Poor strangers, they have so much to be afraid of. - Shirley Jackson

I was already doing a lot of splendid research reading all the books about ghosts I could get hold of, and particularly true ghost stories - so much so that it became necessary for me to read a chapter of _Little Women_ every night before I turned out the light - and at the same time I was collecting pictures of houses, particularly odd houses, to see what I could find to make into a suitable haunted house.

People,” the doctor said sadly, “are always so anxious to get things out into the open where they can put a name to them, even a meaningless name, so long as it has something of a scientific ring.

the houses described in Leviticus as ‘leprous,’ tsaraas, or Homer’s phrase for the underworld: aidao domos, the house of Hades; I need not remind you, I think, that the concept of certain houses as unclean or forbidden — perhaps sacred — is as old as the mind of man.