Malevolent Places

A swift riffle of haunting houses and dreaded demesnes

Location, Location, Location

Folks, it's time we talked about how evil dentist offices are. Okay, maybe not – but I have just been, and had a realization about the relationship between ADHD and bad dental hygiene, so maybe I can set down a bit of the weight of guilt I've been carrying about that.

This Friday is All Hallows' Eve, so I'm contractually obliged with my patron entities to write about something spooky. It's just occurred to me that I could always write about Hallowe'en itself and the role it plays in a number of different stories, often being a time when the barrier between the worlds of living and dead wear thin... (speaking of, anyone watching Critical Role? Yowza!) but maybe that'll be one for next year.

I love stories about places with minds and demeanours of their own. There's something about assigning sentience or simply intention to inert objects or beings that always grabs me, whether it's the rainbow bamboo tree Stevland in Semiosis, Danny the Street in Doom Patrol, or indeed malevolent places like Hill House and the Overlook Hotel.

I'll loosely divide my examples into those which are strongly allegorical and those which are just plain evil. Note that I won't be discussing the origins of these places today, for two reasons: 1) I know that at least the Overlook is 'built on an ancient Indian burial ground', which is both offensive and boring, and 2) It's often a chicken-or-egg situation as to whether human evil cursed a place or a place attracted human evil.

Without further ado, let's split up and stumble through a few spooky places in the middle of the night, shall we?

The House on Ash Tree Lane, [artist unknown]

Allegorical Evil (House of Leaves, Negative Space)

I'm going to begin with the strangest pick of the day; a place whose evil is simultaneously cosmically apathetic and entirely subjective. I've written three lengthy articles about House of Leaves and in some ways it still feels like I've only scratched the surface of this haunting tale about obsession and madness which surrounds the House on Ash Tree Lane.

At the story's most basic level, the House could be called evil for how it taunts and torments Navidson and his fellow explorers, driving him insane and alienating him from his family while also killing men like Holloway and Tom. On deeper analysis, one could say (and I'm sure I have) that the House's evil is representative of the dangers of obsession and spiralling.

But at the same time, each narrative level of House of Leaves simply reflects back what people put into them. Is the House really the problem, or would Navidson just as easily have become obsessive and distant about something else? I would ultimately not label the House as malevolent, but it remains a fascinating point of discussion regardless.

Cover of B.R. Yeager's Negative Space

It's been a while since I wrote about B.R. Yeager's Negative Space, but a recent book club on the novel has it fresh in my mind. Neck and neck with Tender is the Flesh for the darkest and most depressing book I've ever read, Negative Space follows four teens through a suicide epidemic, creepy ritual magic and an all-consuming fungal rot overtaking their small American town.

(There is technically an abandoned house where Tyler performs most of his rituals in the book, which arguably deserves to be here on its own. If any place has been magically and morally stained, it's that one.) But for me, Negative Space is at its most horrifying in its depictions and allegories of real, hard-to-escape terrors: drug addiction, toxic relationships, feeling suffocated by people and place, and more than anything, small towns.

And to be clear, I've lived in Toronto all my life (also contractually obligated to say 'Go Jays!'); my closest points of reference for small towns, besides a few dozen other novels, are the Canadian sitcom Corner Gas and the ever-brilliant Midnight Mass. But Yeager implants the horror deep, and twists the knife by having his characters seem to escape before being drawn inexorably back into the mycelial web of trauma and the lives they thought they'd left behind.

Perhaps I'm particularly terrified of regression, with how daunting ADHD makes every significant step forward. But the town of Negative Space getting its tendrils into Jill and Ahmir even months and years after Tyler's death feels every bit as malicious and calculated as the Overlook Hotel, even if the story overall tends toward allegory.

The Overlook Hotel, design by Studio Muti for Ster-Kinekor

Rotten to the Core (The Shining, Haunting of Hill House)

If there's a single scene that has stuck with me strongest this year, it's the oh-so-simple moment of the Overlook Hotel's ghostly barman serving Jack Torrance alcohol that should not have existed. The infamous setting of Stephen King's The Shining is probably best known for its ghosts, but being haunted is merely a side effect: the novel makes clear that the Overlook is overwhelmingly cunning and cruel in its own right. The ghosts are its puppets and playthings, kindred evil spirits drawn to the hotel or warped by exposure to it.

As I wrote previously, there are plenty of allegorical lessons to be learned from The Shining and its sequel Doctor Sleep – frankly far more than I had expected when I began re-reading the books. But the Overlook itself isn't an allegory, it's just an evil bastard looking to power itself up by absorbing Jack and Danny, preying on the family's traumas in order to divide and conquer. Jack genuinely tried to correct his course and be a better father, putting himself miles and hours away from a single drop of alcohol. The Overlook cheated, gleefully.

(I'm realizing now that The Shining might be to The Haunting of Hill House what King's 'Salem's Lot is to Dracula. Are there other clear examples of King riffing on a classic?)

Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House (1959) probably wasn't the first story to ever anthropomorphize an evil-looking building, but it sure as hell set the tone for the genre. House of Leaves certainly took profound inspiration from the uncanny architecture of Hill House, and as I noted above the Overlook absolutely feels like a direct response to it. The fact that the novel leaves it ambiguous whether Hill House is truly supernatural or point-of-view character Eleanor is simply insane is also rather perfect, both for the book and the genre as a whole, since readers will always be navigating the tension between those two interpretations.

I would be remiss not to mention Mike Flanagan's loose adaptation, which like Kubrick's The Shining places more importance on the ghosts than on Hill House itself. Nonetheless, this was the series that paved the way for Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher (two of my favourite shows of all time), in addition to being incredible in its own right; the twists with the locked room and Bent-Necked Lady utterly blew me away. The show also manages to convey a similar sense to Negative Space, with the grown-up Crain kids forced into reckoning with their childhood trauma and lives they thought they'd escaped.

"Nell's Last Dance", painting by SubHaanArt

Make Our Escape

Strangely enough, I think the moral I take away from this is something akin to 'life is what happens when you make plans': each of these malevolent places intrude into the lives of characters with reminders of trauma and weakness, forcing them to confront the past if they hope to continue living in the present. This even applies to Navidson and the House on Ash Tree Lane to some extent, presenting an unsolvable problem to him just as he becomes determined to settle down.

I've said it a thousand times, but I probably still need to hear it more than you do: mindfulness can play a huge role in helping us through these situations, allowing us to take a breath and remember the progress we've made rather than spiralling and regressing. But more importantly, if you're anywhere near a genuinely evil sentient building or town, GTFO!

Are there any evil places that have stuck with you from fiction? I'd love to hear about them!

Thanks for reading and Happy Hallowe'en 🎃