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How To Build A Haunted House

Mikefule said:
Personally, I cannot see anyone getting the funding for this, and certainly not the funding to do it on a substantial scale
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Anyone know if the Koestler Parapsychology Unit in Edinburgh has any left over funding (or looking for a new project) ?

Crowdfund it !
 
Bad Bungle said:
Anyone know if the Koestler Parapsychology Unit in Edinburgh has any left over funding (or looking for a new project) ?
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IMHO it would be difficult to "sell" the notion of a "hauntings testbed" as a project falling within the scope of the unit's mission. The Koestler bequest that established in the unit defined its mission as follows:

The noted writer Arthur Koestler and his wife Cynthia bequeathed their estate to establish a Chair of Parapsychology at a British University. The declared intention was to further scientific research into “…the capacity attributed to some individuals to interact with their environment by means other than the recognised sensory and motor channels”.
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https://koestlerunit.wordpress.com/history/

Spiritualism and hauntings are occasionally cited as phenomena related to the unit's mission, but it's not clear the unit considers these to be foci for research in and of themselves.

There's something of a catch-22 involved here ... A hauntings testbed might well serve to test what factors make people believe in hauntings, but it won't prove whether the underlying phenomenon (spirits; ghosts; whatever ... ) actually exists. In other words, taking such a testbed seriously presumes the phenomenon is "real" (arguably a matter of illogical circular reasoning) when by definition all it can be claimed to accomplish is to simulate the experiences that make people believe in the phenomenon in the first place.

It seems to me the strongest case for a hauntings testbed might be made in the context of the unit's stated mission of testing "deception" (i.e., frauds and tricks). However, this arguably entails the presumption that the phenomenon is bogus or a delusion.

Either way, any testbed misses the point of hosting "actual" haunting phenomena (as opposed to inducing impressions of haunting).
 
For Fuck’s Sake. Just build a normal house as you usually would and then tell some media hungry ghost show it’s haunted. They’ll provide all the proof you need. It would help if you have an almost imperceptible subsonic hum running through the place though.
 
This reminds me of those ultra-conservative Christian "horror houses" which are designed to scare young kids into not doing anything like drinking alcohol, sex outside marriage, reading Harry Potter, etc.
 
GNC said:
This reminds me of those ultra-conservative Christian "horror houses" which are designed to scare young kids into not doing anything like drinking alcohol, sex outside marriage, reading Harry Potter, etc.
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You mean ‘Catholic School’?
 
GNC said:
This reminds me of those ultra-conservative Christian "horror houses" which are designed to scare young kids into not doing anything like drinking alcohol, sex outside marriage, reading Harry Potter, etc.
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fo you have a l;ink to one? I need to see this!
 
The best I can do is the trailer for Hell House, the 2010 (?) documentary on one of them:

If you're a sinner, you'll die of AIDS or in a school shooting, according to this. Mostly scary for the attitudes rather than the bad acting.
 
One of the oldest (if not the oldest) dedicated Christian horror house attractions is Scaremare (Lynchburg VA), which began in 1972.

Scaremare presents fun-house rooms and scenes of death in order to confront people with the question “What happens after I die?”

Groups of people experience a 40-minute journey, passing through creepy trails, dark woods and eventually entering the House. At the end of the experience, visitors are presented with an answer to this question and given the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. Approximately 26,000 people have made decisions for Christ over the past two decades. Ironically, this House of Death points to the Way of Life!
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Scaremare has been held at four different locations, including a mansion in Amherst County and an old hospital in downtown Lynchburg. It presently operates at 2300 Carroll Ave, Lynchburg (the City Stadium exit, off of US Route 29 North)

Scaremare project continues in the planning process year— round, but swings into high gear from August through November. The House is open to the public during the last three weekends in October

Thousands of volunteer hours go into preparations of this project. It takes a cast of 300 Liberty University students to operate the House each night. Scaremare is sponsored by the Center for Youth Ministries at Liberty University.

Since 1972, more than 300,000 people from several states have made the trip through the House of Death that you are about to take.

The House attracts over a thousand people every Thursday night. Fridays and Saturdays can typically average between 2,000 and 4,000. The all-time record for attendance on one night was 4,500 in 2007.
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https://www.liberty.edu/scaremare/#about
 
Analogue Boy said:
For Fuck’s Sake. Just build a normal house as you usually would and then tell some media hungry ghost show it’s haunted. They’ll provide all the proof you need. It would help if you have an almost imperceptible subsonic hum running through the place though.
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Haven't seen that Derek Acorah for a while, maybe he could be persuaded to move in.
 
My Mams ex house was for sell but not it's up for went and I wonder why
 
Having read this thread, I now have the theme to Rentaghost running round my head. Thanks folks.
 
Mikefule said:
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".



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.
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With regards to Number One: this could be done, at one step removed, by observing a location like the site of Fred West's house, where you might expect some sort of serious psychic disturbance? The trick would be to do this discreetly, respectfully and without any sense of sensationalism.
 
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