing mid type. “You know. Last people that had the house left after a month.”

“No, nothing.” I said, clattering along. “I mean, I might ask someone to look at the walls.”

“What, blood leaking from them already?” Cheryl said with a nervous laugh. I didn’t mention that the walls had made a clicking sound at night—not loud enough to wake me up, but enough to keep me awake. Everything was so quiet out there.

It wasn’t much of a conversation, really. I had a few like that, people surprised I was living in the old haunted house. Which—okay, yeah, a few people it turns out had gone missing in the place. But like, of the past owners—I checked, out of curiousity—none of them ‘mysteriously’ vanished, and even the ones that had a bad time were like, fifty to sixty years apart. The stories get wilder around the 1700s—everyone’s grandma has a story about my old house it seems.

It was kinda thrilling to live somewhere famous. I even gave tours to a few friends—some of them joked about breaking into it when they were teens. Looked different, back then. Run down, but same double floors.

“Yeah, its always been like that.” Jermey said, pointing at the ceiling as we walked down the stairs. “I mean, you know, when I was here it was like. Graffiti’d up and shag carpeted.”

“Shag carpeting?”

“Yeah, it was gross as hell. But the same, top to bottom. Weird that they didn’t like—like the bathrooms weren’t.” He said looking it over. “I mean, they kinda are—we figured that since they were on top of each  other, we’d drop stuff down one pipe and it’d go down the other but nope. Just pissed off the handy man.”

“Thought it was abandoned?” I asked, frowning.

Jeremey shrugged.

“I mean, no one lived here. But I remember once we got wasted and tore up one of the walls—freaked out, thinking we’d get caught.” He said, gesturing. “But it was all put together in like. A day. Someone had to do it. Never heard of ghosts patching up brickwork.”

I did get used to the noise after a while. The little creaks and dings and shifting of moving papers stopped bothering me.  I dreamed about getting lost in repeating hallways more than once. I know I came home drunk and went to bed in my room, and woke up in the living room at least once.

I kinda got used to just staring ahead and counting whenever I saw someone on the sidewalk, a shape I couldn’t quite make out until the last moment. Once or twice, I caught someone following me—or well. I thought they were following me. They just lived nearby and I hadn’t seen them yet. No one was following me.

At least—well there was one time. I woke up in the middle of the night in the bedroom down stairs. I walked around, trying to get my bearings again, and looked out the window—and I thought I saw Cheryl. She was just walking…to the bus station, which was weird because I swear she lived on the other side of town. No reason for her to be around her.

*

“Oh, just went home and binged some shows.” She said when I asked what she’d been up to last night. “How about you?”

“Not much. Read a book.” I muttered.  I mean, it wasn’t a lie. I’d been reading some documents. The crew that came over couldn’t find anything causing the clicking sound,  probably something the construction crew before left in there. So I went digging for the construction crew for the current house—and couldn’t find one.

I couldn’t find the last one either. Not like, a shell company or anything, but like—there’s a newspaper article from 1970 about a fire destroying the house. It’s listed for sale in 1972. That’s the house I’m in. But no one built the house. The listing is in a newspaper, it doesn’t mention the company. And I don’t even know how to start finding that in a public record.

“I think it was built by OMN?” Alex said. I hadn’t given him a ring in a while. “Can’t really…huh. Can’t find a specific record, but they did a lot of construction back then. Hey, don’t worry about it too much. It’s probably just settling or something—get an exterminator if your worried its rats in the walls I guess?”

Or move out of the creepy house, like I said to was the unspoken bit there. But whatever. I couldn’t leave—unless I found another buyer, I didn’t have the cash for that. So exterminator it was.

*

“And he found nothing.” I muttered. I could feel the bags under my eyes, even if they weren’t there yet.

“Well, that’s good right?” Jeremey said, printing another few copies of…something. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention.

“I just…It’s been getting louder I think. More frequent for sure. He heard it, said there’s no animal he’d heard make that sound—left out some traps.” I waved it away. Just when I got used to the little noises, this one comes in insistent.

“I mean—maybe a plumber or something? Might be something rattling in the pipes.” Jermey said, tapping the papers. “Loose coin or something.”

“I don’t…maybe?” I said throwing my hands up. “I’ve got to figure out what it is—I swear, I’d never have bought the place if I’d known it was this much of a pain. Supposedly haunted historical house is one thing, this is…This is just maddening.”

I just didn’t sleep that night. It was the first night I stayed awake all night—cup of coffee and ears listening for any sounds. I’d just, I’d catch this thing.

The ticking started earlier than I remember it starting before. One of the old paintings ticked up a few inches. As I watched, the face on the old woman’s painting peeled off. A small plate there, of some fibrous material, rotated.

I got up slowly…and the floor swam beneath me. I fell back down. The room rotated. The walls fell away, a labyrinth of crystal and glass shimmering in the moonlight. My bed fell through the liquid floor. I screamed and waited for a crash.

None came.

I looked up at the old house—shimmering like moonlight on the water. New stars shone down through the transparent roof. When I got up this time, I was on solid ground. I saw hundreds of miles beneath the house—hundreds of fractal rooms. Perfectly shaped, all with glowing like stars. Except one—down at the very bottom, there was something…something dull. Some small blob, a hundred feet away. The ticking was coming from down in the depths, and I was sure it was from that strange shape.

There was a shout form the window. Looking up, I saw such…wonderful places. I saw hills of sunlight, I saw sable sands with red rivers. I saw moons, I saw worlds outside. I saw them tearing and bending and wonder turned to horror. The ticking turned to skipping—the house…whatever it was, something was wrong. I looked down again, at the shape sitting their listless.

It was like a bug trapped in amber. A small shape but I saw the whole house struggling to break free  of it. It shook and seemed to crack. The floor gave in beneath me, and I went tumbling down. Before I could get up, it cracked and fell again.

Bruised and exhausted, I fell. I fell through house after house. I fell down centuries, down to the very bottom. I looked up, struggling a bit to catch my breath. The light was dim down here—I could barely see my fingers.

