essay about scary house

A scary house - descriptive essay

samuraitom 23 / 18   Sep 23, 2007   #1 Prompt was to describe a place. I think I did a good job with that. I tried not to use too many "I" but that proved to be a bit difficult. I'm trying to get rid of all the vague sentence starters that my teacher informed me about. 1) Is my thesis statement ok? 2) Is my conclusion alright? Critique as always, please. The Scary House As I stood, gazing at the dilapidated house. I shivered, as though, ice had replaced my spine. The cold air enveloped the entire body. The multiple layer of clothing could not protect against the deathly cold. The walkway leading up to house were cracked. Weeds and dandelions poked out from these cracks. Red roses grown wildly in thick batches by the gate. The moonlight cast a ghoulish glow on the house. Vines formed a twisted maze upon the side of house, reaching their tentacles towards the roof. The house's walls showed black decay by neglect. Splotches of original paint hinted at the house former prosperity. Cobwebs covered the corners of the doors, tiny black spiders threading towards their prey. The house is fit for the kings and queens of the supernatural. The door begrudgingly creaked open. A musty, dank order creep into my nose. The house was dead silence except for the intermittent creaks and moans. Black and brown mold dotted the ceiling in clusters, evident of rain seeping through the roof. I quietly entered the dark living room. Windows covered with grime and dirt, the calm moonlight struggled to penetrate the darkness in thin thread rays. Sharp shadows roamed around the room. The sofa and chairs overturned revealing deep grooves on the ground where they used to sit. Wallpaper lay curled on the floor. A large jagged hole dug through the wall stood as though daring any to enter. Picture frames hanged off-centered. Sharp shadows roamed around the room. A misplaced grand bookcase stood the corner of the room, undisturbed for a long time. Selecting the correct book could reveal a secret doorway into a labyrinth. I made my way back into the hallway, a slimmer of light came from behind a door. I approached and opened the door. I had reached the bathroom. The single window was mildly dirty, a flood of light flowed into the room. Dust swirled around the room as I made my way inside. The medicine cabinet mirror lay shattered in pieces on the floor tile. Empty medicine bottle lay in the porcelain sink. The only sound to be heard is the drip, drip of the faucet. A closer look revealed the discoloration of the water, a brownish concoction. A lone mouse stood sentry at the bottom of the tub. Never having a visitor in a while, it curiously eyed me before scuttling away. Approaching the bathtub, a violent odor made it way to my nose. Pinching my nose, I leaned over and peered inside. Crusty rags filled the bathtub, little hints of movement underneath them. It would be unadvisable to see what is under the rags. I arrived at the foot of the staircase. I stood and peered at the top, wondering when a twisted head person will crawl down and have me for dinner. I summoned strength and tiptoed my way up the stairs. Each step intensified the moaning and creaking as if the steps could collapse at any moment. I turned to the right, and met my final destination. The door did not give way easier, a forceful push was needed. Stepping inside, a dresser seem to have been pushed against the door, attempting to deny anyone entry. I could make out the silhouette of bed, edging in closer for a better look. A toy dinosaur lay missing its head on the bed. The sheet was splattered with a dark color. The wind intensified outside, the rustling of the leaves and branches were louder. In the corner, a little chair began to rock slowly. The room had once belonged to a boy. The thin strips of wallpaper showed little trucks. Crayon markings scrambled upon the wall where wallpaper used to stick. The carpet squished as I walked. Little picture frames remained facedown on the carpet. A howl echoed throughout the house. It was time to leave, I told myself. I closed the bedroom door behind as I carefully walked down the stairs. I hoped I did not disturb anything or its somber rest. I made my way outside where my group of friends was standing. They asked me what took me so long; I replied that escaping the ghosts was difficult.

Home — Essay Samples — Geography & Travel — Haunted House — My Own Experience in a Haunted House

My Own Experience in a Haunted House

• Categories: Haunted House Personal Experience

About this sample

Words: 686 |

Updated: 6 December, 2023

Words: 686 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Works Cited

• Bader, C. (2014). Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture. NYU Press.
• Dickey, C. (2016). Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places. Penguin Books.
• Hargrove, R. (2013). The Haunted House: A True Ghost Story. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
• Holzer, H. (2017). Ghosts: True Encounters from the World Beyond. Black Dog & Leventhal.
• Klinger, L. (2014). The New Annotated H.P. Lovecraft. Liveright Publishing Corporation.
• Michell, J., & Rickard, R. (Eds.). (2016). Paranormality: Why We Believe the Impossible. Overlook Press.
• Radford, B., & Nickell, J. (2012). The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead. Prometheus Books.
• Randles, J., & Hough, P. (2016). The Paranormal, the new guide to understanding and working with the unexplained. Watkins Media Limited.
• Tucker, E. (2016). Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American College Campuses. University Press of Mississippi.
• Underwood, P. (2013). Haunted London. Amberley Publishing.

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What Makes a House Feel Haunted?

Haunted houses push buttons in our brains that evolved before houses existed..

Posted November 2, 2015 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

The Haunted House is a time-honored horror setting. All of us have shivered our way through spooky flicks such as The Haunting, The Amityville Horror, The Sentinel, and Poltergeist .

It’s not only at the movies that we pay good money to frighten ourselves to death: commercial haunted houses are an integral part of 21st-century Halloween theater, with an estimated 5,000 such attractions operating in the United States each year .

The portrayal of cinematic haunted houses has remained remarkably consistent across time, and the architects of our annual macabre Halloween rituals incorporate all of the same bells and whistles (or creaks and groans) that we’ve come to expect.

