A 200-year-old Louisiana plantation boasts of being among the most haunted homes in America. One skeptic checks in …

By Caitlin Blackwell Baines

“Do you believe in ghosts?” As the author of a book entitled How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession, it’s a question I get asked a lot. My answer is “Perhaps,” as unexpected as it is unsatisfying. The truth is, I don’t know.

Why do some houses set our super-sensory alarm bells jangling, while others leave us unmoved? Is there a particular set of ingredients—aesthetic, historical, cultural, or otherwise—that can combine to create the “haunted house” of our collective imagination? These were the questions I sought to answer in the book. It was READ ON