I looked up and saw her. Hanging there—not really her. Not her body, that was long gone. Her shadow? Something that was there but wasn’t. It wasn’t really there. It was there though. It was…the house was broken. It yearned up.

But she was there. Her body was there, jammed in the gears and light. She was glowing like a dim moon, soft and cold. The windows down here were all black seas and forgotten woods. The house shook and quaked. It glowed and ticked.

I next remember waking up in the hospital. The doctor said there’d been an accident—freak fire while I was asleep. Most of the house was burned down—not all of it, but most. The fire department was just glad to have contained it—there were lots of old homes down there.  It could have spread uphill, caught some of the others.

It was really lucky it just burned mine. I guess.

Just like that earthquake back in the 70s, I guess. Or the flash flood that tore out the foundations in 1922. It’s a very lucky house, in a way.

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I’m still unhappy with this story. I liked the idea of the house as some sort of mechanism, which was stuck trying to complete its task by the crime committed in the past. But I couldn’t find a strong A-plot to go in with, and interweave with, the haunted house. I think there might be some burn out on houses for now–and looking a head, we’ll be away from them for at least a few weeks! Thank you for your patience.

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The Bowen Street House

This Week’s Prompt:98. Hideous old house on steep city hillside—Bowen St.—beckons in the night—black windows—horror unnam’d—cold touch and voice—the welcome of the dead.

The Prior Research:Rhode Island Ghosts

Bowen Street was a bit nicer than I rememberd. The old pot hole was fixed—the bigger one, not the little ones—and the fences weren’t as rusty. Uncle Rodney had been a bit of a nutter towards the end. There were three locks, and a keypad. I remember when I was fifteen him showing off his security room—I’m still not sure if it’s legal to have that many security cameras peering out in all directions from your house. I’m sure it isn’t healthy to stare at monitors all night.

It was a stroke that got him.

Opening up the house, even with the keys and the passcodes, felt like breaking into some giant vault. There was a layer of dust covering everything inisde, and that was before I started going through the locked doors. Most of them were double locked, and the windows had bars on the inside. I don’t know what Uncle Rodney was worried about—he was just generally nervous it seemed—but he had made one amazing cage.

It really shouldn’t go to waste, I thought. It was his life’s work. And I admit, I didn’t feel like sleeping any time soon. The layers of dust made the air heavy, and I didn’t have time to clean. One night, with some beers, seeing what the old man was looking at all night. I’ll toss it out tomorrow, I thought.

The house clicked to life at eight o’clock exactly. Camera’s whirred to life, screens flickered, lights shone down. And that was the visible parts. Webs of motion sensors were spontaneously woven over the yard, and I’m pretty sure the fence gained life electric. And I sat, drinking from a can, watching the screens. Trying to figure out what had made Uncle Rodney so afraid.

There was a bobcat that walked across the street, right up to the gate. I held my breath as it looked at the fence. It reached out a paw—I stared intently as it considered the jump.

And then, suddenly, it ran off. Scapered back where it came. I glanced across the screens, following the little angry furball until it got to a side walk and went down the street.

I mean, at that point, I kinda thought it lived across the street. There was another house there, although I didn’t give it much attention before. I mean, it was barely a house.

The roof was intact, and the doors, and the—I frowned as I looked at the windows. I guess the lights were off? They were completely dark—actually, zooming closer, it looked like the blinds were closed? No, not even that. They were tinted black. I sat back a bit. Was this whole neighborhood paranoid? I zoomed the camera back out, taking in the crumbling wreck. The porch had fallen in, the door looked worn and someone had stolen the door knocker, and–

There was beeping on one of the motion sensors. I frowned, and looked over at the other camera. My heart stopped for a moment as I saw a pale shape—some kid in a grey hoodie or with a blanket around their back—squeezing at the gate. I couldn’t quite make out what he was…I mean the gate was high voltage, maybe he had wire cutters or something.

I had dialed two digits before he was gone. I looked up as the phone rang, and saw him slip across and into the old house, turning back for only a second. I thought he looked into the camera.

*

“Mr. Barthet?” The voice came through on the other end after a minute of silence. “I don’t know how often we have to answer these calls before it becomes a crime, Mr. Barthet.”

“I’m sorry?” I asked, blinking. “This is the first time I’ve called.”

“Don’t tell me your memory’s going to, Rodney.” The officer sighed. “So what was it this time? Some rave across the street that no one else can here?”

“I’m—I’m not Rodney.” I said slowly. “My names Roger Barthet.”

There was a long pause.

“Oh. Well. I’m sorry for your loss Roger.” The voice said slowly. “Uh, well, alright—Your uncle had a habit of reporting on the old house. Don’t lose to much sleep over it. The place is condemned, should be bulldozed any day now. No one living there but some rats.”

“But I saw–”

“Probably some teen hiding there for a few days or something, you know how kids are.” the officer continued. “If he mucked up your fence too much, that might be something, but, well, we aren’t going out in the middle of the night to chase a kid down in a ghost house.”

And that was it. He told me to get some sleep, see if I felt better in the morning. I sighed, hung up, and went to bed. It rained that night, helped me sleep some.

Not that I woke up feeling any better. If anything, it felt like someone had reached down my throat and dropped a bunch of needles in my stomach. I kinda staggered around most of the day. Took a walk down to the river, did some exploring.

The house across the street was definitely abandoned looking. I mean, the porch was rotting and missing all its paint—it had turned a weird grey brown of dead trees. A bunch of small live ones were growing in the yard. The old fence was pointy and green-black—I can’t quite tell with those old iron fences that have like, the tips you know?–and broken in a few places. The only really intact bits were the windows, which during the day seemed all the more strange. Seriously, why does an abandoned building have tinted windows?

I couldn’t get it out of my head, walking down the riverside. Someone definitely still used that house for…for something, I don’t know what. Maybe it was just a teen sex and drugs den or something. No wonder Uncle Rodney had cameras pointed at, must have been convinced they were going to try and rush his place in the night. I’m surprised I didn’t find a bigger gun-locker in the house. Yeah, I still hadn’t figured out how to get rid of that, I’m pretty sure Rhode Island’s strict about that sort of thing.

