Why are haunted houses so often Victorian? The spooky truth revealed

This blog post comes courtesy of Danielle Keperling at Keperling Preservation Services. Located in Lancaster, PA, Keperling Preservation Services is a historic preservation and restoration company specializing in the restoration of 18th, 19th, and early 20th-century buildings. They offer a whole-house approach to restoration with a custom millwork and cabinet shop. They are nationally acclaimed preservation contractors trusted by homeowners, general contractors, and the National Park Service to repair, protect, and preserve our nation’s historic architecture. They can provide everything to accurately restore a building. They also offer hands-on classes in woodworking and building preservation to help keep the traditional trades alive. Click here to read the original blog.

Why are “haunted houses” usually Victorian in style?

Many authors (here, here, here, and here, to name a few) have pondered and analyzed this question. Sarah Burns (2012) summarized it best in her article “Better for Haunts”: Victorian Houses and the Modern Imagination, querying: 

“If we consider the Victorian house in its own time and place…there is nothing ominous about the mansard-roofed house…Half a century later, however, that very same style had become a signifier of terror, death, and decay. How, when, and why did the ghosts take over?”

The answer comes down to what Burns refers to as a “shifting context,” where architectural changes coincide with and are influenced by cultural and social reforms. There are many reasons for these shifts.

People deem all kinds of trends—from fashion to food, to entertainment, and even to architecture—to be out-of-date or out-of-touch after a time. Many people naturally rebel against what their parents’ generation considered en vogue. The generations after the Victorians were no exception. The fact that the height of Victorian homes’ popularity coincided with the old tradition of laying out the dead in the family parlor (prior to the advent of the funeral parlor) did not help their image and may have added to the “creepy” mystique as trends moved away from wakes at home. These small-scale reasons contributed to aesthetic preferences shifting away from the Victorian style.

On a greater scale, aesthetics were influenced by social reform and philosophical ideals. The Victorian era—especially the latter half—was a time of great economic (and other) disparity. Traditional Victorian homes visually represented this disparity with ostentatious displays of wealth, frequently characterized by conspicuous consumption by the nouveau riche. Heavy ornamentation and detail indicative of most Victorian styles—inside and out—represented the wealth of a small portion of the population. Some of this ornamentation was also made possible due to the Second Industrial Revolution (itself a partial cause and manifestation of wealth disparity). Mass production enabled cheaper, quicker access to materials. But this also meant the wealthy became wealthier, the middle class became wealthier, and the poor stayed poor. In fact, the increase in urbanization made for overcrowded, unhealthy living conditions for the poor (who made up the greatest number of factory workers). They were also practically chained to their factory jobs and seen as inhuman machines by their employers.

Social reforms, including the arts and crafts movement and the labor movement, gained ground in government but also influenced architectural design. Many reformers (arts and crafts movement) saw industrialization as an undesirable replacement for craftsmanship as well as a social problem and advocated craftsman style in architecture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Home interiors were not immune to the changes, as the sanitary or hygiene reform movement also impacted design, especially in the bathroom; wood and heavy fabrics were seen not only as outdated but also as unsanitary. These architectural style changes became an expression of political, economic, and social values in addition to quality materials and workmanship. Architecturally, craftsman styles flourished through the 1920s. By the 1930s and 1940s, modernism and colonial revival styles took hold, continuing to move away from the Victorian style.

For all of the above reasons, Victorian homes fell out of favor, and people moved away from the old neighborhoods, leaving Victorian homes to be broken into apartments, turned into boarding houses, or derelict looming figures thanks to demolition by neglect, their once grand neighborhoods dilapidated and run-down. This likely furthered the view that these homes were “haunted” or “creepy.” This status was perfect creative fodder for authors and artists, who subsequently demonized these types of homes. As entertainment technology evolved, movies and TV shows followed suit (e.g., The Addams Family, The Munsters, and Psycho), further solidifying a negative view of these homes in the popular imagination.

The conglomeration of influences cemented Victorian homes as the style of haunted house for generations to come. The issue is that doing this, in some cases, has damaged the reputation of these houses, leading to improper care for them or even destruction of them. Luckily, enough of the population cares for these homes to have saved many of them, and we can see examples of Victorian architecture in nearly every town and city in the United States today. 

Letting Victorian homes wither away or even demolishing them due to misplaced fear is much scarier than actually saving and preserving these historic treasures. Anything that is dilapidated and not maintained will look creepy!

Lancaster City example of “haunted” Victorian architecture

The caretaker’s home at Woodward Hill Cemetery (the burial site of President James Buchanan) in Lancaster, PA, is in Gothic Revival architectural style. Built in 1851, it features decorative wooden trusses at the apex of the three roof gables, which are repeated along the roof of the entry porch.

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