Houses and Homes and Hauntings

Last updated on: November 12, 2018 at 12:20 pm by Marie

Houses and Homes and Hauntings 2018-11-12T12:20:31+00:00 Marie

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Source: pixabay

Jessica Mesman Griffith has got me started on a horror binge recently.

Horror is never my go to genre. I prefer to maintain my ability to sleep, thankyouverymuch (at night and at all other random and unusual times of the day, too). But I’ve been dealing with some particularly difficult anxiety lately. (You mean moving to a foreign country, with a very different time zone and different eating times and a new language and a new job and trying to integrate into a new family could be STRESSFUL? Who knew?!)

(To say nothing of the Kavenaugh mess, followed by the Heck mess, followed by my abusive father emailing my mother with threats to divorce her and demand spousal support…but we won’t go there. Not today. Nope)

ANYhoo.

Jessica loves horror, and she has recommended a few stunningly well-crafted pieces recently. And I’ve found, to my surprise, that psychological horror can be deeply cathartic for anxiety. It’s weird, but somehow seeing people on a screen feeling the same (more? maybe more) level of anxiety as you, and giving in to their urge to scream about it rather loudly and quite shrilly, is somehow very calming.

So, first I watched The Witch, and it was quite thrilling. Jessica, Joanna Penn Cooper, and I had a roundtable discussion of if over at Sick Pilgrim last week, which was fascinating.

Now I’m watching Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House. I’m not quite finished with episode 7. I had to shut if off last night sometime after midnight. It got pretty intense and I was hoping to catch some sleep before work today.

This series has also given me so many thoughts. Family, and family trauma. The twins craving to be believed. The deep empathy in Theo’s hands. But I have mostly been thinking of houses.

I expected to be much more bothered, more “haunted,” I suppose, by watching this series.

I expected to see ghosts in every shadow in my small garret room with the sloped roof. But I haven’t. Not one.

This is something I’ve noticed about houses. Strangely, I often miss the draughtiness of my old childhood home. I loved to feel the air seeping through. I loved to hear the wind and the sounds from the street. But in new, insulated, sealed up houses, like this one where I’m living in Spain, I feel almost stifled. The paint is too fresh. The lines are too straight. The floor doesn’t creek.

There are no ghosts.

No ghosts of sweet laughter echoing. No lines drawn, marking ages as children inch higher and higher over the years. No sobs creaking through the floorboards.

As I ponder this, I think of Jessica’s guest interview on the Encountering Silence podcast (which is rich and pensive. Please check them out. Also Cassidy Hall is my celebrity crush—and she sends me postcards. So that’s hella cool.) In her interview, Jessica spoke of her terror, all her life, of the silence. But never in nature. Silence in nature, she always found, was richly alive. But in a house, it became the oppressive silence of a tomb.

But see, in old homes, homes that whisper the laughter and tears of generations, I never feel that empty claustrophobia. In new houses I do. New houses, to me, are the tombs. New houses, built with much technology and plenty of insulation, sit smug in their isolation. They don’t let us inside the walls to teach them to breathe. These buildings built and rebuilt for the rich, never loved long enough to live. Houses like the one in which I now live, not yet old or worn enough to be a home. Built only to resist the wearing.

But I think I’ve found a crack in the slanted roof above my bed. It’s hidden by the pristine satin paint, but I’ve spotted it despite its efforts. And there are veins in the glossy hardwood floor beneath me. I think I’ll leave some laugher in that crack above me. And I think the veins in the floor have caught my tears.

When I leave this house, I hope to leave it a bit haunted.

I hope then it can relax a bit into a home.

Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/old-house-mill-lapsed-old-building-2521959/

Uncategorized

Previous Post

October 12, 2018

I Was the Administrator

Next Post

November 15, 2018 We Are Witches

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Advent Art and Poetry Catholic Domestic Violence Easter Triduum Guest Contributions Humor Lent Meanderings from Mass Millennials leaving and staying Pop Culture Social Justic Uncategorized Unconventional Catholicism

Select a Month September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz