In Bitter Orange, my third novel, I play with the tropes of haunted houses: the grand dilapidated mansion, the bird found dead in a room, the white face at the window. Are those noises water gurgling in the pipes or something else? Did the kitchen door creep open because it’s badly hung, or is something standing on the other side? The fun of reading novels with haunted houses is turning off your thinking brain and seeing how you react. Ordinary houses and apartments all have their own peculiarities that can unsettle. And your own house doesn’t have to be a gothic mansion with turrets and secret staircases to be scary. If you’re indoors when you’re reading a novel with a haunted house at its center, the room you’re in, its uncurtained windows and dark corners, will still be there when you put the book down, and so the thrill continues.
Haunted house stories bring that feeling of uncertainty or terror home.
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