Haunted house stories have long been an obsession of our culture. Since reality is composed of conscious energy, any place filled with strife or animosity could potentially turn into a haunted house.
These ghosts often have unfinished business to attend to and can only be stopped by having their remains properly interred – an excellent model being Plautus’ Mostellaria from Roman comic playwright Plautus.
Origin
Haunted houses have become an integral part of Halloween celebrations, from community center shows to big-budget mazes at theme parks. But these horror attractions have an ancient past – dating back centuries!
Haunted houses date back to Europe. Marie Tussaud made headlines in London audiences during the 1800s for her Chamber of Horrors display featuring wax sculptures depicting decapitated French Revolution figures.
Early haunted houses were intended to teach moral lessons about the dangers associated with excessive drinking, gambling and profane speech – yet people often attended these displays for their terrifying entertainment value as well.
Later, civic groups like the United States Junior Chamber (the Jaycees) began using haunted houses as fundraisers, spreading this practice worldwide and eventually culminating in increasingly elaborate haunted house attractions featuring expansive interior spaces with numerous corridors and hard-to-find places.
Significance
Dreams involving haunted houses often represent suppressed emotions, fears that need addressing, and past traumas which need healing. By seeking professional counseling or spiritual practices for personal change or forgiveness can you can alleviate some of these lingering ghosts from your mind and body and improve mental, physical, and emotional wellness.
Haunted houses can also serve as a symbolic representation of places in our lives that make us feel trapped or restricted, like an outdated relationship or toxic workplace environment. This feeling manifests itself as an uncomfortable presence that appears as though to bind or hold you down, like being trapped inside an unshakable haunted house that seems impossible to leave or escape from.
Dreams involving haunted houses may indicate an imbalance between your external world and spiritual life within yourself, suggesting there may be some form of disconnect. Perhaps your haunted house dream is encouraging you to strengthen and expand upon your spiritual gifts as part of building awareness within both body and mind through practice.
Types
Haunted houses come in many varieties. From historical residences where supernatural incidents took place to modern-day attractions like California’s Winchester Mystery House, each haunted house has its own story or event-driven attraction.
These haunted houses employ various techniques to frighten visitors, such as effects lighting, fog machines, eerie music and animatronics. Some houses even provide actors or guides who will guide guests through an experience-based storyline.
Design of a haunted house is key to creating an effective experience. Some haunted houses employ zigzagged floor plans to prevent visitors from seeing what is happening with their friends, while others feature twisting corridors or rooms hard to locate – creating disorientation and fear that there is no escape route; both essential components for creating an effective scary setting.
Examples
Haunted houses and rooms can be terrifying environments filled with ghostly spirits or ghostly presences that require the protagonist to face off against in order to escape from its confines. Furthermore, some haunted houses can even act like characters themselves and become even scarier as characters come alive within its walls!
Death often plays an integral role in haunted house stories, with spirits seeking revenge against living humans for various misdeeds they committed within its walls. Perhaps there have been violent or strange murders which have become local legend, or perhaps these spirits want revenge against loved ones who have passed on.
Twinkl’s KS2 Haunted House Descriptive Writing resource provides children with a wonderful way to introduce them to the fundamental elements of descriptive setting description. This includes a pre-go section which offers useful tips, as well as an excerpt from Twinkl original story ‘Scare at Shadow Fair’ that shows children how descriptive writing techniques should be employed in writing their setting descriptions.
