Haunted House- A psychological phenomenon?
An elderly man had died in the 1940's. He was old. He had many children. When he died, he left his spirit behind in the home. The spirit is obsessed with the doors. Every door in the house that is left open is found closed again. The apparition also drags people out of their bed during the night. The people can be found in the hallway.
This is not the only real haunted house in the world. You can get quite a long list of this. The big question is, Should we believe in haunted houses in this scientific era?
The haunted houses are generally dark houses which lack maintenance. We hardly call a bright colored and well maintained building a haunted house. Everything that we are afraid of or are not comfortable with get associated with haunted house. Our psyche and imagination conceive haunted house as a dark house. The building is not at all impressive. One can hear eerie sounds coming out of the broken windows of the house. Blood stains can be found on the floors.
It is difficult to trace the origin of haunted house. Some are of the opinion that the ghost stories gave birth to the concept of haunted house. But literature is always a reflection of the contemporary culture. Was haunted house a part of the pagan culture or was just a fictitious entity? It is debatable that who hatched the egg first.
The little girl knocked her neighbor's door. Nobody came out. The girl knocked again. This time the door opened. But the girl could not found out the person who opened the door. The girl entered the house. But nobody has seen her since then. It is believed that the dead woman of the house was very fond of children. Thus, the apparition never allows any child to get out of that house. This same incident would have got a different interpretation if it was explained by a psychologist.
Professor Richard Wiseman, the renowned psychologist has done his research on superstitions and fake psychological phenomena. He is now interested to set up a scientific haunted house to explore the psychological effects of haunting. He is on his way to make the arrangements with eerie lighting, infra sound vibrations or provisions for making the necessary change in the temperature. He wants to record the visitors' responses and wants to prove that haunted feelings are caused actually by the environment and not by the ghosts.
If Richard turns out to be successful in his experiment, then it would turn the concept of haunted house upside down. People try hard to believe that ghosts really do not exist. In spite of this conception why we get sweats on our foreheads while passing by a haunted house? According to the scientists and psychologists, we get afraid because we are not comfortable with the gloomy appearance, dark rooms, strange smell of old houses...All these give us the impression of an eerie atmosphere. We do not want to get controlled by witches and apparitions anymore. It's time to wait for the response of Richard's experiment. Modern research is on it's way to prove that it is our uncomfortable state of minds that create haunted house.
Haunted house forms a very important aspect of Halloween. People love to create the haunted house atmosphere while they celebrate Halloween. This time, it is all about fun and not fear. The psychology can be explained in this light- the moment we come to know that this particular house has been labeled as the haunted house, we experience a different uncanny mental state even if we do not get any ominous signal from the apparition. Halloween is the time when people want to play with the fear feelings. Haunted house has become so popular that people around the world love to send e-cards on Halloween haunted house and 123greetings.com is ready with it's huge collection on the same.
Sean Carter writes on holidays, Halloween and world events. He also writes on family, relationships, Christmas, religion, love and friendship. He is a writer with special interest in ecard industry and writes for 123greetings.com. He is also an active blogger at Halloween Blog
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