Haunted houses are believed to be inhabited by spirits of the dead. The hauntings are manifested in a variety of ways and may include strange noises or disembodied voices, cold spots, unexplained smells such as tobacco or perfume, orbs, and sightings of ghostly apparitions. Sometimes items of furniture or decorations will move without explanation, or lights will turn on and off for no apparent reason. Haunted houses are typically envisioned as old Gothic-style mansions, but they come in a wide variety of shapes, sizes, and ages.
People who investigate haunted houses and other structures are called paranormal investigators, or ghost hunters. Investigators use a variety of scientific instruments and techniques to help prove or debunk hauntings, such as electronic voice recorders, temperature gauges, electromagnetic frequency (EMF) detectors, and full-spectrum video and still cameras.
Haunted houses may include two categories of hauntings: residual and intelligent. According to investigators, residual hauntings are like a recording that plays back at intermittent intervals. Any apparition or sounds credited to a residual haunting are just recorded messages. One explanation for how residual hauntings originate is that the energy radiated by a person during a time of extreme emotional duress, such as a violent death, may imprint itself into objects, including the house itself. Another explanation is that repeated events, such as opening and closing doors, can also leave energy behind.
The energy that is thus created from emotions or repeated actions can be stored in a house’s magnetic field, and the energy can build up over time until something triggers it to be released. Paranormal investigators believe that houses constructed from stone, especially porous rock such as limestone, function like batteries to provide energy for residual hauntings, which can manifest as apparitions, smells, or sounds. Water sources are also credited with providing energy for hauntings.
Intelligent hauntings can include spirit hauntings and entity hauntings. Spirits are ghosts of dead people who are somehow prevented from moving on to the afterlife. Some investigators think that ghosts have unfinished business in the world of the living, or that the ghost does not know that it is dead. In addition to manifestations as sights, sounds, and smells, ghosts are thought to be able to interact with living people and may even be able to touch them. A ghost may also be able to physically alter its environment by moving or throwing objects, and by turning lamps on or off.
Some believe that hauntings are manifestations of the activity of nonhuman spirits, called entities. Entities comprise a category of supernatural beings such as demons and elementals. Like ghosts, entities can interact with the living and alter their environment. Some entities are malevolent and can scratch people or make them feel sick.
The Whaley House in San Diego, California, circa 1965. Built in 1857 for the Whaley family, this structure was designated the most haunted house in America by the television show America’s Most Haunted. (Harvey Meston/Archive Photos/Getty Images)
There are many reports of haunted houses in America. Some of the most famous haunted houses are the Edgar Allan Poe house in Baltimore, Maryland; the Jenny Wade House in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California; the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana; and the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Former president Abraham Lincoln’s ghost is said to haunt the White House in Washington, D.C. Famous guests who stayed in the Lincoln bedroom said they heard knocks on the door or saw Lincoln’s apparition. The sightings began a few years after Lincoln’s assassination and continue to be reported.
While many people believe that the Edgar Allan Poe house in Baltimore is haunted, there are few who believe that it is Poe who is doing the haunting. The house was built in 1830 and has had many residents over the years. People report seeing a candlelight move from the first floor up to the attic, and doors and windows open and close by themselves. Guests in the house have reported being tapped on the shoulder and others have heard voices.
According to local tradition, the LaLaurie mansion, located in the French Quarter in New Orleans, Louisiana, is haunted by the ghosts of former slaves. In 1832, Louis LaLaurie, a doctor, moved into the house with his wife, Delphine Macarty LaLaurie. The lavishly appointed house was well kept by a large group of slaves, but slaves seemed to go missing on a fairly regular basis, and rumors about Madame’s mental health began to circulate. Then a neighbor witnessed Delphine chasing a young slave girl with a whip. When the girl climbed onto the roof and leaped to her death, Delphine tried to cover it up. On April 10, 1834, a kitchen fire broke out at the LaLaurie house that was set by a slave woman to attract the attention of the authorities. Firefighters responding to the blaze found her shackled to the stove, and when they went upstairs they discovered a torture chamber. Slaves were chained to the walls and strapped to tables; many were nude and some were dead, their rotting carcasses left where they lay. Others were mutilated and confined in small cages. An angry mob drove the LaLauries out of town after newspapers published reports of the grisly crimes, but the house remains haunted by the cries and screams of agony of the tortured slaves. Apparitions of slaves are seen walking about the grounds, and some witnesses report being attacked by a slave in chains.
In southwestern Illinois, the Villisca Axe Murder House has gained a reputation as a haunted house. In 1912, eight people were killed in the house by an assailant wielding an axe. The crime has never been solved. Paranormal investigators have recorded disembodied voices and heard footsteps and laughter, as well as seeing dark masses and doors slamming on their own.