I didn’t go to bed that night. I stayed tuned in—the guy I called over said it’d be costly pulling out the all the wires, and he needed to check the house more, so I had a few more days. And I knew what I saw. If I could just see it again—If I could catch that kid—I think it was a kid. That thing in the night, I’d be able to sleep. I spent the afternoon after the work practicing the shutter function on the camera—a quick photo with a click. And so I waited. And waited. I waited as cars passed by, as drunk teenagers stumbled across the side walk, I wait until three in the morning, eyes fixed to the screens, staring out in all directions from this house.

I was almost falling asleep, despite the caffeinated heartbeat. And then I saw it. My finger moved before I did, clicking rapidly on camera six, the one facing the house. There it was—some pale ship leaning against the black windows.

It was pointing at the camera.

No. It was pointing at me. It held up a finger, a thin spidery finger, and curled it back and forth. Closer it said. Closer.

*

The police weren’t pleased to hear from me again. I swear I heard them mutter something about running in the family. But I know what I saw. And I brought the photos. Didn’t do a ton of good—they looked like photoshop or something. I don’t know. But they agreed, at least, to send someone over. Show me around the other house. Show me no one lived there.

“See, doors not even locked.” Officer Jones said, pushing the rotten wooden door open with one hand. “No one leaves doors open down here. Alright, lets look around, see if there’s any sign of a squatter.”

I grumbled at that—that wasn’t a squatter last night. But whatever. They didn’t believe me, that’s fine. They’d see. He clicked his flashlight on—the house was dark with the tinted windows, but not as empty dark as it was at night.

“Now, we’ll go quick. This place isn’t exactly hospitable.”

The wallpaper was peeling. There was almost half an inch of dust on the entire floor—hell, the carpet on the second floor seemed to be more dust then carpet. There weren’t any dishes, and only a few bits of silver ware. Most were to busted to be used. The walls upstairs had several gouges– “Twenty years ago someone looted all the copper they could,” Officer Jones explained—and most of the light bulbs had been smashed on the ground. There was a bathtub, stained and moldy. A bed. A few picture frames, although there had been more before. You could still see the marks on the wall were they used to be.

There was a chair by the window, where the figure had stood. I walked right up to the tinted window and squinted out—my house was nothing but a shadow from here, an inky blob you could barely call a home.

“Right, see? Nothing’s here.” Officer Jones said, gesturing around. “Nothing but cold damp floor boards, and broken things.”

I frowned and looked around. There was nothing but some broken things, some mold, and some dust. Why wasn’t there more? An old house like this, why not—why wasn’t there any graffiti? Why was no one living in this abandoned but…but stable house? Why hadn’t they for…who knows how long? What was keeping them out?

“Right. Nothing.” I said, as we walked out. What was beckoning me to stay, even in daylight hours?

I stared out the window. No need for cameras this time. I could see that blasted house. I had seen something before. I know it, I know the cameras don’t lie. I’d locked all the doors, I turned on all the sensors. I had a hundred eyes wide open to see it again.

It was so small—behind the tinted windows, a breeze. It pushed gently against the door, pushing it open and outward. I stood and watched as the door opened, the trees rustled. It didn’t speak—it didn’t even seem..there. But the door slammed against the house wall. No breeze moved anywhere else. It slammed again. And I felt it’s eyes staring up into mine.

The police didn’t even give me a minute to explain. There was shouting, and a frustrated “then just stay inside!”. But I couldn’t. There was something there. Something in the house, that was watching me, that wanted something from me—or was offering something. I couldn’t tell. So I went out, into the night. I crossed the street, and went through the door.

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This story is a bit rushed, but I like the pacing and I think the general idea of security and observation leading to paranoia. That both houses are in a way haunted.  That’s all for this Halloween–apologies for the delay, but things have been hectic.

Next week, we visit another very famous New England town. See you then!

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Rhode Island Ghosts

This Week’s Prompt: 98. Hideous old house on steep city hillside—Bowen St.—beckons in the night—black windows—horror unnam’d—cold touch and voice—the welcome of the dead.

The Resulting Story: The Bowen Street House

This prompt was tricky—the experience of research in this case was very similar to a much earlier attempt to track down a specific name. A brief internet survey for a haunted Bowen Street turned up a restaurant in Texas—here we have  a rather polite ghost, who turns the lights off at around midnight when she wishes to be alone. Fittingly, the article doesn’t record any particularly nasty acts of violence or misery inflicted upon Mrs. Bowen or her family.  The timeline isn’t quite right either, so I began my search elsewhere.

There is another Bowen Street, that seemed more likely—Bowen Street, Providence Rhode Island. As the home  I first consulted my existing material on Rhode Island—which included a number of haunted places that I will go over in a moment—but found nothing on Bowen Street. Internet searches again revealed nothing on the street, except a ghost tour and a number of apartments. I did, however, find another haunted building and the Lovecraft story that this prompt is based on. And that is the ominously named Shunned House, on the Benefit Street.

The plot of the Shunned House is a plot based on obsession with a strange and unfortunate house. The narrator and his uncle attempt to discern the nature of the century old curse, bringing with them some exceptional weaponry and scientific equipment. When they spend the night there, however, they are visited by strange lights, ghastly faces, masses of mold, and other bizarre sights. I will not spoil the final twist of the story, but it is an unusual ghost story in that it lacks the blood, pale visions.

It is possible that our prompt instead served as the basis of The Unnameable or The House in the Mist. Either way, we are back among the lands of the dead, and the Shunned House begins us in a rather strange position.  We can find one of the historic sources of the Shunned House with the Stephen Harris House. The House was constructed over the graveyard of French Huguenots in the eighteenth century, a sure recipe for a haunting.

