Witching hour

ll

Cold was the ground.

This haunted house

"I dwell with a strangely aching heart 
In that vanished abode there far apart..."
--Robert Frost, "Ghost House"

[Self-portrait in the ruins of my family home, September 2013.]

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” 

--Shirley Jackson, the Haunting of Hill House 

[Andrew Wyeth, Hussey’s House, 1942, Watercolor on Paper.]

"We learned, from listening, that all the strangers could see from outside, when they looked at all, was a great ruined structure overgrown with vines, barely recognizable as a house. It was the point halfway between the village and the  highway, the middle spot on the path, and no one ever saw our eyes looking out through the vines."

--Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

 [Clarence John Laughlin, House of the Past, 1947.]

"One need not be a Chamber -- to be Haunted --
One need not be a House --
The Brain has Corridors -- surpassing
Material Place -- "

--Emily Dickinson 

[Will Barnet, the Dream, 1990, oil on canvas.]