Haunted

Sometimes the house where a scary story unravels itself is portrayed as having human characteristics. That is to say that the house has feelings and malignant intentions: it is not simply an inanimate object that suffers in silence as its paint peels and neglected water pipes rust: or that it remains an unaffected bystander after eye witnessing a horrible murder within its walls. The house in THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, for example, is depicted in the movies and even in books with two bright, slice-of-pie windows in the upper level of the house that resemble creepy orbs like a jack-o’-lantern’s or a maniac’s eyes. HILL HOUSE Shirley Jackson’s novel, is often described as “watching” the members of the psychic research team; Eleanor, Theodora, Dr. John Montague, et-al, and “waiting’’ and even deliberately pranking them or playing tricks on them like opening and closing doors or leaving unexplained puddles of water.

To assign human emotions and moods or evil shenanigans and wicked deeds to inanimate objects is what’s known as the pathetic fallacy. Clouds are certainly not “gloomy” in their amorphous hearts or misty minds: and the sun is certainly not “cheery”: although the former and latter may appear so. It is easy enough to research: a 19th Century British philosopher and writer coined the phrase, pathetic fallacy. A house, or any other inanimate object, no matter how dark, creepy, and intimidating it may be in physical appearance and atmospheric mood: lacks the consciousness and intelligence to launch an evil blitzkrieg and attack its inhabitants. Although, it certainly seems that in Shirley Jackson’s novel: Hill House allegedly does precisely that.

To be sure, the significant factor in tales of haunted houses is the mental and or emotional states of the character or cast of characters. In Stephen King’s THE SHINING, there may be a lot of weird and suspect activity in the Stanley Hotel, but it is Jack Torrance, the main character’s mental fragility that tunes in to and materializes all of the psychic disturbances.

Hey, the stagnated imagination of a writer tormented by writer’s block can be a terrifying thing... and conjure up some equally ghastly jitters.

Nevertheless, and despite all my knowing and understanding of such, I could not help but feel that the house on the corner of North Pecos and Housley was giving me unapproving glances. It certainly seemed to me to present itself with an air of prickliness intended to keep me away... or warn me off... or piss me off, maybe.

It was a small house with a garage attached to the kitchen on the Housley side so whoever lived there could go to and from without being exposed to the elements. It was constructed of brick and painted over at least once or twice in its seventy or eighty-year lifespan: first with a sort of off-white, and then later with pale green. Most of the paint had worn off the brick closest to the ground so that patches of the original terracotta color peeked through.

An old, crumbling river rock fence that looked like bad teeth in a crooked smile surrounded the yard. Someone, at some point, had replaced the windows throughout the house and left the price tags with dimensions and costs still adhered to each piece of glass. In the yard, behind the house, a new-looking air-conditioning unit was almost totally concealed in tall yellowish grass and patches of brush. A fire pit constructed of the same rock as the fence also stood in the backyard, empty except for a few pieces of ancient charcoal and maybe some scorched chicken bones.

With the house empty and the yard so overgrown with grass and weeds, it was starkly unlike the Amityville Horror House, locally known as Oakwood Manor, a Queen Anne Victorian home built in the late 19th century with an extremely pleasant exterior to gaze upon. The house in this tale was an old dwelling constructed with many others like it in a suburban development during a population boom and certainly no longer pleasant to gaze upon because of the disrepair, but also perhaps because of architectural design.

The exterior door to the kitchen looked like an elongated vertical mouth instead of a mouth that runs side to side laterally. And one of the kitchen windows was smaller than the other window making the “face” of the house appear disproportionate and almost like a cruel or mocking Picasso-esque caricature of aardvark’s face... or something.

There was some neighborhood scuttlebutt that the last tenants had been drug dealers and Satan worshipers and done unspeakable things in the house and listened to Black Sabbath all the time, particularly Iron Man and Children of the Grave cranked up as loud as they could get it, over and over again. They scratched hellish drawings and fiendish symbols into the walls, supposedly in animal blood. They did so much damage before the owner could finally force them out that the interior needed major renovation once they were gone: and of course: the devilish tenants put a curse on the place, either out of vengeance or just for the hell of it.

The owner reportedly was compelled to spend thousands of dollars to get the place back into good repair again but eventually managed to, and even lived in it for a while with his family before suddenly, without a word or explanation, vacated. And although he kept possession of the property, he was not seen on or near the property for years.

It made no sense to me or anyone else that the owner would go to so much trouble to restore the home and improve it and then leave it suddenly; abandoned it! Why not just sell it?

Why not just sell it?

I suppose I worked a bit of disapproval and displeasure into my face at what I saw each time I passed. And, I suppose, that eventually, I began to feel at least that the house sensed my antipathy and deflected or reflected or shot it back at me or something. I have often seen a dog and a cat stand and stare at one another, almost paralyzed, waiting for the other to commit the first act of hostility upon the other. That is what I fancied, after a while, that that is how the house and I considered one another.

It is sort of a tradition or trope or literary conceit or whatever of ghost stories that they launch into the tale with a vivid description of the house and land where the spooky stuff occurs. And I have venerated that belletristic ritual somewhat and briefly. However, in many terrifying yarns, the best qualities and most rhapsodic recollections of the idyllic seasons of the estate are first presented: that is to say that the stories begin with a description of the beautiful flower gardens with hummingbirds flitting about and bunny rabbits hopping across the manicured lawn. Of course, that is not what has been set forth here. And it is essential to note that the tale does not commence exactly at North Pecos and Housley in Midland, Texas but at another property where I lived many years in Los Angles, California, and presided as the property manager and where I was first formally inducted into the somewhat arcane society of the initiated.