Psychic Vampirism in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Oval Portrait”

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

One of Edgar Allan Poe’s shortest short stories is “The Oval Portrait.” However, its brevity notwithstanding, it is a disturbing and horrific tale in which there is an undercurrent of what might be called psychic vampirism. For those who may be unacquainted with the story, a summary of it is in order:

The story’s narrator, who is wounded, and his valet, Pedro, seek shelter within the apartment of an abandoned Gothic chateau situated “among the Appennines.” In the apartment, the narrator finds that the walls--and even the niches within the walls--are decorated with “a number of very spirited modern paintings” and, upon the pillow of the bed, he discovers a “small volume. . . which. . . criticize[s] and describe[s]” the paintings. For some reason--perhaps because of his “incipient delirium”--he takes a keen interest in the paintings.

After Pedro drops off to sleep, the narrator changes the position of the candelabrum so that its candlelight better illuminates the pages of his book, and, as a result, he discerns a painting in an alcove that had been previously lost in the room’s shadows. Bordered by an oval frame, the painting depicts the head and shoulders of “a young girl just ripening into womanhood.” Her “arms. . . bosom. . . and. . . hair” seem to dissolve into “the vague yet deep shadow” that represents the “background of the whole,” and the narrator, upon first glimpsing it, is startled, mistaking the picture for a disembodied head.

After returning the candelabrum to its original position, the narrator again consults his book, reading about the picture in the oval frame. According to this text, the young woman had been the wife of the “passionate, studious, austere” artist who, married to his art before he’d taken the young woman as his wife, painted her portrait. A happy person, she’d disliked only the art that kept her husband from her. When he’d asked to paint her portrait, however, she’d obediently sat for him, for days on end.

At last, the book declares, the artist finished his work, declaring it to be nothing less than “life itself!” and, turning to “regard his beloved,” he found that she was dead.

In a tale so short and simple, a lesser artist than Poe might have had great difficulty in elevating the story to the level of art, but Poe, of course, is one of the great masters of the horror genre. Because of the subtlety with which he writes and because of his own knowledge of human nature, which was more than a little tinged with cynicism, he imparts to his tale an unexpected psychological richness. Much that the story conveys is left unsaid and must be inferred by those readers who are able, as it were, to read between the lines.

The wife is in the flower of womanhood, and has a carefree, loving, and happy heart. Her husband, however, seems to love his art--which is to say, himself, since his art is an expression of himself--more than he loves her. It is to her beauty that he is attracted more than to her, as a person. He views her as a fitting subject for his art, and asks her to model for him, despite her dislike of “the Art which was her rival” and her dread of “the pallet and the brushes. . . which deprived her of the countenance of her lover.” As he paints, spending all his time with the very “pallet and brushes” that she detests as her rivals for her husband’s affection, rather than with her (as other than a model), her health fails, and she becomes “daily more dispirited and weak.”

According to the book that “criticise[s] and describes[s] the paintings,” the color in the portrait’s cheek is obtained at the expense of her own lifeblood: “he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sat beside him.” The last brushstroke with which his masterpiece is completed ends her life. Symbolically, his art represents his nature, which is as narcissistic as it is “passionate, studious,” and “austere.” Paradoxically, as an artist, he is a creator; at the same time, his creativity destroys the woman whom he claims to love. His passion for his work sucks the life from his bride. The artist is a psychic vampire who is willing to kill in order that his art may thrive. Artists are like Brahma and Shiva of the Hindu Trimurti, both a creator and a destroyer at once, and every work of art is a still life of sorts, a Vishnu, or preserver, created of the essence of the life (or lives) upon which the artist’s imagination has fed and, daily, continues to feed.

The theme of Poe’s story is reminiscent of that of a poem, “My Last Duchess,” by one of the author’s contemporaries, Robert Browning (1812-1889), although Poe’s story was written before Browning’s poem and there is no evidence that the two works have anything to do with one another:

That's my last duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive. I call
That piece a wonder, now; Fra Pandolf's hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.

It is more likely that these artists both understood the paradoxical creative-destructive duality of the artist. In Browning’s poem, a duke appreciates the portrait of his late wife more than he appreciated her (whom, the poem suggests, he may have killed), because it is both beautiful and passive. (The young wife in Poe’s story is also beautiful and obedient.) The women’s passivity or obedience allowed the artists to create beautiful portraits, although these qualities also allowed them to destroy the realities that these portraits represent. Therein, Poe suggests, lies the horror of art in general and of "The Oval Portrait" in particular.