The actual Shunned House—the Stephen Harris House in reality—has a similar origin. It is built atop a Hugenot graveyard. A wealthy merchant, Stephen Harris, and his wife built the house, and afterwards became horribly cursed. Ships began to sink, children died, and other tragedies.  The legend goes on to say that Mrs. Harris eventually went mad, no doubt in part with grief. Most famously, when she was confined to the attic, she was heard shrieking in French—a language she didn’t know.  The house stayed in the family, falling into decay and decrepitude as the house failed to sell. By the 1920s, the street had become a slum with the haunted and crumbling house on the hill.

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2568/3828989872_011ef0d4e7_z.jpg

This is of course not the only haunted house in Rhode Island. As I’ve alluded to before, all places are haunted in the end. One along the ghost regards a Mr. Jackson. He was traveling with one Captain William Carter in the winter 1741, intending to take some furs to Boston. The captain murdered Mr. Jackson for his furs, and stuffed his body beneath the ice at Pettaquamscutt Cove. The body was eventually discovered by an eel fisher, and the good captain was brought to trial for it.

However, Mr. Jackson was not at rest. Nearby indigenous settlements were so harassed by the ghost, the village was moved to avoid him. The roads nearby then reported Mr. Jackson’s presence up until the mid 1930s—well into Lovecraft’s day.

More haunted locales, however, are also common. There is the story of the Ramtail Factory. A dispute between the owners and the night watchmen over pay resulted in the night watchmen threatening that to get the keys, they would have to take them from a dead man. Shortly after, the owners found the factory locked—and breaking in, found the watchman dead inside, hanging from the pull rope of the bell. The bell rang out every night at midnight from  that day forward. Removing the rope would not stop it—and removing the bell lead to stranger mischief, such as running the factory at full speed or turning the mill stone backwards against the water.

Smith’s Castle, courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons

A house in Wickford, built by one Richard Smith in 1639 was reportedly more haunted then could be believed. Smith’s Castle, as it is sometimes known, has a long history. Among these many ghosts were a group of indigenous people—the exact nation is not recorded—who had been captured by the settlers. In a fit of drunken cruelty, one of the settlers cut the head off a captive, sending it tumbling into a clock. Another was tarred and feathered before dying. The house had further misfortune, being the site of a suicide later on and a number of other tragedies—a mass grave for forty soldiers is nearby, and one of the owners was beheaded and placed on a pike after King Phillips War.

A strange marker of the dead, attributed to indigenous people, are scrub pines.  Each scrub pine that rises, according to local folklore, represents an unnecessary death. One farmer swore to remove each and every one of these pines that grew up in his field every year—and was warned against it by the living. Pushing on, despite the miraculous growth of some pines over night, the farmer met his end when one of the pines collapsed and fell on him.

A number of places in Providence have specific hauntings, but I’ve yet to locate sources for all of them in folklore—the best list I found was here.  As always, a haunted place is often the site of violence or death. Murders, abuse, and others result in restless dead seeking redress. Cruelty calls to the dead. In our prompt we have a second layer of the dead—one that separates it from a number of these stories. For, from Mr. Jackson to the night watchmen, most ghosts want their domain vacated. They drive people out. But here we have the dead beckoning inward. The dead welcoming, if invisible. The dead are calling.

And nameless—and I think this is key as well to the horror at play here. Most ghost stories remember the name of the ghost. Names are sometimes repeated, represented, or changed but almost all are remembered. The dead here are not only nameless but numerous—perhaps recalling the Huguenots at the Shunned House, who are known as a mass but forgotten as individuals. If anything, the strange beckoning dark reminds me of another house.  A house…well. I have spoken on that house.

I think for this story, weaving the weighted, overgrown and ancient house with the image of new life from the scrub pines might be the most fascinating route. The manifestation of ghosts and others in new life and new knowledge is a form of a horror we haven’t done yet—at least not exactly. Plant life in particular—or in the case of the Shunned House, fungus—has a clear connection to the dead. The underworld is often connected with cycles of seasons and other patterns. Persephone and Hades, as an archetypal story, connects food and vegetation with the land of the dead as does the Maya Hero Twin story.

The other bit of lore I find fascinating about the Shunned House, connecting it to a similar collapsed manor story we wrote, is the notion that the haunted house is trapped here, in this family. The curse cannot be gotten rid of, because no one will buy the land and there is nowhere else to go. Roots laid too deep to be entirely removed from the family line.

What haunted houses have you heard of or visited? What ghostly shapes have you seen, beckoning from the windows?

Bibliography

Bourgaize, Eidola Jean. Supernatural Folklore of Rhode Island. University of Rhode Island, 1956.

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The House on the Hill.

This Week’s Prompt:95. Horrible Colonial farmhouse and overgrown garden on city hillside—overtaken by growth. Verse “The House” as basis of story.

The Resulting Story:The Old House

It’s been a while since we’ve indulged in Mr. Lovecraft’s poetry. The particular poem he references, which will provide a bit more guidance to our research, seems to be one of two by Edward Arlington Robinson. One is “The House on the Hill”:

They are all gone away,
The House is shut and still,
There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.

Nor is there one to-day
To speak them good or ill:
There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stray
Around the sunken sill?
They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.

The other is along the same theme, is “The Haunted House”:

Here was a place where none would ever come
For shelter, save as we did from the rain.
We saw no ghost, yet once outside again
Each wondered why the other should be so dumb;
And ruin, and to our vision it was plain
Where thrift, outshivering fear, had let remain
Some chairs that were like skeletons of home.

There were no trackless footsteps on the floor
Above us, and there were no sounds elsewhere.
But there was more than sound; and there was more
Than just an axe that once was in the air
Between us and the chimney, long before
Our time. So townsmen said who found her there.

Both of these stories point us towards our ultimate topic—a haunted house on a hill, overgrown with time, in the United States. The term Colonial is a bit more limiting. I suspect Mr. Lovecraft was thinking of houses in New England in particular, but have expanded my research into the ghostly and and haunted to other house up through the eighteenth century. Not that the Americas have a shortage of haunted homes and houses.

