Топик: Analysis of a Real Haunted House
Топик: Analysis of a Real Haunted House
Analysis of a Real Haunted House.
Everyone has his/her own theories and
ideas about Haunted Houses, and these claims are based on assumptions and
clichés without proofs. However, "real" haunted houses have
always existed, as one evidence from Paranormal Story Archives shows, and these
houses hide something unusual and mysterious, as "similar haunted
houses" from such literary works as "Haunting of Hill House"
by Shirley Jackson, "Tales of Horror" by Laura Mullen and "Halloween
Street" by Steve Rasnic Tem. The role of these houses, as described in
many other articles and essays, is not that simple.
In fact, the existence of the haunted houses is closely connected
with moral behaviour of every society; it seems that these houses want to tell
very important things to human beings, to reveal secrets of universe and make
people believe in supernatural events, in the power of good and evil. All these
issues have occupied the public interest for centuries. Although the
fascination has changed today, it is still a topic that is a cause for great
speculation.
Unfortunately, humans are not able to interpret the signs of these
haunted houses, because they are afraid of them, refusing to believe those who
experienced something unusual. People always prefer to close their eyes to the
most obvious and important matters, but facts are stubborn things, and persons
can't hide behind them. They can't deny the existence of such haunted houses,
as the house considered the "most haunted house in America"
(Paranormal Story Archives, p. 20). This was the home of carpetbagger Charles
Wright Congelier, his Mexican wife Lyda, and a young servant girl, Essie, and
the house was located at 1129 Ridge Avenue, in Manchester on the North Side of
Pittsburgh.
According to data, this house is one of the brightest
examples of haunted houses of the past, and the most intriguing one. It
attracted attention of many specialists, like Dr. Brunichter and Thomas Edison,
and such famous authors as Richard Winer and Nancy Osborn gave their opinion of
this house in their book Haunted Houses. This article provides a very
detailed observation of the house, starting from the tragedy in the family of
Charles Wright Congelier, when in the winter of 1871 Lyda discovered Charles
having an affair with the maid, she fatally stabbed Charles and chopped off
Essie's head. This cruelty was a starting point in turning the house into a
haunted one, and, in accordance with various sources, every haunted house
reveals a secret connected with murder. Further, as story tells, the house was
vacant for more than twenty years, as people were afraid to occupy such
horrible place. In 1892 the attempt to accommodate railroad workers failed, as
they were unable to live in the place with the sobbing and screaming of a
woman.
Of course, no one could tell for sure, whether people really
heard those strange noises. This was the end of the 19th century,
and humans possessed neither knowledge, nor ability to check the house.
Perhaps, the workers' claims were tales, but, on the other hand, there is no
smoke without a fire, and further events had proved this proverb. Dr. Adolph C.
Brunrichter was the next person who had bought the house. However, a year later
something strange happened there, and when the police arrived, they found a
decomposed female body strapped to the bed and five headless young women in
basement graves. As Winer and Osborn think, Dr. Brunrichter had been
experimenting with severed heads. The doctor himself had disappeared and true
reasons of the events were not clarified, the only witness was the haunted
house.
Strange, as it may seem, the house somehow wanted to remain vacant, and
the next awful event took a really tragic turn. One night two of the emigrant
Equitable Gas Company workers were found dead in the basement. As the story in
the Paranormal Story Archives tells, "one had a board driven like a stake
through his chest and the other was hanging from a rafter" (p.20). And the
strangest thing is that these men had both been seen alive a few minutes
earlier. Since that time many famous scientists had been interested in the
house, and in 1920 Thomas Edison came to study it. However, his death prevent
him from finishing the experiment, but Winer and Osborn wrote that Thomas
Edison's visit to the house at 1129 Ridge Avenue changed his attitude towards
afterlife. In fact, as many witnesses revealed, this haunted house was full of
sex orgies, demonic possession, torture and murder.
Thus, it was considered as the house of evil, and even its destruction
was really strange. On the morning of November 15, 1927 the nearby giant gas
storage tank owned by the Equitable Gas Company exploded with a force, which
was felt across the county. The force was so strong that people thought that
the earthquake had begun. According to Winer and Osborn, the haunted house was
the only structure destroyed in the blast, for which no trace was ever found.
This "real" haunting house has some similarities
with the houses described by famous writers Shirley Jackson and Laura Mullen.