From a psychological point of view, the standard features of haunted houses trigger feelings of dread because they push buttons in our brains that evolved long before houses even existed. These alarm buttons warn us of potential danger and motivate us to proceed with caution.

Haunted houses give us the creeps not because they pose a clear threat to us, but rather because it is unclear whether they represent a threat or not .

This ambivalence leaves you frozen in place, wallowing in unease.

For example, it would be considered bizarre and embarrassing to run screaming out of a house that makes you feel uneasy if there is actually nothing to fear . On the other hand, it could be perilous to ignore your intuition and remain in a place that is dangerous.

These are the psychological mechanisms behind feeling “creeped out.” They may be useful if they help you maintain vigilance when threat is uncertain. They also help you manage the balance between self-preservation and self-presentation (i.e., presenting yourself in a socially desirable way).

Large deserted buildings that once held a lot of people can provide attractive venues for a good haunting, especially if they once housed troubled populations (e.g., prisons, mental hospitals, orphanages). However, the rest of this essay will be devoted to what goes into a good old-fashioned single-family haunted house, because just as human psychology can explain what makes a haunted house so scary, it also provides the perfect guide to making one ourselves. The building blocks for such a home can be sorted into just a few categories, and the more of these ingredients a house possesses, the more terrifyingly haunted it will be.

Things that trigger our ‘agent detection’ mechanisms

Evolutionary psychologists have proposed the existence of agent detection mechanisms —or processes that have evolved to protect us from harm at the hands of predators and enemies.

If you’re walking through the woods alone at night and hear the sound of something rustling in the bushes, you’ll respond with a heightened level of arousal and attention . You’ll behave as if there is a willful “agent” present who is about to do you harm.

If it turns out to be a gust of wind or a stray cat, you lose little by overreacting. But if you fail to activate the alarm response and a true threat is present—well, the cost of your miscalculation could be very high.

Thus, we have evolved to err on the side of detecting threats in ambiguous situations. Things that activate hypervigilance for malevolent supernatural (or natural) agents abound in large, drafty old houses: rattling or creaking sounds in upstairs rooms; the sighing and moaning of wind passing through cracks; ragged curtains fluttering in the breeze; echoes; and cold spots.

Feeling Trapped

Research has consistently shown that we need more personal space while seated than while standing, more space when we are in the corner of a room rather than in the center of it and more space in rooms with low ceilings.

We feel uncomfortable when our personal space is violated anywhere, but especially so in situations where we feel as if escape will become difficult.

Such feelings of discomfort are symptomatic of the fact that we are constantly—even if unconsciously—scanning our surroundings and assessing our ability to flee if it should become necessary.

Consequently, a haunted house is our worst nightmare.

The prototypical haunted house is in a remote, isolated location, far removed from the rest of society (think of the off-season resort hotel in The Shining , for example). If bad things do happen, help would be a long time coming, even if communication with the outside world were possible. (Conveniently, in old horror movies the telephones always stop working.)

Also, the darkness and confusing layout of the house may cause us to get lost, or at the very least, slow us down. Escape could further be impeded by hedges, iron fences or crumbling stairways, all of which are featured prominently in Hollywood haunted houses.

A womb with a view

British geographer Jay Appleton was the first to describe two crucial features that determine whether a place is attractive or frightening to humans: the more “prospect” and “refuge” a place offers us, the more attractive it is.

Refuge means having a secure, protected place to hide where one can be sheltered from danger, while prospect refers to one’s clear, unobstructed view of the landscape. Attractive places offer us a lot of prospect and a lot of refuge, or what landscape architect Randolph Hester refers to as a “ Womb with a View .”

In the words of Appleton, these are, evolutionarily speaking, places where “ you can see without being seen, and eat without being eaten .”

Unfortunately, most haunted houses make for a bad combination of very low prospect for us, and very high refuge for the creepy-crawly things that are lying in wait to get us. Research has confirmed that people experience such environments as unsafe and dangerous.

Such places also lack what environmental psychologists refer to as legibility . Legibility reflects the ease with which a place can be recognized, organized into a pattern and recalled—in other words, a place that we can wander around in without getting lost.

Thus, the typical haunted house is large, dark, surrounded by overgrown vegetation, and full of surprising architectural features such as secret rooms and closets under staircases. Attics and basements are also must-have items, and, of course, spider webs, bats, rats and insects make nice accessories.

The older the better

Most haunted houses have some sort of “legend” associated with them. It usually involves a story about a grisly death or accident. There may even be a history of suicide and murder.

The older a place is, the more likely we are to perceive it as haunted because there’s been much more time for tragic things to have taken place.

Stimuli such as moldy odors, antiquated Victorian or Gothic architecture, wood interiors, and old portraits on the wall reinforce an ambiance of great age. Assuming that the house is no longer occupied, signs of life suddenly interrupted and frozen in time only amplify the fear factor.

For example, remnants of a half-eaten meal on a kitchen table or clothing laid out on a bed waiting for a homeowner who has apparently vanished without warning create a frightening ambiguity about what may have taken place in the house. (There are bonus points awarded if the house is conveniently located next to or on top of an old cemetery or burial ground!)

Ultimately, whether or not a house is perceived as haunted obviously depends upon something other than the physical features of the house. Just as important are the expectations of the person exploring the house .

Individuals who believe in paranormal phenomena and have expectations that creepy things might actually be present in such a place are more likely to engage in the sort of top-down, cognitive processing that induces fear.

For these people, otherwise innocuous but uncertain surroundings can become a chilling experience.

A slightly different version of this post also appeared in The Conversation .

Frank McAndrew, Ph.D., is the Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology at Knox College.

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A Haunted House

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