Key Features of Haunted Houses

  Edgar Allen Poe has always been a pretty important figure in the American literature, he is extremely famous for mystery and horror short stories. Certain themes in his stories became the foundation of some of the most fascinating works today, including detective fiction and haunted houses. The Fall of the House of Usher was a famous piece of his glorious collection of mystery - based stories, it introduced the concept of haunted houses to all writers of America and inspired them.

Source:http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/grimshaw/paintings/8.html

  If I were to create a short story with the haunted house as the theme, I would like to use Poe's idea of a spooky house illusion in the middle of nowhere. It's interesting that the once castle-like mansions can become such a fearsome place years after, the dead and decayed trees just adds on to it. Since location plays a huge role in any story, it just makes this portrayed place even more important.

   Another idea of Poe's that I would like to use would be the disturbed mind of a human being, Poe's story mentioned some of the symptoms of different psychological disorders. Any character from his short stories could, in some way, be ill in the brain. His stories are all meant for people to question who was telling the truth.

  Depression would be another good feature, since many eerie feelings of a story are caused my the characters' lack of affection towards one another. The lack of focus on the characters will give the authors more time to develop the surroundings.

  The fresh idea of the term "zombie" seems to work quite well for Poe, since the sister in the story came back alive after being buried a few days prior to her reappearance. I think it would be interesting to combine the haunted house image with the use of zombie characters.

  The last idea that I would want to re-establish from Poe would be his usage of telling scary stories with natural, spooky sound effects. It's really quite interesting that the character in his story was reading another author's work at the right moment. Poe seemed to have connected fiction and nature to make a realistic fiction, I think it would be nice to use this.