How to Haunt a House: Part V

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

In the four previous posts in this series, we deduced a number of principles, or rules, that apply, in general, to fiction that involves a haunted house. These rules can be used to create a haunted house in both printed and cinematic horror stories.

This post brings these rules together in a simple list that is likely to be handier and dandier than the separate lists in the previous posts. In writing about fiction, especially fiction that is often about supernatural or paranormal events, it’s a good thing to have one’s guidelines readily available.

These nine rules apply to the interior of the haunted residence:

1. It should be spacious--the bigger, the better.
2. It should house many rooms.
3. A haunted house often symbolizes its resident’s state of mind.
4. A haunted house is often associated with the resident’s past.
5. A haunted house may be the portal to another dimension or to hell itself.
6. To be, horrors must be perceived (even mysterious phenomena, whether paranormal or supernatural, must be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and/or touched).
7. A haunted house will probably have an emotional effect upon its resident.
8. The phenomena associated with a haunting should also be associated with the resident and with his or her mental states, moral failings, or personal experiences.
9. A haunting may result from a condition or set of circumstances other than ghostly habitation (mental illness, practical joke, hoax).

These four rules apply to the grounds upon which the domicile stands:

1. Relate the place with death and decay.
2. Ensure that the estate is at least ten acres in size, remembering that the bigger the grounds, the better.
3. Make the estate isolated, and surround it with a high wall or a forest.
4. Associate the house with its resident (the story’s protagonist).

By the way, you might also check out the entries that are relevant to ghosts, poltergeists, and haunted houses in both The Skeptic’s Dictionary and James Randi Educational Foundation’s An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural for information and tips as to how to introduce, maintain, and develop a skeptical parallel to the supernatural or paranormal explanations of the haunting. You may also want to read the Chillers and Thrillers posts “Alternative Explanations,” Parts I through IV. Horror fiction works best, perhaps, when the author gives the reader both a natural and a supernatural or paranormal explanation of the bizarre incidents in a horror story, as we show in “Horror By the Slice: The Lurking Fear” and “Creating Mood in Horror Fiction.”

Have fun in creating your house of horrors!

How to Haunt a House: Part IV

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

The grounds upon which a haunted house stands (or crumbles) are also haunted. The land is unhallowed, or unholy, ground. As such, its vegetation is apt to be withered and sere. The grass, if any remains, is likely to be brown and scrubby. Shrubs will more than likely be shriveled or leafless. Trees will be grotesque, stunted trunks projectong a twisted tangle of bare branches. Flowers won’t do well. Rosebushes may bear thorns in abundance, but few or no blooms will appear to alleviate the gloom. The ground itself may be not only bare (and barren) but may also be lined and fissured with great, deep cracks. If there are any statues, they will be of strange figures. Some may be missing heads or limbs (or they may have extra heads and limbs). Others may bleed or weep blood. A figure may even moan or groan, perhaps due to a human soul imprisoned within the marble or granite stone. Hounds or other guard dogs may prowl the grounds. The entire estate is likely to be surrounded by a tall wall that is topped with a spiked, wrought-iron fence. Sometimes, instead of a wall, a thick forest hems in the estate. Wild animals live among the trees--wolves, wildcats, and worse--that keep guests at bay.

The estate may feature a family burial ground or a few gravesites. If so, the graves are likely to be marked with crumbling headstones or weather-stained crosses that may bear strange symbols and other bizarre inscriptions. A lake, or tarn, may be present, but it will be a lifeless body of water, uninhabited and unvisited by animals. The estate is likely to be isolated. Its residence and any other structures it contains will be the sole building or buildings for miles in any direction.