Starting with the northernmost examples I have, we have tales of ghosts from Nova Scotia. A peddler murdered in a half-way house in Halifax haunts its top most room, and sounds of burial can be heard while sleeping there. In Digby, a local doctor’s collection of skeletons are haunted—and disapprove of a worker who set them up like dominoes and knocked them over. A ghost returned to his family, haunting them for three days before a priest compelled him to speak. The ghost then revealed he needed a shave before entering St. Peter’s gates.

In Indiana, there are number of old haunted homes. A number of houses are haunted by coffins not yet buried. A millionaire named Tess preserved the love of his life, even buying a fan to blow her hair and having a private generator keep the blue lights on in the room. Poor Tess seems to have lost his mind, hoarding coffins not only of his loved ones but of cats as well. In Medora, a similar story plays out with one Aseop Wilson, who’s mother insisted he not serve in the civil war. Aesop did, and of course died in battle—his body however was sealed in casket of charcoal at his mothers request, and not buried until a pyschic made contact with him years later. Despite the eventual burial, the delay appears to have attracted unseemly sorts as the house, as white wraiths still appear and moan in the old decaying ruin of the place.

Downtown Terre Haute, the town home to the Preston House (well. Whats left of it.)

The Preston House has a number of ghosts ascribed to it. One is of a woman, who came with a man from New Orleans. When she refused to divorce him, she went missing on a trip to her family—the servants at the house were convinced she had been buried in the walls. Another group of ghosts came from the Underground Railroad—although the informant claims the railroad was literally underground. As a number of slaves were escaping, the tunnel caved in on both ends. The house’s owners tried their best to excavate the tunnel, but needed to move slowly to not draw the authorities attention. Sadly, all the slaves died—and their spirits still lurk in the house, chains shaking as they wait.

In Koleen, a rotten woman died when her hair caught fire—the product burned fast, and her shouting fed the flames to burn faster. To this day you can see her burn once a year, an event marked by increasingly ominous signs and weather until the day of.

The Hill House of Rockville is probably the most relevant of the houses in Indiana—and perhaps the most humorous. The owner, a wealthy man judging by the size of the house, passed on. And as they say, where there is a will there is a long line of eager relatives. His entire extended family came and spent the night before the funeral there. The next day they awoke and learned that all of their clothes had been removed, and placed in the high branches of the trees outside. Truly a terrifying experience!

The Shoals of Maine provide many haunted ruins as well. A pair of violent drunken pirates argue along the shore, in the burnt ruins of a home. A woman waits still for her husband, who left for the sea ages past. He promised to return, but alas, if legend is believed it was none other then old Teach, Blackbeard himself! She wanders on the shore still, her clothes flowing behind her and mumuring darkly at any movement on the waters. A hanged man walks the shore as well, in a bloody butchers apron and with a long knife. This set is made complete with a monk. The monk, a black robed hooded figure, only appears when the sea growls and the wind blows—a gale is coming, and he prays along the shore for those men who will join him in the here after.

In New York state, we have the Sutton house. This house fits our description almost perfectly, as a shambling house that cannot be seperated from the woods around it. The house was home to a family of three—the mysterious Mr. Sutton, his wife, and his daughter. They lived apart from the rest of the commmunity, and rumors persisted that Mr. Sutton abused his wife. Shortly after their arrival, Mrs. Sutton died of an illness—and had a closed casket funeral. Her daughter vanished, to live with an aunt in England (although others suspected she too had been slain by her father). Mr. Sutton persisted for some time, but he too vanished. The story continues, that as the place fell into ruin, women were seen walking the grounds with their throats slit. On the anniversary of Mrs Sutton’s funeral, Mr. Sutton’s form was seen digging a grave. A distant relation did eventually move into the house after the Revolutionary war. As the day was short, he stuffed all his belongings into a small room and went to bed. On his first night, his sleep was disturbed by the sounds of a great and terrible struggle. It sounded as if china was being shattered in a struggle between a man and a woman—but no damage had been done to his good. He learned, however, from some letters that the room his cookery was in was the room the young Ms. Sutton stayed—and at last the fate of the girl was confirmed.

Schoharie village, from Wikimedia Commons.

In the Schoharie hills, New York, we have other stories of hauntings. One informants mother was asked to watch the house of a suspected murderer. The old man was accused of having done away with several peddlers and others. On her first night, a strange image of a dog appeared. Next one of the man’s victims appeared, headless. He demanded to be buried—his body was under the floor boards—and to see the man hung. This ghost had the decency to make his court date as well, and testify. Another house had a room of such fright, that any animal placed in there fled or perished.

For each of these I’ve mentioned, I’ve ommited about a dozen others. The tales of hauntings are very similar—doors fly open, loud sounds with no origin, sudden bursts of light and fire, strange headless apparitions. Often they are the sight of a heinous crime, other times merely…present. Some even occur before the death of their victims!

So we know what a haunted house looks like, sounds like, feels like. We know that sensation, late at night, on the edge of sleep, and hearing a strange creaking sound not far off. And it isn’t hard to build a story of all sorts around a haunted ruin—places of palatable dread and uncanny, that are somewhere between wild and constructed. That ruins are haunted is nothing new. Sumerian demons dwell in those great collapsed buildings unprotected. But the hill poem asks an interesting question. What makes us stop and pause?

The poem calls out the lack. There are no lights, no specters, no sounds. There is a profound nothing. No one is left, and we don’t even have the nature of these nobodies. Why then do we stop and stray, at this ruin on the hill? An answer might be for treasure buried deep or for thrills. Maybe to find shelter in a storm. There are many reasons to end up in a place we don’t want to be.

This doesn’t feel like a monster story. This doesn’t feel like a story with jump scares and shaking buildings. This is a more atmospheric piece. Perhaps, our narrators are looking for someone, something. Some closure at least. Who knows why one might end up, like the nameless Sutton, in an old family home.

And find no one there.

This reminds me of one other haunting—one I discussed here. I will have to think on it some, to build this one. What stories of the dead places have you heard?

