haunted house???

How to describe a "haunted house".   And does a house that is haunted look any different from a house that isn't.   There were a lot of so called "haunted houses" on the street  where I lived when I was a kid.  Us kids believed that there were at the very least ghosts and skeletons living  in them.  That. however, I learned later was the point of adults labeling these  vacant houses as "haunted".    I was let in on the secret, a secret that started during the Great Depression to protect the homes of people who had gone elsewhere to look for work, and surely they would return someday.  After the years wore on few came back,  vandals and time reduced the once fine houses to rotting heaps of timber. and they were torn down to make way for the new.

Is it that house down the street with the peeling paint and windows that look like vacant eyes, where the  trees and vines have  become overgrown and now look like grasping tendrils?  Where the wavy glass on the curtain less windows plays tricks on your imagination every time a car goes by.  Unattended and uninhabited,  what might have made this place its home?  Or why did the the owners leave and never come back, what dark force, real or imagined threat lurked inside these well built walls.

Sometimes, don't you wonder what is behind those perpetually drawn curtains and overgrown trees?  those houses that always gave you the chills when you walked past them, and  where only the bravest of Trick or treaters every dared go.

Then there was that old house by the woods, someone lived in it, there was often smoke curling from the chimney, it was  overgrown, but you could tell it had once been a nice house, but no one ever saw anyone around.  What sort of creature lived here that never showed  himself during the day?  Someone, but who. would mow the lawn from time to time, clear the weeds from the old car, which never appeared to go anywhere.  Lights went on at night.   The neighborhood kids might hide and watch to see if anyone came in or out of the house, but they never saw anyone.


photos fromhttp://www.etsy.com/shop/AndSoForth