Haunted houses are about more than ghosts, says Dalhousie prof

Haunted houses are all the rage around Halloweenbutfor Julia Wright, the fascination is more than seasonal.

"What I'm interested in is the idea of the spooky house as a way of talking about how society's gone a little bitwrong," she said. "The idea the house is not really a home because people aren't safe, people aren't comfortable that's what I'm interested in in terms of what's ...on television right now."

The Dalhousie University English professorand dean of research for arts and social sciencesstudies shows from Supernatural and American Horror Storyto The Munsters and The Addams Family.

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Gothic tradition

In the 18th century, there was a lot of concern around gender inequities in gothic writingand women being completely dependent on the men who owned the houses, Wright said.

"There's a wonderful story from the 1830s where a heroine escapes a bad man inside the house and she runs for miles. She's wearing a Victorian dress that weighs 20 pounds and she just boots it," Wright said.

TV today shows gothic in a different way.

Gothic is still used as a way to talk about gender inequalities and domestic violence, but today's problems, like the U.S. housing crisis, are also popping up.

"People not feeling they really have their house, that they might be kicked out of the house at any moment and I think shows like American Horror Story are picking up on that," Wright said.

Cultural connections

"The first season, the house that is haunted, that has all the ghosts in the basement, was built by people involved in the early years of Hollywood," Wright said.

A lot of these ghosts tried to make a go of it in Hollywood, Wright said.

"The idea of the house being haunted is part of this overall sense that Hollywood is kind of exploitative, and the thing that everybody wants and very few people get."

The home takes on a different meaning in Supernatural, where the two main characters take to the road after losing their home as kids.

The cause: a demon attack.

"One of the recurring debates in the first couple of seasons especially is, we live on the road, we live in the car, we don't get to live in a house. Wouldn't it be nice to live in a house?" Wright said.

"It's an interesting way of playing with that idea of the assumption that everyone wants to live in a house."

Horrific attraction

The draw to spine-chilling stories is not new.

"Stories of spooky houses actually go back to classical Rome. Thereare actually stories of ghosts in houses and courtyards and so forth all the way back to there," Wright said.

Wright said anumber of writers in the 18th century tried to think through why ghost stories around the fire were so well-liked and one answer they came up with is that it's fun to be thrilledbut know you're actually safe.

"And the other theory they had was it was a chance tothink about things in slightly different ways. To go beyond your normal everyday experience and be surprised and be shocked and think about what things were like hundreds of years ago, or in a countryfar away or in a universe where the rules don't work the same way," Wright said.

Technology may have changed, but it's the same story today.

"You're sitting in your living room you know that thing on television isn't real and that the people aren't real but you can imaginatively enter into the story and enjoy it for what it is, as well as think about the larger questions it's raising," Wright said.

Or you can read about it in Wright's upcoming book.Men with Stakes: Masculinity and the Gothic in US Television is being published by Manchester University Press in January 2016.