Bibliography

Baker, Ronald L. Hoosier Folk Legends. Indiana University Press. 1982

Beck, Horace Palmer. The Folklore of Maine. J.B. Lippincott. 1957

Garner, Emelyn Elizabeth. Folklore From the Schohaire hills, New York. University of Michigan Press. 1937

Fauset, Arthur. Folklore of Nova Scotia. New York, American Folk-lore society, G.E. Strechet and Co. 1931.

Pryer, Charles. Reminiscences of an old Westchester homestead. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1897.

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The Ground Under Your Feet

This Week’s Prompt: 40. Warning that certain ground is sacred or accursed; that a house or city must not be built upon it—or must be abandoned or destroyed if built, under penalty of catastrophe.

This Weeks Story:The Wedding of the Oberhrrescher, Part 1,The Wedding of the Oberherrschers, Pt 2

The idea of sacred and cursed spaces is one that has a large deal of weight in folklore and myth. Culturally, the notion is found often in religious centers and temples. A large number of temple complexes, both in the Middle East and in Mesoamerica. Ziggurats and pyramids are raised over sacred spaces, forming layers of holiness one on top of the other. While the exact qualities of a sacred space vary from place to place, they generally follow common themes. Mesoamerican civilizations preferred caves, Mesoptamian ziggurats reflected mountain tops, and so on.

Ziggurat

Sacred spaces are often places that connect to divinity, and as such—despite the prompt—are often occupied to one degree or another. There are a few places that are too sacred, often believed to disturb or anger the inhabitants of the area if built upon. This notion still has folklore roots, particular in areas that are considered haunted.

The cause of hauntings is…well, very common across regions. Typically, places that are haunted, drawing from these lists, are the sites of terrible crimes. Particular favorites that we talked about here and here, are murder and suicide. Tragedies often resonate and inhabit the buildings and even the space.

This is well known in the horror trope of the Indian Burial Ground, which has problems all its own. A haunting typically results in more murders, disappearances, and strange sounds. Again, here. The notion of accursed land that is built over and therefore incites vengeance is too played out for my tastes. No, I prefer to return to the notion of vengeance do to taboo violation.

Taboo is a familiar term, but in this case I mean it specifically in the anthropological sense: a rule that, if violated, invites supernatural retribution. These rules sometimes are enforced by the divine principles of the world, but other times they stand outside the divine and pursue at their own will. The Furies, for instance, do not necessarily obey Zeus and often seek to enforce the rules of hospitality and familicide on their own. Taboos extend beyond that, of course. Some include taboos against incest (a universal one), the ownership of certain items by certain people, and so forth. Constructing a living space in a taboo’ed area results in considerable more than haunting. A taboo invokes divine wrath, something more akin to the calamity fortold in the prompt.

There is also a rather obvious structure that could be followed here. We are given a rule: Do not build here. Someone violates the rule. And then there is calamity. But I think that such a structure wouldn’t fit in the 1500-3000 word limit I am attempting to maintain. Rather, I think the calamity is the focus, for a number of reasons.

Firstly is the nature of buildings. They are long lasting things, generational things. Houses are haunted for years to come, old castles see generations pass by. Places become more than instants, and the vengance of gods is often long coming.

Instead, I think I will take a page from the Gothic. The Gothic is obsessed with place as a reflection of pysche, of geograhpy and buildings with symbolic value. This is both a continuation of the sacred spaces and accursed places in the prompt, and the notions of the Fisher King. In the Fisher King notion, the damage to the ruler of a land is reflected in the damage to the land. Consider how Scar, in the Lion King, rules over a wasteland that is cured upon being dethroned.

In this notion, I would suggest the terrible building, that has blasphemed against the world, has been built for a good deal of time. Abandoned and re-inhabited a few times, perhaps, as the curse strikes down inhabitants that dare claim the land. When the calamity comes, it ought to be towards the end of the lives of those who violated the curse. The victims, then, are not only those that knowing violated the pact or taboo, but their descendants who now face a reckoning. This reckoning will take the forms of gradual events, isolating and driving at the victims until they discover its ultimate cause. All too late, of course, to avoid their fated doom.

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Under the House

This Weeks Prompt: 17. Doors found mysteriously open and shut etc.—excite terror.

Research: Things Unseen

The clouds gathered over Burgany at the dawning of the day. The great clouds whirled, spiraling serpents over woods and fields. The golden corn was almost gray in their shade, Lucas thought. Rain would come, as it always did with great clouds that slipped over the looming mountain tops. The rising sun barely speared through from the blue firmament.

“It’s going to rain hard today, I can feel it,” Mrs. Lavender said from the bed, her face faded like old paper.

“Certainly looks like it.” Lucas said, looking up from the breakfast tray. He’d been taking care fo Mrs. Lavender for the last year or so. The small isolated house, far from what Mrs. Lavender called “the infernal engines” of the city, had been an adjustment. As had Mrs. Lavender. She didn’t manage the farm anymore ,and he was here to see her off, not tend to the corn. It was remarkable that the fields were mostly intact with a few years of neglect only occasionally working up through the underbrush.

“It’s going to be the big one, I can tell. My knees haven’t ached this bad in ages. No, this is going to be one for the almanac, Lu.” Mrs. Lavender said, sitting up a bit, her bones groaning with effort. The windows clattered some as she spoke, applauding her efforts.

“It’ll be bad, but nothing that huge. Big storms can’t get over the hills.” Lucas said, turning back to the silver. The winds were whipping themselves into a fury, but it wouldn’t amount to much. There was another clatter down the stairs.

“What was that? Visitors?” Mrs. Lavender said, jumping a bit.

“No, just the wind, miss.” Lucas said with a chuckle, “I’ll go get it.”

The house creaked and the pots clattered as the air wrapped around them. The door was open only a jar, not unusual for the old and flimsy frame. Lucas pulled it shut with ease, securing it with the iron locks and fasts. Turning to clean up the cooking, however, Lucas saw something peculiar. The wall was jutting out some.

