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The Washington Post has a piece up on how Victorian houses developed a reputation as the quintessential haunted homes.
The two main factors that the Wa Po highlights are:
-Creepy construction
“The layout of a Victorian is about as far from an open floor plan as a house can get. Every level is divided into many rooms, each with a distinct purpose, and rarely with sightlines into another one.
The effect is ‘almost an infinite labyrinth,’ says Adam Lowenstein, author of “Horror Film and Otherness” and a professor of English and film at the University of Pittsburgh. The luxuries of ample space and a room for every occasion can easily turn into a ‘nightmare version of the utopian idea,’ he explains: ‘a labyrinth of spaces that are out to get you rather than out to serve you.’”
Building materials were also dark and ominous-looking.
And the houses were so big that they were difficult to maintain and often fell into disrepair.
-Creepy cultural context
Spiritualism
and ghost stories were hot in the Victorian era.
“It’s not as if spooky stories didn’t exist before, (Simon) Cooke says, but they would have often been set in places such as castles. During the Victorian period, audience preferences began to shift: ‘Most of the readers were middle class, and they didn’t know anything about aristocratic castles. … People wanted to read about ghost stories in their own homes.’”
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