Architectural history of haunted housesfrom @the_life_professor

Transcript

Have you ever wondered why every stereotypical Scooby Doo haunted house looks like this? Like in a movie or a cartoon, if a house is supposed to be haunted, it is going to be in this particular style of architecture more times than no. And there's a very interesting reason for that. Well, the haunted house architectural style is essentially a broad synthesis of what we would today call Victorian homes, which is a umbrella term of different architectural movements that were going on during the Victorian era. And while each one of these homes is different, it's one of those things in the modern context of like, when you see it, you know it. It's this very ornamental colorful style. Often, it's got these towers, big windows, that kind of thing. And during the nineteenth century, these elaborate woodwork homes were the impressive, fashionable, and expensive homes for all the well-to-do to stay in. However, by the twentieth century, more architecture started leaning on the modernist style, which is more known for, like, clean angles, less ornamentation, and form following function. And as the years went on, more of these modernist ranch style homes began to be built until this became the new normal. And the old Victorian homes became more and more known for disrepair and disuse as they got older. Until eventually, you had a whole bunch of normal houses and then this thing that good man Johnson refuses to crawl out of, except for when he comes for blood. And also doesn't help that, like, all the ornamentation and, like, silhouettes and, like, imposing nature that was going on with the original structures, as soon as they, like, fell into any kind of disrepair, they just became evil looking, like, even more than, like, just an abandoned shack ever could. What makes this so eerie on a psychological level is, like, this is a once prestigious building that has fallen from grace. That's a big part of it. Eventually, the idea of the old nasty house in your neighborhood being a Victorian home began to be cemented in popular culture in the nineteen thirties whenever many of these old Victorian homes were actually falling apart, whenever they started making so many of these classic monster movies that we know today. And as these kind of things go, as you had the generations who grew up on the old monster movies using these Victorian homes as stand pieces for haunted, eventually, it just became to the point where this exclusively means haunted. And now it's to the point that if these old Victorian homes are in anything but, like, tip top shape and then the brightest, happiest colors ever, they just good like they got a ghost in them. And it's a self reinforcing cycle where so many people are exclusively exposed to this type of architecture in this evil light and then, like, more works of art get made, evil light and then, like, more works of art get made casting it in, you know, the haunted way. That's just the way that this works. But based off that history, it kinda makes you wonder if the next generation's version of this are gonna be like derelict millennial gentrification apartments. Some people may say that they're already evil buildings. But, tell me what you think rank, follow for more hauntingly good content.