With as many features as we have cited, it’s obvious that the estate must be large, rather than small, especially if it is associated with a mansion or a castle. It shouldn’t be under ten acres, although it can be much bigger. There is apt to be rolling or drifting fog, white and thick enough to limit one’s vision and to conceal shapes within its gloom. Across the yard, at a distance, anyone who is unfortunate enough to trespass upon the estate will see the exterior of the haunted house, or its façade.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” brings many of these classical elements of the haunted estate together in his description, at the narrative’s outset, of the house and its grounds:

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart--an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it--I paused to think--what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down--but with a shudder even more thrilling than before--upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

From these observations, we can deduce the following rules concerning the estate upon which a haunted house stands:

1. Relate the place with death and decay.
2. Ensure that the estate is at least ten acres in size, remembering that the bigger the grounds, the better.
3. Make the estate isolated, and surround it with a high wall or a forest.
4. Associate the house with its resident (the story’s protagonist). (Note Poe's "eyelike windows.")

How to Haunt a House: Part III

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

One expects strange things to happen in a haunted house because, well, it’s haunted. Ghosts aren’t like us. They’re spirits. Of the departed. By all accounts, mythical, religious, literary, and otherwise, there’s a world of difference between the quick and the dead. Therefore, ghosts should be expected to do the unexpected, to behave in a bizarre manner, and to be frightening, if not terrifying. Many choose to set up housekeeping in a house, rather than in, say, a house trailer or a flophouse. Consequently, the house, haunted, may also be expected to do the unexpected, to behave in a bizarre manner, and to be frightening, if not terrifying. In other words, if a house is truly haunted, one is entitled to expect to see (and, often, to hear, smell, taste, and feel) signs and symptoms of is condition. A home may be where the heart it, but a haunted home is where the horror is.

Anyone who has ever read a story or seen a movie about a haunted house (which is to say virtually everyone) knows some of the things that happen in such a place. Let’s consider these phenomena in relation to the senses by which they are perceived:

Sight

Walls or ceilings (or both) drip blood. Bathroom faucets pour blood. Black slime oozes from the walls. Walls bulge. Floors rear or buckle. Stairs flatten to form long, steep ramps. Mirrors exhibit horrific images. Furniture or dishes move by themselves, and are sometimes thrown across kitchens, dining rooms, or other chambers. Appliances turn off and on by themselves. The press of a hidden lever reveals a hidden room. Trapdoors drop into basements or water-filled wells. Oil paintings depict ghastly scenes, and the eyes of the subjects of portraits seem to follow the observer wherever he or she goes. Flies or wasps or insects may swarm within the house. Horrifying messages, written in blood, may appear on walls or other surfaces. The house’s floor plan may change overnight or even more abruptly. Doors may open upon other dimensions or even hell itself. And, of course, sooner or later, the ghosts themselves--or something even worse--will make a grand entrance.

Hearing

Strange noises are heard in the attic or basement. Doors slam shut. Mysterious footsteps are heard in vacant rooms or hallways. Doors may open or close of their own accord. Shadows may be cast by invisible forms or figures. Pets may behave strangely--cats may hiss or dogs may bark or growl for no apparent reason or may run from something that only they seem able to sense. Moans, groans, cries, or voices may be heard when no one is there or music may be heard when there is no musical instrument in the house.

Taste

Familiar foods may taste bitter, sour, or disgusting. Things that do not have a flavor may develop flavors--nasty ones, of course.

Smell

The stench of decaying flesh or some other particularly disgusting smell may waft through the house.

Touch/Emotion

A heavy, oppressive feeling of dread seems to cling to the house or to a specific location within the house. Cold spots appear in unlikely places. Residents may feel as if they are under constant visual surveillance by an unseen observer. Residents may even feel as if someone--or something--has touched them. Something--or someone--may bear down upon or sit atop one’s body as he or she sleeps or rests in bed. Residents may undergo physical or sexual assault by invisible assailants.

Remember, House = Self

In general, it’s a good idea to associate such phenomena with the main character of the story. Since it is he or she who will see, hear, smell, taste, and/or touch most of these phenomena, they should be related to him or her in some manner. Perhaps the phenomena are really signs and symptoms of a mental illness with which the protagonist is “haunted” rather than clues that the house in which this character resides is haunted. Maybe he or she needs a psychiatrist rather than a ghost buster.

The phenomena could have a moral significance. Maybe the sights, sounds, and other perceptions of strange and horrific incidents represent feelings of guilt and sorrow concerning past or present misdeeds that “haunt” the protagonist.

An elaborate prank, a practical joke, or a more sinister hoax could be the cause of the haunting, as in the movie Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte, in which a house is made to appear to be haunted in an effort to drive the protagonist mad so that her relatives can have her committed to a mental institution and inherit her estate. A bed-and-breakfast inn might be rigged to appear to be haunted in order to generate publicity.

