Haunted houses, particularly ones constructed from personal trauma, are built with stories—some past, some ongoing. Buddhism teaches us to practice meditation and presence, focusing on the here and now, so we can dismantle the story and awaken to the causes and conditions that affect us.

 

By Kellie Schorr

 

Dharma in the Dark is a six-article series exploring how horror movie tropes and clichés can show us some life basics found in Buddhist teachings.

A house with enough bedrooms and space for the whole family in a picturesque, wooded area and a “within our budget” mortgage.

Who could ask for anything more? What a find! Then, you gather your family outside the pristine Dutch Colonial mansion for a photo, only to notice those quarter-moon windows on the third floor look menacing as they peer over the horizon. The white siding, weathered by a century of harsh winds and thunderous rain, begins to feel like it is holding you inside instead of keeping the world at bay.

Strange tapping sounds on the walls (at 3:15 every damn morning!). Water faucets turn themselves on, delivering scalding water. That weird cold spot at the bottom of the staircase never goes away, no matter how high you turn up the thermostat. You start to wonder if this was a case of “too good to be true.”

Your kids tell you they keep seeing a “sad lady” in the upstairs bathroom. Even worse, Scooter, your loyal Golden Retriever, won’t go into the parlor and has started growling at the ceiling. You decide the best course of action is to:

  1. Get the hell out of there while you can.
  2. Light some sage and hope for the best.
  3. Explore the house!

In horror films, that third option is always the one they take. Why is it that, despite all the glaring signs that the house is evil, malevolent, or at the very least having an existential crisis, the first thing they decide to do is wander deeper into the darkness—armed with nothing but a flickering flashlight and poor life choices?

Why Don’t They Just Leave?

Some don’t leave because they simply don’t think they are in danger. Sure, the old house knocks and creaks at night, but that’s to be expected from a home that’s seen as many years and deaths as this one. Wait. What?

Others may realize there’s a problem, but they can’t leave. They might not have anywhere else to go, or they can’t afford to move until they sell the house. No escape clause.

Then, there are those who think they can fix it. A little sage, nail the door to the creepy room shut, ignore the moaning, or just go full Do-It-Yourself Exorcism.

Whatever the reason, they stay and explore every haunted room until all the horror, secrets, and hidden railroad bonds worth nothing are exposed. The cost—to them and their psyche—can be dear.

House of Pain

So many of us perfectly understand this trope because we’ve been there in our own lives. Instead of a house being haunted by ghosts or former inhabitants, we are haunted by past trauma—memories, events, or pain so scarring that we find ourselves living in it every day.

Few horror movies capture the connection between trauma and haunted houses as effectively as Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House (2018). Each room, each painful revelation, plays out in the lives of the Crain family long past the night their father drove them from the haunted home.

Like the owners of a haunted house, we often feel trapped in a cycle of memories we haven’t resolved or can’t escape for the very same reasons.

  • Sometimes, we delude ourselves into thinking there is no danger from our unprocessed trauma. We tell ourselves “the past is the past” or listen to the unenlightened among us say, “Just forget it—that person can’t hurt you now.”
  • Other times, we want to process our grief or fear, but we just can’t leave. Maybe the emotional cost of remembering or dealing with it directly is too high, or maybe we think we can’t afford to forgive.
  • Then, there are those who seek to fix their pain—or at least numb it for a while. Cycling through one troubled relationship after another, addiction, distraction, or disassociation are all ways we attempt to patch the problem until the next leak opens up.

Trapped in the hallways of our most hellish moments, like the most doomed horror movie characters, we decide to “explore the house.” We pick at our pain, rummaging through old emotional baggage, looking for a matching pair of socks. We hastily break open doors that were locked for a reason, then become consumed by the ghosts we release.

That’s certainly better than the alternative.

One of my favorite haunted house movies is the beautifully ethereal I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House (2016). This film serves as an exploration of trauma, following Lily as she enters a house steeped in a history of violence and longstanding regrets. Instead of confronting or uncovering its secrets, she becomes the house, absorbing the legacy of pain until she is fully enmeshed within its walls, lost to the echoes of the past.

There’s always the risk that if you don’t explore your trauma, you may simply embody it and pass it down to future generations. Intergenerational trauma is made from all the pretty things that live in the house.

Awakened Ownership

So, what do we do with our houses of pain? We anchor ourselves firmly in the present and slowly—often with the help of a therapeutic alliance who already has a map to the exit—reclaim the deed to our sanity. Then we can leave that property behind.

Haunted houses, particularly ones constructed from personal trauma, are built with stories—some past, some ongoing. Buddhism teaches us to practice meditation and presence, focusing on the here and now, so we can dismantle the story and awaken to the causes and conditions that affect us.

Dharma doesn’t teach us to run away from our ghosts, but to witness them without attachment—to see them and understand them, yet not to cling to them. Our trauma is real and profound. But it is not what defines us or locks us into a way of being or feeling.

There is a world outside of your house. There are paths you can choose. There is a future you can forge. Let what arises, arise. Hold it. Own it. Then, understanding the impermanent nature of all things, be willing to leave it in its place and let it go. That doesn’t mean to forget; it means to transcend.

That’s not as easy as continuously exploring the rooms and passageways that built the structure which binds you. But each step you take toward awareness without entanglement, each time you choose to walk out the front door, brings you closer to freedom and further from the things that haunt you.

 

Authors note:  Horror can teach messages such things as living with grief (The Babadook, Hereditary, Don’t Look Now), dealing with family trauma (The Haunting of Hill House, The Witch,  The Invisible Man [2020]), the reality of systemic racism (Get Out, Us, Nope), the harm from fanatical devotion to religious certainty (The Mist, Heretic, The Wicker Man [1973]) or the horror women endure in a culture obsessed with youth and beauty (The Substance, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Death Becomes Her).

Is there a movie you want to talk about or you’d like an article about? Let me know at KellieSchorr.com

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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