What Happens To The Spirits Inhabiting a Haunted House When It Moves or Is Destroyed?
Why a viral video on Twitter reminds me of a New Orleans ghost story
The video of a 140-year old Victorian mansion drifting down the street in San Francisco recently bobbed to the surface of my Twitter timeline in a surreal fashion, as if emerging from water. It almost didn’t make sense initially.
I saw Dr. Cheysa Burke (@ChesyaBurkePhD) post it, and what turned my attention away from the house itself was her caption: “If you move a haunted house, does the ghost go with the house or stay on the land?”
Though she obviously isn’t implying the house is haunted, Dr. Burke raises an interesting question and one I have pondered frequently — What does happen to the spirits inhabiting a haunted house when it moves or is destroyed? Do spirits follow the house they haunt or remain on the original land? What about a house that is torn down like the supposed “Demon House” in Gary, Indiana? Do spirits haunt the dispersed lumber and the fixtures, or only the rooms as they existed?
I follow Dr. Burke’s writing on the horror genre, so I commented on the post along with several others. A few people discussed the possibility that a spirit’s memories or final moments can be tied to a specific building or plot of land and therefore they haunt…