Houses become haunted--or are said to become haunted--after famous people live (or die) in them. If your story features such a house, obviously the manner in which it is haunted, and the identity of its ghost or ghosts, should relate to the celebrity in question. One might expect a piano to play in Liberace’s house, for example, were it to be haunted, and maybe, in Charlton Heston’s abode, the actor still clutches a rifle in his “cold, dead hands.” Remember the metaphor that equates a house to the self of the person who resides there. A haunted house should be symptomatic of the haunted soul who lives within the distressed domicile.

In this post, we deduced these additional rules for haunting a house:

1. To be, horrors must be perceived (even mysterious phenomena, whether paranormal or supernatural, must be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and/or touched).
2. A haunted house will probably have an emotional effect upon its resident.
3. The phenomena associated with a haunting should also be associated with the resident and with his or her mental states, moral failings, or personal experiences.
4. A haunting may result from a condition or set of circumstances other than ghostly habitation (mental illness, practical joke, hoax).
   

How to Haunt a House: Part II

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Even Victorians can intimidate.

In the previous post, we considered two rules concerning how to haunt a house:

1. Make it spacious--the bigger, the better.
2. Fill it with rooms.

In this post, we’re going to look at the ways in which haunted houses often symbolize characters and their states of mind or serve as a gateway to a darker realm. As is often the case with regard to fiction, fact gives us a direction. In particular, we’re thinking of Ed Gein, the schizophrenic murderer upon whom such characters as Psycho’s Norman Bates, Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface, and The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill are based.

If ever a home was a reflection of its resident, Gein’s house certainly indicated his mental state. The house was a veritable garbage dump. The floors were littered and strewn with old magazines and newspapers, and boxes stood in precarious stacks along the walls and among piles of assorted materials that should have been discarded but weren’t. Among the rubbish were the trophies, consisting of human body parts, that Gein collected from the female corpses he robbed from the cemetery in his hometown, Plainfield, Wisconsin, and from Spirit Land, a graveyard located a few miles to the north. One box contained a bag, inside which, police found, was a mask that had once been the face of Mary Hogan, the owner and operator of a tavern that Gein had once frequented. The walls of some rooms were decorated with other such masks, and Gein ate soup from bowls he’d fashioned from the upper halves of human skulls. He also kept a torso, or mammary, vest; a collection of women’s noses; female genitals; and a belt made of women’s nipples.

After his mother died, Gein, who was a momma’s boy, missed her so much that the psychiatrist who examined the killer after his arrest concluded that Gein collected cadavers and female body parts in an attempt to fill the loss of female companionship that ensued his mother’s death and burial. In some ways, he was thought to be trying to bring home a bride (or parts thereof) or, perhaps, his dearly departed mother. Gein also kept part of the farmhouse he inherited upon his mother’s demise sealed off from the rest of the residence as a sort of shrine to his mother’s memory.

From Gein’s example, we see that haunted houses may be cluttered, and that the clutter may include some grisly, ghastly artifacts--perhaps human body parts--and that the resident of such a house might keep a door locked or even part of the house sealed off, either as a shrine or for some other purpose (hiding a body, an insane relative, or a secret of some sort, perhaps). In A Winter’s Haunting (2002), Dan Simmons’ sequel to Summer of Night (1991), the protagonist, Dale Stewart, keeps the upper floors of the house he rents--it belonged to a childhood friend who was murdered, years ago--sealed off from the lower floor, where he resides. Likewise, there’s a locked attic in The Skeleton Key (2005). After hearing voices from inside the locked room, the movie’s protagonist, Caroline Ellis, becomes curious. When she finally manages a look inside, she finds evidence that maybe demons do cause illness, and, in fact, maybe the invalid she’s been hired to care for may be a victim of dark magic. We all know what’s said about curiosity and the cats it lures. Other horror stories, both in print and on film, make use of the locked room motif as well.

Other novels suggest other approaches.