Some haunted houses are considered dangerous places to enter, such as the Bell Witch house, which was located in Tennessee close to the Kentucky state line. In 1817, John Bell and his family lived in the farmhouse. One day Bell shot a dog in his fields, but the animal disappeared and no body was found. Soon afterwards, the family began hearing scratching noises, knocks, and bangs. The Bells scoured their home for rats but found none. Blankets and sheets were mysteriously pulled off the beds and the children reported having their hair pulled. They had rocks thrown at them when they walked to school, and the daughter, Betsy, heard a disembodied voice. The entity was named the Bell Witch, and John was the focus of most of her attacks. He became sick with a mysterious illness and nearly died when the family discovered that his medicine had been swapped with poison. John died on December 19, 1820, and after that the haunting decreased in intensity but did not go away. Eventually, neighbors burned the house to prevent the haunting from spreading to their own homes.
Haunted houses and ghost tourism have become a large industry in America, with entrepreneurs and museum docents offering house tours and walking tours. Some haunted house tours focus on the history of the building and its former occupants and treat the haunting as folklore or legend. Others, such as the Whaley House in San Diego, known as the most haunted house in America, offers guests the opportunity to use paranormal investigation tools and engage in an actual ghost hunt.
Stories about haunted houses encourage people to take an interest in a building and its past occupants, while the fees collected from house tours help support the efforts of preservationists and public historians. Haunted houses and the stories of their occupants have provided ample material for books, poems, art, and films.
One of the most famous haunted house stories is the Amityville Horror. In 1979, the book The Amityville Horror: A True Story was published, based on events that happened to the Lutz family in their Amityville, New York, home. The family knew that murders had been committed in the house, so they had a priest bless the home in mid-December 1975, the same day they moved in. Disturbing events began almost immediately and included swarms of flies, cold spots, foul smells, sounds of the front door slamming and eerie music, green slime on the hallway walls, and unexplained bite marks and scratch marks on family members. The Lutz family moved out on January 14, 1976.
A series of books and films have been made about the Amityville house since the publication of the first book, as well as a number of documentaries investigating the hauntings. Allegations of fraud and legal proceedings have surrounded the house and its former occupants, but the hauntings continue to hold the public’s interest.
Classical haunted house stories include Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book The House of the Seven Gables, as well as modern stories such as Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Stephen King’s novels Rose Red and The Shining.
Skeptics argue that haunted houses do not exist, and the manifestations in them can be explained by science. Buildings creak with a change in temperature or atmospheric pressure, such as a falling barometer before a storm, and it is possible that these noises may be mistaken for footsteps. Many apparitions or orbs can be explained as illusions, and some haunted-house critics believe that chemicals in buildings, including pesticides, mold toxins, or carbon monoxide, may be the cause of the hallucinations, headaches, and fatigue that are commonly reported in haunted houses.
Karen S. Garvin
See also Amityville Hauntings; Bell Witch; LaLaurie House; Scary Stories; Whaley House; Winchester Mystery House
Further Reading
Bailey, Dale. 1999. American Nightmares: The Haunted House Formula in American Popular Fiction. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Blum, Deborah. 2006. Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life after Death. New York: Penguin.
Long, Carolyn Morrow. 2012. Madame Lalaurie: Mistress of the Haunted House. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.
Newman, Rich. 2011. Ghost Hunting for Beginners: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started. Woodbury, MN: Llewellyn.
Roberts, Nancy. 1998. Haunted Houses: Chilling Tales from 24 American Homes. 3rd ed. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press.
Haunted Houses—Primary Document
Legend of the Haunted House of Hartford, Kentucky (1911)
Practically every village, town, and city in the United States has a local legend of a haunted house or even many of them. In this newspaper article from 1911, the author recalls his younger days in Hartford, Kentucky, and investigates the story of the Sam Smith house, which locals claimed was haunted. The article illustrates the way a person’s education, social class, and even racial identity influenced how these stories were received and understood.
HAUNTED HOUSE NEAR HARTFORD
And How It Got Its Name Many Years Ago.
OLD NEGRO’S MYTHICAL STORY
Reminisces of Old Days When “Haunted Houses” Were Common.
THE BAN LONG SINCE REMOVED
Editors Herald:—As but a few now living ever heard of the return to this house of the weird spirits of its deceased occupants and their nightly visits to this home of haunts, as told many years ago by the ignorant and superstitious persons of that time, perhaps the story of the haunted house on the Morgantown road, as It was told sixty-five years ago, may interest the readers of The Herald, as many of them never heard of a Hartford ghost story before.
