Haunted houses are benign. If you want real evil, suggests Keith Eggener, look to the sentient houses in fiction and film that are "born bad". From Poe to Siddons, he explores examples of "architecture gone terribly wrong".
"There is within American literature and cinema a subgenre of horror focused on buildings, buildings that are themselves the sources of evil, without ghosts or ghouls, but which, through some flaw of design — some peculiar arrangement of space and mass, some technology gone awry [1] — manifest a malign awareness that targets occupants," observes Eggener.
Authors like Edgar Allen Poe, Shirley Jackson, and Anne Rivers Siddons, "take us . . . to a place where buildings are not just alive, but aware and willful — like us, but not quite. Built on bad ground or bad foundations, literal or figurative, the houses of their stories are like psychoanalytic subjects whose dark, submerged dream worlds have surfaced and taken over, wreaking havoc all around."
FULL STORY: When Buildings Kill
The Trust for Historic Preservation’s ‘Most Haunted’ Hotels of 2024
Looking for a historically creepy place to spend Halloween? Check out these haunted properties.
Contested Property: Haunted Houses and the Anxiety of Ownership in America
Sometimes home becomes a place of fear for the least supernatural reasons.
What Abandoned Places Teach Us
Abandoned cities and other forsaken human-built sites are haunted by the mistakes city leaders and builders have made over centuries.
Americans May Be Stuck — But Why?
Americans are moving a lot less than they once did, and that is a problem. While Yoni Applebaum, in his highly-publicized article Stuck, gets the reasons badly wrong, it's still important to ask: why are we moving so much less than before?
Using Old Oil and Gas Wells for Green Energy Storage
Penn State researchers have found that repurposing abandoned oil and gas wells for geothermal-assisted compressed-air energy storage can boost efficiency, reduce environmental risks, and support clean energy and job transitions.
Placekeeping: Setting a New Precedent for City Planners
How a preservation-based approach to redevelopment and urban design can prevent displacement and honor legacy communities.
San Francisco’s Muni Ridership Grew in 2024
The system saw its highest ridership since before the Covid-19 pandemic, but faces a severe budget shortage in the coming year.
Colorado Lawmakers Move to Protect BRT Funding
In the face of potential federal funding cuts, CDOT leaders reasserted their commitment to planned bus rapid transit projects.
Safe Streets Funding in Jeopardy
The Trump administration is specifically targeting bike infrastructure and other road safety projects in its funding cuts.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
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