Shirley Jackson’s novel, The Haunting of Hill House, suggests that it may be the individual within a house, rather than the house itself, who is haunted or (depending upon one’s reading of her story) that a haunted house may, in turn, haunt its residents. This novel, like Poe’s short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher” and many lesser narratives, drives home the relationship--indeed, the interrelationship--between resident and residence. A home is a reflection of its owners or occupants. The disorderly state of Gein’s house reflected the disordered (confused) state of his mind, because normal people not only do not live among filth and clutter, but they also do not reside among human body parts and eat out of human skulls. Often, ghost stories are symbolic of past sins, of guilt, and of remorse or of past trauma and its continuing, present-day effects.

Therefore, many ghost stories connect with past events, and the incidents that occur within haunted houses represent such sins, such guilt, and such trauma. In The Others, the mother keeps her house dark because her children suffer from photophobia, a fear of light. Her concern with keeping them in the dark represents her love for them, but the darkness of the house also represents her ignorance of--and her refusal to see--the truth about her past. She has killed her children, and they, like her, are the ghosts who actually haunt the house in which they reside, not the residents of the house whom she imagines are its ghosts.

In an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, college students transform a fraternity house into a haunted house as a setting for a Halloween party. The partygoers become more than amorous, all but having sex in front of one another. Buffy stays in bed with her boyfriend, Riley Finn, from the time they arrive until their friends rescue them. When the partygoers touch a wall, they experience an orgasm, and playing a game of spin-the-bottle becomes the occasion for more than a friendly kiss between players. Buffy’s mentor and friends discover that the house is haunted by the souls of adolescents who’d lived in the house under the stern and disapproving tyranny of a foster mother who feared and hated sex and severely punished her charges when, at the onset of puberty, they began to experiment with sex, murdering at least one boy by drowning him in her bathtub. The dead child--or, perhaps, children--having been abused, now, as ghosts, become the abusers.

The Winchester mansion is allegedly haunted.

The furniture and décor in a haunted house also often reflect the resident’s state of mind. Bizarre images in a mirror which are seen only by one character suggest that these images are not real. Rather, they are likely to be but the contents of his or her own mind, projected onto his or her environment--the looking glass sees within, rather than reflecting that which truly exists. Therefore, only the one who sees such images can perceive them. The mirror mirrors his or her own thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. If a character ascends a staircase (or, for that matter, descends one), what type of revelation does he or she experience as a result? What happens at the top or the bottom of the stairs is indicative of what this character believes, feels, or thinks, and it is likely to be either transcendent or reductive in nature, depending upon whether the stairs lead upward or downward. An ascent into the attic is apt to represent an elevation to consciousness and knowledge; a descent into the basement is likely to symbolize a decline into the subconscious and the unknown.

When a locked room or a shut-off part of the house is part of a haunted house, the secret it contains will probably be the heart of the narrative’s mystery and, most likely, it will represent a great truth about the haunted character’s nature, behavior, goal, past, or present. Unlocked, the door may admit the resident to madness--or to revelation. The secret within the locked or sealed-off room or suite may deliver or destroy.

H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Lurking Fear” and “The Rats in the Walls” show that basements can be portals, as it were, to other, darker places, such as subterranean cities or dwellings in which cannibalistic mutants reside. His example reminds us that haunted houses often contain secret passageways, hidden rooms, and trapdoors to subterranean chambers or tunnels that allow villains to come and go in secret or to conduct clandestine operations. Sometimes, dungeons are accessed through trapdoors, wherein sadists torture, dismember, and kill victims. Such portals may even be gateways to another dimension or to hell itself, as in William Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderlands and Bentley Little’s The House.

From this consideration of how to haunt a house, we may deduce three additional rules:

1. A haunted house often symbolizes its resident’s state of mind.
2. A haunted house is often associated with the resident’s past.
3. A haunted house may be the portal to another dimension or to hell itself.

In our next post, we’ll take a look at what might be called the special effects that are typical of haunted houses.

How to Haunt a House: Part I

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Ed Gein's house, a haunted residence if ever there was one!

Think of the haunted house stories and novels you’ve read and of the haunted house movies you’ve seen. Most have specific elements in common. In considering how to haunt the house in your story, novel, or movie script, you’ll want to learn from your predecessors as to what they (and their readers or viewers) found particularly effective. Then, you’ll want to emulate them, but by adding to, rather than simply copying, the conventions they employed.

Even a nodding familiarity with the haunted house as a horror story setting suggests that such a domicile needs to be spacious--the roomier, the better. In Gothic horror, from which contemporary horror fiction in large part originates, the original haunted house was a castle or a manor house. Often, it was of several stories, including an attic and a basement.