“Mrs. Lavender, looks like the paneling was damaged by the wind. Going to hammer it down real quick, okay?” Lucas shouted, digging through the cabinets for some nails and the hammer. As he rested the first nail, he felt the panel give more.Putting everything down, he gripped it. There was a hole behind it. Moving the paneling back and forth, he heard the scraping of hinges.

Furrowing his brow, Lucas pulled the panel open. On the other side was a hall, descending down someways before suddenly turning left. Biting his lip, Lucas left the door and went upstairs.

“Mrs. Lavender, how many basements do you have?” Lucas asked, packing up the tray. Mrs. Lavender looked at him, as if he had asked how many suns were in the sky.

“Just the one, Lu, just the one. Why?”

“I think I might have found an old closet or something then. Just a sec, Miss, going to see what’s down there –” Lucas said, cut off by the slam of a door. Blinking rapidly, Lucas ran down the stairs without another word. The panel was shut.

“It’s probably just the wind, Lucas.” Mrs. Lavender said. Lucas ran his fingers along the top of the top of the paneling. His fingers pushed and pulled until he found a seam. His nails gripping it as best they could, he slowly pried the door open again. A pair of sable shoes sat on the other side, neatly placed next to each other. Slowly, Lucas, backed away from the door. It was possible, he thought, that he hadn’t noticed the shoes before. It was possible, after all, for in a panic him to have missed something so innocous.

Opening the junk drawer, Lucas began looking for a flashlight. There were more chords than he thought he’d seen before though he might have become more perceptive lately. As he looked, he heard the pitter patter of rain dancing on the roof, the start of the storm. Grabbing the flashlight, Lucas headed down as thunder boomed over head.

The passage way was short, going down what felt like only ten or twenty feet. The room at the bottom was well lit, to Lucas’s suprise. A table was laid out, with silverware next to porcelain plates and candles lit. Book shelves lined the walls, and doors at every wall. A coat hanger was slumped next to it, and a dripping trench coat rested on it. Who ever lived here had been outside recently.

Lucas grabbed one of the silver candlesticks as he moved through the rooms. Down here, the storm couldn’t be heard, so with only his heart beat as company, Lucas slipped between doors. There was a bed room of sorts, with a hammock and a large lavish red chair, almost entirely cushion. A book lay open beside it, on a small wooden desk. Lucas drew near, hoping for a clue to the strangers identity, or at least their nature.

The book’s pages were neat and orderly, perfectly pale pieces of paper no dobut from a modern printer. Not a word of english was on their pages, nor any language that Lucas knew. Flicking through the pages, he saw writing that sprialed, that ran both left to right and right to left. Sometimes it seemed upside down, other times a rainbow of colors crossed the pages. As he skimmed, he heard the pitter patter of what he thought was rain, dismissing it as the new mystery pulled him closer. For at last he found something he recognized.

A sketch, by a swift and sure hand, of a woman. A number of them, actually, about twenty faces engraved in the book, with a silhouette and notes beside them. Lucas only dimly recognized Mrs. Lavender at first, as the initial faces were from her youth. But as the wind howled overhead, he found the latest drawing and the rough image of Mrs. Lavender, aged as she was, stared back at him. More notes in swirling script, punctuated by jagged arrows and what must have been punctuation marks.

And then he heard the door slam above him again. Lucas stood frozen, terrified now that a hundred eyes might spy from a hidden door somewhere. Blowing out the candle, he slowly snuck around to the entrance. A hunched over shadow moved across the floor of the dining hall, slowly like a cloud rolling over a field. The form coughed and mumbled to itself. There was a clang of a cup being overturned on the table. Lucas waited until the shadow hobbled away, only to hear another clattering sound.

A second shadow, tall and with long fingers came hopping down. Water dripped around it, as it’s owner tossed a long jacket on the rack.

“Rain keeps coming, don’t it?” one voice, tired and raspy said.

“It’ll be bad for the ladies crops it will.” the other, which judging from the shadows, was the second man, replied.

“To think we’ll finally get some peace and quiet down here then! I could hear her wheezing, and I swear the reaper was pacing the foot of her bed.”

“Might still be, Wort. Don’t know how long he takes.”

“Ah, maybe if we let the crows in again. They’d clean her out.”

“I still think there was no need for that. Its fine below. No need for fields down here, nice and cozy.”

“She’s stopped buying food, Lee! Got that youngin doing it instead, and he buys terrible meal. Ought to send the maggots after him, run him right out.”

Another slam of the door. Lucas glanced up, as the steps creaked again.

“Oh hush it with the both of you. It won’t wash her away, nothing to be done about it. We’ll just wait till until it’s clear, and leave her in the fields.”the new voice said irritably. The shadow he cast was wider than the other two, and his head was like a big dogs.

“Patience didn’t get us nothing.” the second voice said.

“It got us rain, and rain got us lots.” The first voice replied.

“Quiet! Both of you, want to wake the old wretch up? Come on, we needs to be praying around now. After that, with calmer minds, we’ll talk about it.”

And with that, they wondered off, their steeps squishing and sloshing as they went. Lucas slowly rose, and peaked around the wall at the room. The shadows had moved on, but there coats were long leathery things, with some odd stiching and the occasional potted hole. Slowly he climbed the stairs, now hearing every creak and feeling every crack in the steps. He opened and closed the door carefully, to best avoid the slamming sound.

Setting foot on the solid surface floor again, Lucas heard the howling wind. The pattering of the rain. And the occasional crack of thunder. It occurred to him then, that the wind did not sound like the howls he heard below, that the rain above pittered and pattered differently than it sounded below. And as he approached Mrs. Lavender’s room, it occurred to him how different the slam of the door sounded from the peal of thunder.

**

A bit pulpy and unfinished of a corpse it seems. I think we must return to the home of Mrs.Lavender some day. What about you? What did you dredge up?

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The House In the Mangroves

http://wileywileywiley.blogspot.com/2012/11/blog-post_16.html

This Week’s Prompt:13. House and garden—old—associations. Scene takes on strange aspect.

