Today is the USA’s creepiest holiday, Halloween.
Oh, sure, there are cute costumes, pumpkin-spice everything, candy, harvest carnivals and bobbing for apples, but there also ghosties, ghoulies and scary noises. And, haunted places.
Houses, or interiors generally, can be haunted by entities, or they can absorb death, despair and evil themselves, radiating those back at hapless humans who enter the space.
One of my favorite haunted buildings in fiction is Hill House, in Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. This mansion has both an evil ghost and evil oozing from its wainscoting and walls.
Several decades later, the decaying “stately pile” in Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger is another brilliantly creepy example of a haunted building.
What is your favorite fictional haunted place? Let’s not limit it to buildings. Is there a haunted spaceship you love? Let us know. If you want to share a personal experience in a real-life haunted place, we’d love to read it.
One random commenter will choose a book from our Stacks.
I do think Shirley Jackson’s Hill House is a great story – much more subtle and psychological than your typical haunting tale.
BTW there’s a great set of real-life spooky stories on Ask a Manager today. My favorite was the haunted museum theater story, #4 in the list. Fascinating and chilling! https://www.askamanager.org/2019/10/has-anything-spooky-happened-to-you-at-work.html
I just went and read that one… That’s pretty scary. It’s possible he just had a dizzy spell, but that wouldn’t explain the sounds he heard. And then the question becomes, what caused the dizzy spell?
Hogwarts, because the ghosts are friendly and serve as mascots for the school houses.
Hogwarts would definitely be my kind of haunted house! Or castle, as the case may be.
I have to go with Hogwarts. It’s haunted but the ghosts aren’t scary.
Yes, helpful ghosts are always nice!
The Murder House in “American Horror Story” is pretty comfortable. If you’re a ghost and your family is with you.
Well, the Overlook Hotel is obvious but still I”d say a great choice. And I like the uniquenes of David Mitchell’s Slade House.
The Overlook is genuinely scary.
George Martin wrote a haunted spaceship, the Nightflyer in “Nightflyers”.
For a haunted spaceship it is hard to beat the Event Horizon.
And then there’s always Space Station Three – Carmen Miranda’s ghost is far friendlier.
Event Horizon was a pretty chilling haunted ship!
I will say the town of Seaburgh, from the M.R. James story “A Warning to the Curious,” since that’s very scary!
I agree the Nightflyer would be terrifying!
Not just a spirit but a vengeful one.
Becky Ashwell, if you live in the USA, you win a book of your choice from our stacks.
Please contact me (Marion) with your choice and a US address. Happy reading!