When castles and palaces became untenable in horror fiction (which, today, anyway, is written, after all, for the masses, not for the fortunate few), authors employed mansions and--in the case, at least, of Stephen King, hotels (The Shining, “1408”)--and, in the case of Bentley Little, both mansions (The House) and a resort (The Resort) (2004). King (and others) has even haunted entire towns, albeit not necessarily with ghosts per se: in Desperation (1996) and its companion volume, The Regulators (1996), the demon Tak haunts a Nevada mining town and a suburban community, respectively, and, in ‘Salem’s Lot, a vampire is the culprit who disturbs residents and brings down property values, whereas, in It, the haunt is a protean shape shifter.

The point is (and, yes, there is a point) that haunted houses must be big, spacious dwellings. Cottages and bungalows need not apply, nor should efficiencies, garden apartments, or small condos.

The Psycho house

Houses have to be palatial for a couple of reasons. First, if the ghost pops up in the same location all the time, he, she, or it soon becomes predictable, and a ghost whose actions are predictable isn’t all that scary. In addition, it’s pretty easily avoided unless, perhaps, it’s haunting the domicile’s one and only bathroom’s commode (an unlikely point of interest for even ghosts, it would seem). A ghost that has the run of the house--especially a palatial abode--can pop up unexpectedly, since he, she, or it is not restricted to one or two rooms. The resident is as likely to see the ghost in the basement as in the attic, in a closet, in a mirror at the end of the entrance hall, or on the staircase between floors.

Various rooms also allow it to do various things, all of which could (and should) be fairly horrific. In It, after building suspense for beaucoup pages, King lets his readers walk downstairs with one of his characters, and, entering the dark and clammy subterranean chamber to feed the furnace, the character, and readers along with him, sees, in its flooded interior, the bloated corpse of the character’s brother as it floats past among other debris when there’s no way in hell that the boy’s body (or the debris) should be there. The result? Readers, like the character in the scene, are horrified--and terrified. This scene wouldn’t play out as well in the pantry, the linen closet, or the attic.

Likewise butcher’s knives and meat cleavers, available in the kitchen, make frightful props for ghosts (especially poltergeists) to wield, and a bedroom pillow makes a handy smothering device in hostile ghostly hands. Foods in pantries can include nasty surprises--maggots are only one of the many things that squirm to mind. Anything can crawl out from under a bed or spring from a closet, and God only knows what sights may be seen in hallway mirrors. A drowned person’s ghost may appear in the shower (An American Haunting) or in the bathtub (The Shining).

A spacious house has space enough to house many rooms, and each room, as a good (or even a not-so-good) dream dictionary makes clear, is often symbolic of a particular aspect of the self. As Dream Moods’ “Online Guide to Dream Interpretation” points out:

To see a house in your dream, [sic] represents your own soul and self. Specific rooms in the house indicate a specific aspect of your psyche. In general, the attic represents your intellect, the basement represents the unconscious. . . .

To ascertain what each room represents in the iconography of dreamland, simply look up each room; “Online Guide to Dream Interpretation” will offer specific suggestions, and, as a writer, you make the connections between the character’s inner emotional or mental state and the room (and the condition of the room):

To dream that you are in a basement, [sic] symbolizes your unconscious mind and intuition. The appearance of the basement is an indication of your unconscious state of mind and level of satisfaction.

To dream that the basement is in disarray and messy, [sic] signifies. . . confusion . . . which you need to sort out. It may also represent your perceived faults and shortcomings.

Dream Moods’ dictionary indicates that various parts of the house and the condition in which these parts appear also represent aspects of the dreamer’s (or the haunted character’s) self:

To see a roof in your dream, [sic] symbolizes a barrier between two states of consciousness. It represents a protection of your consciousness, mentality, and beliefs. It is an overview of how you see yourself and who you think you are.

To dream that you are on a roof, [sic] symbolizes boundless success. If you fall off the roof, [sic] suggests that you do not have a firm grip and solid foundation on your advanced position.

To dream that the roof is leaking, [sic] represents distractions, annoyances, and unwanted influences in your life. It may also indicate that new information will dawn on you. Alternatively, it may suggest that something is finally getting through to you.

Perhaps someone is imposing and intruding their thoughts and opinions on you.

