This post was originally featuredon The Country House Reader. If you love neat houses, it's a must read!
How
is it that some Victorian houses are the cutest darn things you’ve ever seen
and some are right out of a Gothic horror story? It’s not as simple as adding
dark colors. There are particular styles, cultural symbols, and history that
makes some Victorian houses scarier than others.
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| By Jen Wen Luoh via Flickr cc |
Architecture
There
are several different types of Victorian
architecture.
Some like Queen Anne houses, Greek-Revivals, and Italianates are really cute,
usually painted in pastel colors, and representative of prominence and
achievement. There are probably some houses in these styles that one could say
look creepy, but it’s usually due to deterioration as opposed to the original
appearance. The two types of Victorian houses that naturally represent a
haunted house are designed in either the Gothic Revival or Second Empire
styles.
Gothic Revivals are literally a throwback
to the Gothic castles and churches of medieval times, and include steep or
peeked rooftops, arches, pinnacles, and decorative ornamentation especially
over and around windows. Arches were also popular for entryways, doorways,
porches, windows, etc. Sometimes these types of houses will have a lot of
height to them or may include a large tower.
The
original Gothic horror
stories
were all set in or around decaying Gothic churches or castles from medieval
times and the architectural style became a worldwide symbol of the horror
genre. The look of Gothic architecture is culturally embedded in to our minds
as symbols of fear. Gothic horror and Gothic literature developed further in
the Victorian Era. Gothic Revival houses and mansions not only look reminiscent
of the horror story castles, they became the setting for Victorian
Gothic literature.
Recognizable symbols of Gothic literature still commonly populate modern day
horror genres.
Second Empire architecture w,as inspired
by the reconstruction of Paris, France under the direction of Napoleon III who
had much of the city torn down and rebuilt with wider roads and large elaborate
buildings.
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| By Ashley Rehnblom via Flickr cc |
Victorian
Second Empire houses are usually very large and ornate, with lots of floors and
windows. They are styled in a box shape with flat roofs and often times include
a tall tower. Some people have said the squared levels and roofs make these
houses resemble stacked boxes or a tiered cake. Second Empire houses have been
used in twentieth century Halloween and horror movies including Psycho, The Adams Family, and
Beetlejuice.
Interior
Design
Victorian
floor plans were designed so that each
room came off of a central hallway and were closed off from other rooms by
doors and walls. The small enclosed space was easier to heat. Unlike modern
living rooms, dining rooms, and family rooms that are bright and open,
Victorian common rooms were small, closed off, and often times dark because
heat could escape easily through large windows. If a room did have windows,
they would be covered with heavy velvet curtains that kept heat in during the
winter. Although parlors and ballrooms needed to be larger to serve their
purposes, most spaces in nineteenth century middle-class homes were smaller
than modern day rooms.
It’s
an almost universal fear to be trapped in a dark, cramped space, so Victorian
rooms can easily be used to create a sense of unease, especially if the objects
filling the space has the ability to send chills down a person’s spine.
Interior decoration during the Victorian Era
was very ornamental, busy, and overbearing. It was also known for a mixture of
old world, new world, and multi-cultural styles that created rooms designed
like frantic and chaotic representations of the world and beasts that coexisted
within it.
The
most popular styles at the time included the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Anglo-Japanese Style, and the Aesthetic Movement. Although each of these
styles contributed key characteristics to the creepy Victorian interior design,
including the busyness, ornamental influences, and dark colors, none of these
were as disturbing as the Art Nouveau Style.
The
Art Nouveau style incorporated a lot of animal and human faces or body parts
into the designs, such as in the “claw-footed” tub or a bedsteads with cherub
faces carved into the wood. The style was also characterized by “whiplash”
curves and twirling designs. The designers incorporated a life form or some kind
of movement into nearly every piece. Art Nouveau furniture, jewelry, and
decorations like statues, knick-knacks, mirrors, lamps, etc., were inspired by
the world of nature.
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| New York Parlor, 1850, Public Domain |
There
are also a lot of monsters and fantasy creatures like fairies, dragons, and
gargoyles
in Art Nouveau decoration. This is due to the fact that the movement was a type
of rejection of the modernization, industrialization, and technological revolution
of the late nineteenth and turn of the centuries. Some artists wanted to revert
to the old world or a world without
science where fairy tales and magical creatures ruled the world of fantasy not
scientific discovery.
This
type of furniture and decoration was used in the famous 1959 Gothic novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, which
was turned into the 1999 film The
Haunting.
Art
Nouveau is also a form of architecture but it wasn’t generally used to create
houses. It was used to embellish parts of houses, such as stairwells, doors,
archways, etc. Most Art Nouveau architecture came in the form of larger
non-domestic buildings.
History
Of course, the history of Victorian homes is
what makes them seem quite scary. It's common to feel like those who used to
live in the house are present when surrounded by the historical objects that
remind us how people lived and suffered in the home during this period in
history.
Death was common
during the Victorian Era. A large percentage of babies and children died as
well as adults. It was an even more frightening thing than in the past as new
discoveries about death spurred more questions
than answers. It wasn’t clear if death occurred due the
heart stopping or the brain dying and why these things occurred at all. This
uncertainty led to societal fear that people could be misdiagnosed as dead and
then buried or dissected alive.
Unlike modern times, death most commonly
occurred within the home in result of an illness. Lack of medicine and the use
of family members to care for the ill meant that all the messy and difficult
parts of an illness were witnessed by the direct relatives. Further, the
byproducts of the human body ceasing to function were experienced and cleaned
by family members or by servants in an upper class home.
The Victorians were surrounded by so much death
that they created an elaborate set of traditions called Mourning Etiquette
in order to respond to it. These traditions involved elaborate funerals and
burials as well as keeping memorabilia including post mortem photos, known as
Memento Mori, and hair jewelry
made with locks of hair from the deceased.
The home was prepared after a death
to be a quiet, dark solitude of grief. Victorians would cover the mirrors with
black sheaths because women were not supposed to partake in any kind of vanity
during this time as they should look dreadful from weeping. Someone would drape
a piece of black velvet over the portrait of the patriarch if he had passed.
They would drape the family carriage with black velvet too. They also locked
the piano because no one was to play any music, and there would be no dinner
parties or festivities in the house for some time.
There were a variety of traditions to signal
outsiders that the house was in mourning. Some people hung black wreaths on the
door, or the family covered the doorknobs in white crepe for a child’s death or
black crepe for an adult’s death. Markers like these signaled to visitors that
they should prepare to speak quietly and quickly so they would not overtax or
burden the bereaved. The family might also muffle the doorbell to prevent any
loud noises, which would startle the already anxious nerves of those inside.
Many
Victorian houses are quite cheery, but the ones that often times stand out in
movies or literature are the ones that are less so. It's not just the age or
decay that makes them so disturbing. Certain architectural styles are the
symbols of our cultural fears, the interior layout and decoration can be quite
fantastical, and the history of death in the home makes some Victorian houses
just more haunting than others.
If you liked these creepy houses then you may also enjoy the creepy house in my novel A White Room.