The Research: Home and Hearth

There’s a House beneath the Mangrove trees, up on the northern hill. The Homeowners Association should do something. Its an old house, been there since the sixties. Square top, square walls. The man who owns it, strange man, is old. Old and private, staring out with only one eye. Occasionally he has the decency to wear an eye patch. Sometimes he has no decency at all, and slips around the yard stark naked at night.

But the lawn is the travesty, dead brown grass stabbing up through the rocky ground. The mangroves, they make these great swooping arcs over it all. Birds like to crap on them, and sometimes it looks like a snow storm has swept through. Something really should be done, with that chic statues outside. Big smiling faces sitting on cupids. A few hunched over dog-men are placed around. They smell, the neighbors say, like formaldehyde.

The house has three floors, all with windows. Windows wide open. They always glow faint blue, and you can hear from the street the sounds of old commercials for Warbonds and football games between the static. On Saturday’s its cartoons, Looney Toons and local broadcast cartoons. The kind of cartoons that have big talking ships or strange rubber suited monsters. At least, that’s what the kids say.

Mr. Leman says there are puppets in the closet, near the crates of rat poison. Of course, in this town, it’s foolish to forget the rat poison. Rodents and pests Even if it accidentally kills a pet, like the fluff of fur in the driveway of the house. Someone should clean it up, its beginning to rot and no one wants flies. They get nasty, nipping at your feet like mosquito.

The garden in the back is well kept, large green bushes blocking out the flowers. There white, ashen things. The mangrove trees sometimes starve them, but mostly their fine. There are rat bodies in the roots, the help says. Suppose it makes good fertilizer.

He has red skin, and the doctor says his veins are bursting with blood. His blood presumably. The doctor didn’t say. The garden is well kept, lined and orderly. Some nights he snoops around, shining lights into the sky. The light pollution is intolerable. Maybe he’s signaling something. Planes or wolves in the woods. The children say they see things moving out there. Probably rats.

The Homeowners association wants to talk to him about his cars. Their old, rusting things, lumps of metal with rubber wheels. He doesn’t answer the door, but he takes in all his mail. And he gets a lot of mail. The post officer says its mostly magazines. Letters too, never packages. He plasters his windows with them sometimes.

Some men from Indonesia visit the house regularly. They stay up all night in the blue lit rooms watching television. They never drive, but don’t walk their either. Just there sometimes. Something really should be done.

He had chains and barbed wire delivered once. The convenience store owner saw him taking dirt out of the basement. Needs more room, he said. Needs more room. The state should investigate, if your allowed to do things like that.

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Home and Hearth

This Weeks Prompt:13. House and garden—old—associations. Scene takes on strange aspect.

Resulting Story: The House In the Mangroves

What Mr. Lovecraft has proposed for us here is an interesting scene, perhaps. A home slowly warped by time serves as something of the plot to ‘Color out of Space’, and certainly haunted houses and creeping abodes are common enough. Why, we’ve already had a few corpses speak of them already, with Zinge’s strange house and the terrible abode of the vampire.

But this is a more civilized place, judging by the fact that it has a garden. The first format that springs to mind is the age old ‘country house poem’ which is, admittedly, antiquated but contains the necessary structure that can be bent to the purpose. Alas, if we go that route, I must admit my incompetence at poetry.

There is more of course. Firstly, is this a home or simply a house? A home is inhabited, I think, and the recounting of a peculiar boy (or girl) hood home might be a nice twist on it. Talking of summer vacations in Innsmouth or the like. Further, there is the ability for some old tenet to wander through the garden, and muse on how times have changed the place (No doubt, given our source author, for the worse).

A house meanwhile has all the strangeness of the unknown, a place where insight must be gleaned through the senses. It therefore has something of a mystery to it. It isn’t as obvious all the terrible things that could happen there, or have happened there. The inhabitants themselves become a piece of the strange puzzle.

A Lovely Vacation Site

As for the format, it seems by nature mostly expository. I don’t think this will be terribly problematic, and in fact could be modeled like the Tom Waits song ‘What’s He Building in There?’.  There is unlikely to be a shocking reveal, but instead a gradual increase in atmosphere, a density that is hopefully choking by the end.

Now, what element of horror could we locate? There is something like what we did last week, with gradual revelation of strangeness. Indeed a house lends itself to this quite naturally. The basements and attics are always full of terrible deeds and treasures, the closest always skeletons, and the bedrooms damned deeds. But if we are going to do that, we must keep some element of surprise. I recommend, then, we build our story like a house, with a central hub connected to seemingly disparate parts. Bit by bit we drop the pieces, unrelated at first, but binding slowly over time, until the last terrible truth is shown with something so simple as say, a doll.

Of course, there is also the notion of a haunting, a terrible ghostly presences still remnant in the house. Ghosts will no doubt take a primary role latter in our list, and as such, we will leave a full discussion of their lore until then. But for the mean time, an eldritch or haunted house is a classic archetype which could be built on. Stephen King, the Simpsons, Edgar Allen Poe, and more illustrious individuals have toyed with the notion, most recently with the House of Leaves.  Most influential on myself was Monster House, a strange film to say the least which scarred me out of Halloween as a child.

The difficulty with such a prolific form, however, is that it is rife with cliché. We certainly, as proper necromancers, cannot bury a loved one in the walls or foundation. We cannot have some noxious beating noise, should avoid mass murders as the cause of haunting (particularly of children thanks to a certain franchise) and  suicides do to lost of loved ones. These have been played with endlessly, and with a limit on space, we do not have time for good reversal. A nebulous force of malice in the house may be do to something else, some other odd occurrence (perhaps simply a visit from a strange man? A seance that draws a long dead ghost to the place? Some unexplained unease?) is far preferable.

With that in mind, hopefully next week we will have something homely and domestically produced for you. What would you do, with such a place?

I’d like to also take a moment and recommend Lovecraftian Science, a wonderful blog which I will be certainly consulting for the more scientific side of things. The image of Innsmouth was found at their lovely site.

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