To dream that the roof is falling in, [sic] indicates that you high ideals are crashing down on you. Perhaps you are unable to live up to your own high expectations.

There are plenty of other entries (and punctuation errors) in the dictionary that suggest ways in which the rooms of a haunted house may be used to symbolize the haunted character’s (or other characters’) states of mind. Make a list of the rooms, the parts of a house, and even the furniture and other accoutrements of a residence, and look them up in this or another dream dictionary or a dictionary of symbols to see what such places and things have tended to suggest and symbolize concerning human minds and behavior. Your fiction can capitalize on such leads by using appropriate rooms to suggest specific characteristics and states of mind with respect to your characters, including the ghosts themselves.

Another source worth checking out is Fantasy and Science Fiction's Dictionary of Symbolism, which offers this entry concerning “house”:

Just like the city, the TEMPLE, the palace, and the MOUNTAIN, the house is one of the centers of the world. It is a sacred place, and it is an image of the universe. It parallels the sheltering aspect of the Great Mother, and it is the center of civilization. In Jungian psychology, what happens inside a house happens inside ourselves. Freudian psychology associates the house with the WOMAN, in a sexual sense; a house is undoubtedly a feminine symbol. Shelter and security are words commonly used surrounding house. [It] has a correspondence with the universe, [with] the roof as heaven, the windows as deities and the body as the earth. [It is] the repository of all wisdom.

One is also advised to study Edgar Allan Poe’s masterful use of a house, in “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839), to represent the emotional and mental states of his protagonist, Roderick Usher.

Other haunted house stories (listed chronologically) you’ll want to read are:

• Castle of Otranto, The (1764), by Horace Walpole: Conrad Manfred’s decision to divorce and remarry causes horrifying events to occur within his family’s castle.
• Mysteries of Udolpho, The (1794), by Ann Radcliffe: After the death of her father, Emily St. Aubert moves in with her aunt, who marries Montoni; the women go to Udolpho to live, and Emily is separated from her suitor, Valancourt, as Montoni seeks to force Emily’s aunt to sign over the estate which Emily would otherwise inherit.
• Haunted and the Haunters, The (1857), by Edward Bulwer-Lytton: Mesmerism and magnetism combine with alchemy and Rosicrucian mysticism as the protagonist seeks immortality.
• “Red Room, The” (1894), by H. G. Wells: A skeptic discovers that an allegedly haunted room really is haunted, but not by ghosts.
• Turn of the Screw, The (1898), by Henry James: Is the governess seeing ghosts or is something even more horrible happening to her (and the children in her charge)?
• House on the Borderland, The (1908), by William Hope Hodgson: Two men investigate a house that seems linked to an identical dwelling in the very pit of hell.
• “Rats in the Walls, The” (1924), by H. P. Lovecraft: Investigating the sound of rats in the walls of his ancestral estate, the protagonist discovers that his family lived in a subterranean city, feeding upon their fellow humans.
• Stir of Echoes, A (1958), by Richard Matheson: This novel inspired the movie of the same title.
• Haunting of Hill House, The (1959), by Shirley Jackson: Psychics investigate an allegedly haunted house, and one of them, Eleanor, is possessed by the supernatural entity they encounter there.
• Hell House (1971), by Richard Matheson: A millionaire hires psychics to explore the possibility of life after death.
• Shining, The (1977), by Stephen King: An alcoholic writer’s descent into madness ends on a bad note when he takes on the duties of caretaker during a hotel’s off season.
• “1408” (1999) by Stephen King: A skeptical writer learns the errors of his ways after he stays in a hotel room that is supposedly haunted.
• House, The (1997), by Bentley Little: Five strangers discover they all grew up in an identical house situated on the gateway between this world and another, far darker place.