One mile from the court house in Hartford, on what was known many years ago as the Morgantown road but [is] now known as the Hartford and Beaver Dam turnpike, is a country residence that to pass it after dark by the small white boys or some of the older colored population, was a terror of that time. How the house came to be known as the “haunted house” or at what time it became thus known to the believers in ghost stories, was never known by the superstitious of that time.
The house is a brick one, built [to] the plan of a well-to-do citizen of that time, is one and a-half stories high, fronts the road and is about far enough from the road to start an old time ghost story from. From what I learned at Hartford when I was a small boy, Sam Smith, the owner of the farm and builder of the house, was a prominent man of that time and died before he finished the house. He appears to have had a desire to be long remembered and on the stone sills of the front windows are these words in bold relief: “Sam Smith, 1840,” which can yet be read by a careful observer from the road.
Sam Smith appears to have died suddenly, leaving his business in a very unsettled shape. He appears to have left much property and owed much at the time [of] his death. He was a prominent officer of the State Militia and at his sale, Frank Griffin, the local school teacher at that time and who owned the farm between the Sam Smith farm and the town of Hartford, bought his sword, had it shortened and for years used It for cutting up corn a much better use than stabbing the lives out of men. In 1849, when my father moved his family to Hartford, the Sam Smith house was called “the haunted house” by persons who were old enough to know better. When I first saw the farm it was owned by Larkin Nall and later was owned by Elisha M. Ford, who owned it at the time of his death in 1851, but I never believed that either of these Christian gentlemen had anything to do with starting a report that the house was haunted.
The story of the haunted house was that at various times of the year, the spirits of some of the departed members of the household would return to the house: that late in the night, lights could be seen in the house and Mrs. Smith and her domestics could be heard and seen at their spinning wheels, reels, hackles, etc., while the voice of old Mrs. Smith could be heard commanding her servants to be more vigilant about their work. In conversation with an aged colored woman about a return of the departed spirits to this world, my mother told her that the spirits of the dead never returned to this world of sorrow again, and that there were no ghosts or haunts in this world. The old colored woman said: “O, yes, dar Is. ’Way in de night you can hear old Mrs. Smith spinning on de big wheel and say to de little nigger gal, ‘rock dat cradle, rock dat cradle,’ clitter-clatter, clitter-clatter, buzzu! buzzu!—O, Misses! dar is ha’nts!”
As I have said, the house was not finished when Sam Smith died. The staircase had been completed to the attic or upper story, the upper floor laid and the end window frames closed with rough boards. As I had to pass this house on my return from my father’s farm to my home in town after night, I hurried by the place, looking back to see that none of the spooks were following me. In company with some other small white boys, we visited the haunted house one bright November day and went up the stairs until we could see what was in the attic. Dry gourds and pieces of broken harness were lying promiscuously over the floor from which the autumn wind had removed the light dust, and, boy as I then was, I could not help thinking that the clatter of the loosely nailed boards in the window frames and the rattle of the dry gourds, pieces of rope, etc., on the floor, greatly aided the spooks in their carnivals on dark and windy nights.
I heard my oldest brother—then a young man—ask a very pious old colored man why the house was called “the haunted house,” and he said that after Sam Smith died, his farm was offered for sale and a man of means wanted the farm but didn’t want to pay its value for it and started the haunted house story to buy the farm for less than its worth, but I never believed that Larkin Nall or Elisha M. Ford were either of them that man.
My father was an enemy to all ghost stories, which he said were the work of the devil, yet he would stay and hear them told, and when he first heard the story of the haunted house on the Morgantown road, he gave it as his opinion that it was the work of some schemer for personal benefit. I heard him ask a business man of Hartford who came into his shop, which was on the site of the Thomas Bros. counting room, why the Sam Smith house was called a “haunted house.” The gentleman talked to my father in so low a voice that I did not hear what he said, but my father never spoke of the haunted house after this interview on that subject.
One bleak December evening a few years ago I passed the haunted house of my boyhood days and perhaps I took my last look at it. It appeared to have undergone much improvement and the merry voices of little children at play in the yard, I thought, was enough to remove the ignorant, superstitious ban that years ago made this house a terror to those who wore young, or uninformed by a more enlightened age.
What a mighty lever is the power of refinement, when strengthened by the teachings of the scriptures! The many who now dally pass the “haunted house” of sixty-five years ago and hear the joyful shout of little children at their play—how little do they know of the dark shadow that years ago hung over this now happy country home.
EDWIN FORBES. Fordsville, Ky.
Source: The Hartford (KY) Herald, February 1, 1911.