What are some things that you might see/hear/smell in an old house that might creep you out or upset your stomach?
I opened the front door. It suddenly became hard to breathe. The strong smell of mold made me sick. After emptying my stomach from breakfast, I was finally ready to enter. Cobwebs and dust created a barrier that made it difficult to see more than half a meter ahead. Light only in some places got into the house, because of this, only part of the house was illuminated by rays of sunlight. It feels like someone is deliberately directing the light like that. As if someone is just waiting for you to come out into the light to attack you from the darkness. The darkness itself seems alive, it does not disappear in the presence of light, but only retreats deeper into the house. It was quiet around. What's wrong with silence? But for someone who grew up in a city and always heard the city noise around, hearing only his own breath and his own heartbeat was something new and unusual. I am alone and there is no one around to help .. The floor creaked and bent underfoot as I walked. I could not help but think that this place could collapse in any second. The floor or ceiling collapsed and then what... How long will it take until they find me and will they find me? It felt like this whole place was hostile to me. Therefore, it reacted so vividly to my presence and any action. As if everything around me was pointing at me and telling me that I was a stranger, that I was not welcome here, that this was a warning, that they were giving me a chance to leave.
Rats. although they are a bit cliched of course, How about an animal bolting out of the place between your feet? Hmm, more cliche A book of notes for a horror story, without explanation that it's a book of notes from an aspiring author. Several screwed up drafts of a suicide note, (poor grammar, typo's - maybe the suicidee was a grammar nazi? - I know I am) A large kitchen table with dark stains and some rusty tools?
If you meant tricks to scare the reader or create an atmosphere, I remember tricks like this ... 1) Uncanny valley. The human mind works from stereotypes. And when it meets something that is very similar to some kind of stereotype, but slightly different. Not enough to consciously immediately notice, but enough to subconsciously notice that something is wrong. When this happens, a person begins to feel an incredible uncontrollable fear, while not understanding the reasons. The person begins to think that he is going crazy. This effect is difficult to achieve in a book by describing images, so it is more often achieved by using assignments. When something is described by one thing, but during the interaction of the character it turns out to be something else. The light switch turns out to be a mousetrap, the remote control turns out to be a coil of barbed wire. You wonder if the hero has poor eyesight, or his has problem with head, or someone is making good fun of him. 2) Environmental storytelling. We give you the opportunity to add some kind of scary story yourself, just from a detailed description of the environment, which develops as a consequence of some kind of dark story. Then give the reader the opportunity to come up with a story of events. Good examples are provided above in another comment from SoupSpoon. 3) Fishy. This principle works on the principle of probability. If something that is very unlikely to happen , our mind begins to think that this event is rigged. At this moment, the paranoid mode is activated. The less likely an event occurs, the stronger the effect. Classic examples: The crowd that follows you. You walk down the street and flowerpots fall in front of you. Dying lanterns in the night. And much more.
I am definitely referring to creating an atmosphere. The creepy old house doesn't even really play in much to the short story; I just want to make it known that this village that the house is in is unsettling, and that the MC is uncomfortable having to live there before the real disturbing events happen. The uncanny valley is especially what I am looking for; I remember the ferocious lion's faces in my grandparents' antique furniture, so I used that as an example, but I just needed a few more ideas to build on the atmosphere.
what about the air itself, cold and brittle you can see your own breath. Is it creepy because of the house or what is in the house?
Is the house still full of furniture, clothing, food, etc. as if the house was just hastily abandoned? Or is it empty, damaged, rotting walls and floors, broken windows, etc? Both can be equally atmospheric and spooky. But the key in either case is to describe the house while also showing what the characters feel at the same time. For example, if there is a half-opened closet door with handprints on the dusty wood...does that make the character curious? Scared? Nervous?
The character sees a few feral cats hanging around. Nothing too odd there, it's probably a good spot for hunting rodents or raising kittens. But they're watching the character. Appearing silently behind them. Bolting whenever approached. But mostly just watching. A framed photograph that's been out in the sun for years, and is almost too bleached to make out any of the people in it. Maybe it's just sun damage causing distortion, but it looks like there's something distinctly wrong with one of the people in it.
There are always the blood stains on the kitchen floor from the mass murder that was carried out there a generation earlier.
My grandmother had a very old, two-foot-tall Santa Claus figure she stood in front of the fireplace. Good, old-fashioned nightmare fuel.
I lived in a house in Rush Springs OK and it would creak and groan to the temperature differential when the oil heater was shut off at night. You could see moonlight through the cracks in the walls that cast ominous shadows across the floor. The out-house was 20 yards away and to go out there in the dark was terrifying.
When i was 10, we moved i to this house that had weird peeling wallpaper, and a whole wall length, floor to ceiling mirror. That was creepy and took a while to get used to. I always imagined someone standing behind me in the mirror or (you had to walk toward the mirror as you walked down the hall) the mirror swallowing me up and depositing me on "the other side". For a long while, i'd either run past the mirror or keep my eyes lowered so that i didnt look at it. It was worse at night Also, my bedroom door was painted over before we moved it, but we could still make out the letters. It said "Cynthia" and my brother would always joke that Cynthia was still in the house and that Cynthia was going to get me. Also, the previous owners owned and raised pigeons, and when they moved, they released the pigeons... But the pigeons never left. They'd sit on the roof and coo. -old house -creepy mirrors - Cynthia -pigeons
I always think those clean marks on old wallpaper where photos sat for years are spooky - especially if you can toy with the shape - make it look like the outline of a figure or something.
Joke answer: Have an eccentric but still creepy doctor living there, then you'd have a creepy old house inside a creepy old house (I'm not sorry XD) Serious answer: Mannequins are great fun no matter how you slice them. Serious answer B: Porcelain dolls, particularly those japanese ones with long black hair. Serious answer C: A fireplace that has been clearly used recently, despite the house being 'empty' for years. (hell, ANY sign of 'life' without explanation would work wonders) Serious answer D: Music boxes are great. Serious answer E: Flickering lights despite there being no power in the house.
Yeah for me it's a tie between them and Mannequins, I think the fireplace one would serve ya well too. Nothing says creepy like the neighbors saying nobody's lived in that house for years yet the one time you enter it you see freshly charred wood in a fireplace.
