Hundreds Hall: In a Lonely Place
The time is the 1940’s. The place is Warwickshire, England. The location is an 18th century mansion known as Hundreds Hall which has fallen on hard times. Oh, and the mansion is supposed to be haunted. Ghosts or not, it has a reputation:
“My husband always used to say that this Hall was the loneliest house in Warwickshire.”
Hundreds Hall: Atrocity Exhibition
The thing about haunted houses is that everything is dependent upon perspective. A dilapidated state may be creepy, but it is not really enough to engender a fear of haunting. For that, one must approach a home with a built-in perspective. We know the house is lonely. But what if the lonely house is also described as the exact opposite?
“…the Hall was, in Caroline’s words, was a madhouse.”
Hundreds Hall: Atmosphere
Once inside a haunted house, they key to feeding the fear is the creation of a strange and abnormal atmosphere. Few things are stranger and more abnormal to the modern human being than a lack of noise and at one point in the narrative:
“the Hall was soundless. There wasn’t so much as the ticking of a clock. Life seemed held, arrested inside it.”
Hundreds Hall: Auto-Suggestion
The real key to thinking a house is haunted, of course, is convincing yourself that very normal phenomena are supernatural in origin. With a little imagination and a few ambiguous sounds, many people can convince themselves any home is haunted:
“this house creaks like a galleon! I’ve heard it, many times. It’s never creaked quite like that before. Perhaps it’s never been quite so damp before; and the place has certainly never been so neglected. Probably the timbers are shifting about.”
Hundreds Hall: Dead Souls
For a mansion to be truly accepted as haunted, it must have ghosts. A home built ten years ago is thus more likely to seem haunted than one just completed. But what’s a decade to souls? Souls are like cheese; they need some aging to truly come into their own. But souls are also like water battered by winds: they need to be angry and what makes someone angrier than being neglected? Hundreds Hall fulfills these requirements because:
“after two hundred years, those people had begun to withdraw their labour, their belief in the house; and the house was collapsing, like a pyramid of cards.”
