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How To Build A Haunted House

You mean creaky floors and odd plumbing dont cut the mustard any more?

(Im suprised no ones tried this before).
 
Maybe build a house and advertise for spooks.

The only way I could see something like this happening is if you rebuilt a house that had since been knocked down and had been know to be haunted before. Even then the ghosts might have dissipated anyway depending on what was holding them there.
 
I guess the ground the house will be built on have to be haunted already, but you're not guaranteed to inherit ghosts from the house that stood their before. All this is hypotetical of course. Paranormal researchers believe houses near rivers attract ghosts or keep them energized.
 
You could try killing someone, in a traumatic and gruesome way and burying their body under the cellar floor. A new-build haunted house would of course include a cellar, probably modeled on that of a building far more ancient than the rest of the structure: e.g. if your building is Victorian Gothic in style, the cellar would apparently be Medieval.
 
Incorporate material from a house or location already known or suspected to be haunted?
 
Ley lines. It has to be on a ley line. Even better where they cross!
 
AgProv said:
Incorporate material from a house or location already known or suspected to be haunted?
Click to expand...

This touches on an issue that's been bugging me ...

Is the "haunting" linked or based in the site (the grounds) or in the structure(s) upon the site?

... Or can it depend on circumstances?

There are numerous stories of ghosts (etc.) inhabiting sites from which structures associated with their past lives have disappeared. However, I don't know whether this apparent primacy of site over structure is universal.

FWIW, I tend to doubt it ...
 
Frideswide said:
Ley lines. It has to be on a ley line. Even better where they cross!
Click to expand...

One might also wonder if crossroads locations (with or without ley affiliation) would foster "hauntability."
 
In "Wyrd Sisters", the Witch Nanny Ogg applies creative thought to the problem of a deceased ex-king whose ghost is bound to the stones of the Castle and cannot leave it; she takes a loose stone from the castle wall and takes it home with her, so the King can talk to her privately in her garden shed or washroom or wherever. The problem is - the whole of a very old castle's complement of ghosts hears about this, and takes the opportunity for a change of screne and a holiday somewhere else. Terry Pratchett does not expand the theme, but I'm guessing, logically, if Lancre Castle's stones are moved outside the castle and the ghosts can move with them, this enables the ghosts to move freely between the castle and the local Witch's scullery room?
 
All you need is one of those portraits where there‘s holes in the eyes. Nothing says hauntingness more than that.
 
If I was a Ghost Hunter, I‘d spend time setting up a huge domino rally.
Who, living or dead, could resist flicking one domino and setting a thousand off?
 
Just build an ordinary house.

Then butcher some visitor as gruesomely as possible.

Sit back and wait for the vengeful spirit to return.
 
NOTE:
I discovered an earlier thread entitled "Creating A Haunted House", which was intended to address the same topic.

That thread has now been merged into this thread under the newer thread's title.
 
You could conduct evocation in every room of the house. Sacrifice small animals to certain spirits during those evocations, and using that blood at the cardinal corners of the lot to invoke further demons and spirits. You could continue to do it seasonally so it meshed with the season cycle. make further conjurations in a prison cemetery, another sacrifice. Take the blood and earth from triangle back to house and re-conjure at cardinal points. Repeat. Inscribe spells and sigils in certain unseen areas, and charge 'em up. Get taken away to a padded cell when the neighbors call police..
The Rent-a -ghost idea sounds easier and more fun.
 
Séances and bunch of mirrors in the house should help, according to psychic mediums.
 
The place we lived in that was supposedly haunted was built on the site of an old C of E church.
 
An alternative might be to simply invite in a family with an angst ridden teenage daughter.

But you might not want the inconvenience of a polt.
 
There's a genuinely interesting idea at the back of this, but one that they seem to have missed.

I suggest that there are approximately 5 very roughly defined categories of factors that are conventionally or traditionally associated with hauntings.
  1. Tragic or gruesome death, often but not always associated with some form of unfinished business or unfulfilled desire on the part of the deceased.
  2. Location, whether you think in terms of ley lines, or some other unproven "Earth energy" or "portal" etc. (I would probably put burial grounds, Indian or otherwise, in category 1, rather than 2.)
  3. Reproducible physical characteristics which might include such things as being built of stone, built on granite, built near to running water, having mullioned windows, dark stairwells, oak beams, etc.
  4. Times of the year, dates, not associated with some specific event at that location. (e.g. Hallowe'en/Beltane/Samhain, etc.)
  5. The phases of the moon.
Joking apart, we cannot create category 1 purely for the purposes of research. I suppose in theory we could build a house on the location of a murder that had already happened, or next to a plague pit. However, there would be many objections to this, not least that it would be in bad taste, and the risk that the experimental subjects would be aware of the association and may be subject to "suggestion".

Until we have some sort of established scientific understanding of what is or is not happening with ley lines, Earth energies, and portals to the other side, some testable hypotheses and some verifiable data, I would put 2 on the back burner.

That leaves 3, where some controlled experiments could be done.

(Factors 4 and 5 could of course be incorporated in the analysis of any observational data.)



I can imagine that an honest and thorough study of reported hauntings would produce some common factors relating to the physical characteristics of the building.

It might then be possible to construct a series of buildings incorporating these features, then rent them out to the public and see whether there are any reported hauntings. If there were reports, then that might suggest one of two hypotheses:
  1. That hauntings are a socially constructed psychological phenomenon, and that people in a location that has features traditionally associated with haunting are likely to have a psychological experience that they interpret as a haunting. (If you stay in a dark Gothic building, you might expect to see a ghost.) Or...
  2. That there is something about the construction (damp granite, certain combinations or shapes of stones, temperature...) that creates a genuine physical or physiological effect that the subject interprets as a haunting.

Personally, I cannot see anyone getting the funding for this, and certainly not the funding to do it on a substantial scale.

My own view is that hauntings are likely to be a socially constructed psychological phenomenon, a form of suggestion, reinforced by the effects of confirmation bias. However, that does not mean I would not be fascinated to read of any proper controlled experiments of the kind described.
 
Tempest63 said:
The place we lived in that was supposedly haunted was built on the site of an old C of E church.
Click to expand...
That might actually be the best kind of place to build on or remodel for "hauntings". Places where intense focused emotions, memories and interaction have occurred --places that have been remembered by multiple people throughout their lives; that would help in the cassette-tape recording / thoughtform paradigm of "hauntiings". Were one to accept those things. :sherlock:
 
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