One of my favorite books is "The House Next Door" by Anne Rivers Siddons. Published in 1978, the book was a departure for Siddons, who often wrote sweeping, realist family novels rooted in the American south, where she was born. But "The House Next Door," which became a New York Times bestseller, is a horror novel about what happens when a vacant lot is sold next to a middle-aged couple, and a new house is built there, a terrible, modern house where bad things keep happening.
Houses can contain many horrors, not just of the ghostly variety. I grew up in a 200-year-old farmhouse in Ohio. There was, hidden in our fireplace hearth, the skeleton of a cat. When my parents purchased the old home, it had fallen into disrepair. During the many fixes, workers tore up the hearth and uncovered the skeleton. They rested it on the mantle while they poured new concrete for the fireplace base. And then, as the concrete set, the skeleton accidentally fell in again. It is still buried there, as far as I know.
