Book Review: Author Leila Taylor visits Sick Houses: Haunted Homes & the Architecture of Dread

Cover Photo Courtesy of Repeater Books

What comes to mind when we think about haunted houses? Do we see a large Victorian home that looms in the shadows? Do we picture a dilapidated cabin in the woods? Or do we automatically visualize the Dutch Colonial home with its famous (or infamous) glowing eye windows from the Amityville Horror? In her newest book, Sick Houses: Haunted Homes & the Architecture of the Dead (Repeater Books), author Leila Taylor examines the scary architecture of not only haunted houses in horror films, but those homes that harbor real life horror stories found in our own histories.

 In her introduction, Leila Taylor notes that since the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, horror has made its place in the home. According to Taylor, “Our home is, or should be, our sanctuary, our designated center of comfort, security, and respite, a place where we are naked, literally and emotionally.”  Thus, when something invades this sanctuary, whether this something is supernatural or a more real evil, we feel especially vulnerable. And this vulnerability, as readers will see, can be felt in any type of home or building.

In the first chapter simply titled “American Houses,” Taylor examines the role of both homes and homeowners in haunted house films. She explains that in America, we are taught to strive for home ownership and that owning a home “signifies a stable income, a cohesive family unit, a valued place in society, personal security, and most importantly, agency.”  When supernatural events invade this home, these elements are destroyed, and thus, killing any security a family may feel in a place they were supposed to feel safe. 

She starts with one of the most famous haunted house films, The Amityville Horror. In this movie, Kathy and George Lutz celebrate buying a beautiful home at a reasonable price.  Home ownership suggests some kind of security, but the Lutz family soon finds out that there is no protection against hauntings. Indeed, Taylor notes, haunted houses stories work because they introduce a sense of normalcy and happiness, before the frightening events begin to occur. Many other haunted house films follow this plot including the movie Poltergeist where the Freelings are introduced as a very ordinary family before the supernatural chaos ensues.  Taylor goes on to say that films featuring haunted houses often focus on middle-class White families and that is why the film Us is so refreshing. This movie introduces the Wilsons, a Black family living the American Dream, until their doppelgangers rise to take over their American Dream lives.

From this chapter, Taylor moves on to different types of haunted homes and their inspirations. In one chapter, she spends considerable time looking at haunted homes that were inspired by Edward Hopper’s painting, House by the Railroad.  In Psycho, Alfred Hitchcock used the painting for the inspiration for the looming home of Norman Bates and his mother. Taylor explains that homes like these were symbols of wealth in the Victorian era, but because of the loss of money, such homes slowly fell into decay.  Indeed, this model, continuously made its appearance everywhere from the film, The Haunting of Hill House to the television show, The Addams Family. In fact, Taylor notes, in the film Barbie, the character of Weird Barbie lives in a “plastic, pop version of the Psycho house.”

While discussions of horror films and television shows take center stage in this book, Taylor does spend some time examining buildings where atrocious crimes took place or truly evil people lived. For instance, she takes a close look at the Unabomber cabin (otherwise known as the hideout of Ted Kaczynski). She notes that at Kaczynski’s trial, his defense team introduced the cabin in hopes that the tiny building complete with a front door that had three padlocks, but no doorknob would help convince the jury of his paranoia and mental illness. Taylor then turns to photographs of the Bender farmhouse and the home of Ed Gein noting that all these houses are very different, thus proving that any kind of home can hold evil.

For me, the most interesting aspects of this book occur when Taylor looks at buildings that we normally don’t associate with evil. For instance, Taylor examines the history of Brutalism, a type of architecture that became popular after World War II. Brutalist architecture was characterized by massive, blocky geometric forms that focused on raw concrete with little to no ornamental design.  David Cronenberg’s Shivers takes place in this type of complex as does a more recent film, High-Rise. Indeed, as a reader, I realized that apartment complexes of any kind almost never enter my mind (with the exception of the film Rosemary’s Baby) when I think of a haunted home, but when I imagined the stale, creepy complexes described in Taylor’s book, I can see why some horror films embraced these settings.

Overall, Taylor’s book reminds us that any place we call home can become haunted. Sometimes, the hauntings come from places that are very real, while other times, the supernatural invades our lives. In Taylor’s concluding remarks, she says that someday in the future, science will have an answer for haunted houses. Still, she hopes that day is far in the future for “haunted-house stories make the best movies.”