ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the physical spaces, journeys and returns of ghosts to the locale and landscape of the haunted house, the reasons for their visitations and their relationship to the materiality of walls, rooms and gardens. It introduces the idea of the sedimented house – places which are themselves containers for the congealed histories and trauma of the past or of their inhabitants. The chapter focuses on the ghosts delineated by Nabokov before introducing perhaps the most remarkable short ghost story of all time, Karen Blixen's ghost of Elsinore. The haunted house is one of the most significant motifs and locations in ghost lore and history. It offers, like the castle, specific and well-documented physical spaces which act as the locale for hauntings. The 'incipient possession' by 'disembodied spirits' led to the family fleeing the house and in subsequent years the Amityville mythology has grown around the supposedly most haunted of houses.
