The haunted house is a familiar feature of the horror genres of fiction and film and, like Dracula and vampires, seems to have emerged out of the romantic imagination of the eighteenth century. Before its arrival it was the wild places - forests, moors and marshes - that instilled the greatest terror, with its component elements of trees, rivers and stones all said to be inhabited by spirits. What changed after the enlightenment was the significance of these apparitions and, in the case of haunted houses, the location of fear. For fear has a location and, in a newly urban society, fear migrated to the built environment.
展开▼
