Sorry to quote something from 08.
If any house was bound to be haunted by an unquiet spirit, it's one built over the shallow grave of a murder victim. If rumour and superstition do their job, I'd expect to be hearing ghost stories from these areas in time.
After Fred West's murders came out, I talked to several builders who used to use the local pub, who said West had been employed by their firm - two of them claimed to have worked with him. (This was Wiltshire/Gloucestershire). They worked on houses, and speculated that West had hidden some bodies on sites that were now new housing development. But there were a lot of stories like that going around at the time. I do believe it's quite possible that West took cash-in-hand building jobs.
When I first moved into this town, the house we lived in for a year did have an oppressive atmosphere, although I wonder if much of that was to do with the fact that abuse happened there (to myself and my sister, and non-familial). I do clearly remember the first time we saw the house, when it was standing empty, and the smell; not unpleasant, but quite strong. As the house wasn't centrally heated, I think now it may have been slightly damp, maybe mingled with wallpaper paste and paint or something. Any-one whose been in an empty house probably knows what I mean.
The house is probably the lightest I've ever lived in. The windows were large, and the front room had wide windows at either end; it was also south-facing, and should have been bright.
I read in a different thread about places having a thick, almost smoky air in them, and this house was like that. It was almost as if the lights were always tinged with brown. The family pretty much fell apart there. It was a dreadful year, though again I wonder if I was so scared and depressed that it influenced the way I saw the place.
Anyhoo, when I'd settled at the local school, a girl and I decided to do a 'project' on ghosts, which really involved just asking other kids, and all the stories I heard were about hauntings in fairly new houses (this was the 70's, so from about the 40's to the 70's - our house was built in the 60's, I think). There were few if any 'old' buildings within the perambulating distance of ten year old's, even though we did get about quite a lot.
Up until then, I'd associated ghost stories with castles, old pubs, ruins, cottages, stately homes, etc, but here were stories coming from bland, not very old estates. I can't vouch for the truth, although many years later I found some of the stories online, so the kids didn't just fabricate them off the top of their heads.
It seems that the age of a building does not matter. The new (a few years old) hospital already has ghost stories attached, although I am sure all hospitals do, new or old. My local for a long time was an estate pub built in the 70's, that allegedly had two ghosts, one of a regular who died (never saw anything) and an enormous mutant spider that apparently grew to Goliath tarantula proportions by drinking beer slops. :shock:
It does seem to me that ghost stories come from newer houses/developments pretty regularly.