First of all, all these houses terrified people with strange and awful sounds,
and made them crazy. Outside they seemed ordinary buildings, but inside they
were alive creatures that were invisible to human eyes. The house of Charles
Wright Congelier revealed the sobbing and screaming of a woman. And the house
in the story of Laura Mullen "Tales of Horror" expressed
voices and breath of something: "Voices, voices, out of the walls And the
ceiling's and floors. And then nothing stays where you put it (Mullen,
p. 11). And then another proof: "There was the muted sound of sobbing and
yet THERE WAS NO ONE IN THAT ROOM!" (Mullen, p. 13). In the story of
Shirley Jackson strange things also happened in the house: sounds, pounding,
and 'hallucinations'.
Thus, in all three cases people heard some strange noises. Such
similarity is obvious, as these two literary works were based on real facts,
Mullen and Jackson analysed odd events in the haunted houses, making their own
conclusions. However, both of them thought that every haunted house covered
someone's crime, and ghosts sought justice. The works of these writers were
aimed to investigate one of the most intriguing paranormal phenomena of the
universe. Shirley Jackson decided to write a story about a haunted house after
reading about a group of nineteenth century "psychic researchers" who
studied a house and reported their supposedly scientific findings to the
Society for Psychic Research.
Although, the writer failed to discover something great in these reports,
she was really excited by the prospect of creating her own haunted house and
providing her own explanation of it. She even found out a California house,
which looked like a haunted house. In addition to all these attempts, she read
a lot of ghost stories, and, as a matter of fact, she believed in ghosts.
That's why her haunted house was so real.
Another similarity between a 'real' house and two fiction houses lays in
people's perceptions of normal and abnormal. They used to accept things as they
are, if they imagine a haunted house it must be dark, old and strange.
Otherwise, they won't believe in its existence. Thus, the haunted house
described by Shirley Jackson is just the same, as the real house of Charles
Wright Congelier and invented house of Mullen. Here, how Jackson describes it:
"Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness
within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more.
Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors
were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill
House, and whatever walked there, walked alone" (Jackson, p.1).
This description reveals the dark energies of the house and shows the
real protagonists of both literary works – the houses, which fulfil their role
as Bad Places, the horrific archetypes of any location with a powerful sense of
wrongness. With their dark descriptions Jackson and Mullen suggest rather than
explain, and frighten more by what they do not say about the houses rather than
what they do.
As a matter of fact, the haunted houses of Jackson and Mullen were based
on their discovery of the quiet evil that pervades ordinary life. Everything
around - the house, the person, the action - is never quite what they seem to
be. This is true in our modern life. This is the third similarity among three
houses. All of them revealed something hidden beneath, something that seemed
simple and, at the same time, different from peoples' ideas of universe. In
short, this is supernatural, human beings are unable to understand it, if they
don't make an effort to accept all components of a 'haunted house', they will
be trapped in their own prejudices. There are plenty of clues, but the proof is
seldom, and at the centre of everything there may never have been anyone at
all.
The role of two fiction houses is quite obvious, they are created to make
people hear something, something that they want to identify, but it is so faint
and distant that human beings are unable to make it out. Not quite simple
things, but much more difficult and complex matters. By creating their haunted
houses, both writers wanted to show that there was no logical explanation to certain
supernatural phenomena. In both cases haunted houses were main protagonists
that wanted to prevent people from some awful actions. The worst thing was that
they affected everyone, not only those who lived in these houses, but the
neighbours and other members of the society as well. Such was the notion of
Mullen and Jackson.
The supernatural occurrences may or may not be directly
connected to someone special. In fact, neither the characters nor readers are
quite sure of what they experience in Haunting of Hill House and Tales
of Horror - but all are profoundly effected by them. For instance, in Tales
of Horror readers are really affected by the power of each sentence:
"This house has been Lived in, he said, speaking in a low tone but with
great intensity, by an extremely Beautiful but utterly evil woman. Yes, yes, I
feel that too. This week Workmen are taking the thing apart, stone by stone. Oh
this? Just. a little something I found in the ruins. Don't bring it into the
house!" (Mullen, p. 12). This description doesn't seem very logic, but it
has the power to stir our feelings and emotions.
In summary, a real haunted house is a place that hides many secrets of
good and evil, of morality and crimes. Human beings are unable to understand
these phenomena because they don't want to accept things that frighten them,
they don't want to look at the core of these supernatural events. They start
with the basics, and as they grow older, they begin to focus more on the
details. And it is obvious that obsession with details to the exclusion of the
basics is a sure way to begin losing the true facts, the real understanding.
Works Cited.
1.
Jackson Shirley. The Haunting of Hill House, Penguin, 1984.
2.
Mullen Laura. The Tales of Horror, Kelsey Street Press, 1999.
3.
Paranormal Story Archives. January 2002. The Original "Most Haunted House
in America".