These movies, featuring haunted houses, are also worth a peek, preferably between one’s fingers:

• Uninvited, The (1944): A couple buys a haunted house.
• Ghost Ship (1952, 2002): A salvage crew, towing a lost passenger ship to harbor, finds it is haunted.
• House on Haunted Hill, The (1958, 1999): Partygoers will receive a cash reward, if they can survive a night in a haunted house.
• House That Dripped Blood, The (1970): A Scotland yard investigator investigates mysterious disappearances related to a vacant house.
• Amityville Horror, The (1979, 2005): In this movie, based upon an actual hoax, newlyweds move into a house in which a murder was committed.
• Changeling, The (1980): A man’s isolated country estate is haunted by a ghost.
• Shining, The (1980): An alcoholic writer’s descent into madness ends on a bad note when he takes on the duties of caretaker during a hotel’s off season.
• Poltergeist (1982): Ghosts haunt a family in their new house.
• Sixth Sense, The (1999): Cole, a boy who sees ghosts, helps a depressed child psychologist, Malcolm Crowe. Coincidence?
• Stir of Echoes, A (1999): A hypnotized skeptic, Tom Witzky, begins to see a ghost, which leads to the solution to a murder.
• What Lies Beneath (2000): A woman starts seeing things--and hearing things--or does she?
• Others, The (2001): The residents of a house turn out to be the ghosts who haunt the residence.
• Rose Red (2002): Psychics investigate an allegedly haunted house.
• Grudge, The (2004): A ghost, born of a grudge, haunts a nurse who cares for a housebound invalid.
• Skeleton Key, The (2005): A hospice worker decides to risk it all on what lies behind a locked attic door.
• American Haunting, An (2006): A girl’s father has a split personality, one of which she mistakes for an evil ghost.
• 1408 (2007): A skeptical writer learns the errors of his ways after he stays in a hotel room that is supposedly haunted.

In this post, we learned two rules about how to haunt a house. The first rule in haunting a house is to make the residence a big house (but not necessarily a prison). The second rule is to make sure that your haunted house houses many rooms, or, as many writers would say, chambers, each of which is an appropriate and handy opportunity to present a different ghost or a different aspect of the same ghost (or the protagonist’s own inner ghosts).

In our next post, before going outside, we’ll examine another rule or two concerning how to haunt a house.

Everyday Horrors: Killer Bees

copyright 2008 by Gary L. Pullman

Whatever happened to the killer bees rhat were supposed to exterminate the human race?

Immigrants from South America, killer bees are descendents of 26 queen bees from Tanzania. The original queens were imported from Africa in 1956. The queens bred with honeybees and with other honeybees from southern Africa by--yes, a scientist (whether he’s mad is up to you to determine)--biologist Warwick E. Kerr. From their hive in San Paulo State (southeast Brazil), near Rio Claro, the killer bees were migrating north, mating with local drones.

They look like ordinary bees, but they are more aggressive than their European peers, the Africanized honeybees, which are more commonly known as killer bees, swarm more readily, relocate as a colony when food becomes scarce, requires more territorial space, and attacks in greater numbers when threatened. In a word, killer bees tend to be much more hostile than their European counterparts. They will chase a person up to a quarter of a mile. To date, killer bees have killed 1,000 people.

It takes a lot of beestings to kill a person. The record number survived (so far) is 2,000. Ouch!
Since leaving Brazil, the killer bees have migrated into southern Argentina, South, and Central America. They also immigrated to the United States, having been detected in southern Texas, southern New Mexico, southern Arizona, southern Nevada, and the extreme southeastern corner of California. They are also in parts of Florida and are said to be extending into southern Louisiana and Arkansas as well. Scientists predict that the bees will eventually spread as far north as San Francisco and the Chesapeake Bay before cold climate conditions stop their advance.

Experts point out that some Africanized bees are gentle, which gives them hope that, by breeding the gentler with the more aggressive killer bees, the hostile bees can be domesticated.


Killer bees have appeared (as the bad guys) in Arthur Herzog’s novel The Swarm (the basis of an Irwin Allen film) and such made-for-TV movies as The Savage Bees and Out of the Sky.
According to IMDb, The Swarm features “a huge swarm of deadly African bees [that] spreads terror over American cities by killing thousands of people” and, in, in The Savage Bees, the annual Mardi Gras celebration is brought to a halt when a swarm of African killer bees escape from a foreign freighter. Neither movie did well at the box office.

In a third bee-theme “B” movie, The Bees, “corporate smuggling of South American killer bees into the United States results in huge swarms terrorizing the northern hemisphere,” IMDb points out. It didn’t cause much of a swarm at the box office, either, alas.

“Everyday Horrors: Killer Bees” is one in a series of “everyday horrors” that will be featured in Chillers and Thrillers: The Fiction of Fear. These “everyday horrors” continue, in many cases, to appear in horror fiction, literary, cinematographic, and otherwise.