This poem was inspired by the video titled Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House by Jacob Geller. In it, he covers the video games Control and Anatomy while bringing in notes about Leviticus 14:33-57 and The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I pulled some sample text from Shirley Jackson’s Sublime First Paragraph in ‘Hill House,’ Annotated in addition to the other links here.
I grew up in a haunted house,
One bereft of creaky doors or jump scares,
But haunted all the same
Unpredictability was king
And my family’s matriarchs its queens
The violence of generations collected in swarms,
Passing between each of us,
Being released into our bodies through our loved ones’ arms, hands, and harsh tongues
Although I tried,
There was no escape from this haunting,
No rabbi to point out the malignancy
The haunting became so deep that, soon, the house no longer mattered
Any home became haunted
Any dark spot leprous
Every room a mouth
As I grew up, I caught glimpses of healthier homes
Ones where hauntings had been avoided
Or houses were made clean
I found the words I needed and pointed this out to my family
“Something like a spot of leprosy has become visible to me in the house”
I brought evidence
Testimony
Recollections of hauntings past
All only to be told that every home was haunted
All families cursed
That we, in fact, were better off than most
Poltergeists don’t see the haunting they cause
I became silent, searching for a teaching Tangina to help me until
This house is clean
I never found my guide, but
One day, the dark spot I’d become accustomed to was gone;
Without my vision and mind clouded,
I saw everything I was taught was wrong
I knew I had to tear down the house —
its stones, its timbers, and plaster —
In hopes of rebuilding myself stronger.
I could no longer serve as a shelter for this poltergeist if I hoped to truly live
And so, I left,
Tired of closing kitchen cabinets and unstacking the chairs
I scrubbed my walls, treating them with care
Seeking help over the years until atonement had been made
I am older than I expected to be now
I live in an old house that has stood for a century
The floors and doors creak from time to time
The basement gets damp after a storm
The dogs bark at the nothingness more often than I’d like
But,
This is a house full of love, not sorrow
Joy, not pain
Clean walls, free of spots, save for the echoes of my past that I treat quickly with care
Life, not ghosts