Old houses were made for hiding secrets. Letters beneath the floorboards, a dumbwaiter behind the wallpaper, a pair of children in the chimney. Old houses are built on death and secrecy and they know that, they are moulded and fueled by it and we call that haunting and ghosts.
New buildings are somehow... worse.
There's no floorboards to pry open, revealing documents that could shame your family for centuries to come. Instead there are sturdy and practical stone tiles on a concrete base above sturdy and practical metal raft foundations. No room for the dead anywhere near the floor, maybe a corpse or two tumbled into the concrete slurry deep beneath the house but not close enough to haunt it.
There's no dumbwaiters hidden behind peeling wallpaper that will lead you to a hidden part of the attic that isn't on any blueprint. There's no need for them now, not when public elevators are used and vandalised in equal measure, not to mention how attics are homes in their own right - small and cheap and a lifeline for the poorly paid masses.
There's no chimneys, no need for old fireplaces when electric ones have the same aesthetic without the risk of suffocating a bird or a pair of orphan chimney sweeps whose malnourished little bodies wouldn't be found until the old place was demolished to make way for new apartments.
For all that they lack, for all the old souls who can't find purchase in their smooth, fibre optic drenched walls or in their soulless minimalistic dining rooms, something older still finds a way to make it home. Something so utterly unhuman that lack of nature and comfort draws it through from its own dimension and into our own.
We call it a bad internet connection, cheaply made hardware that doesn't make it past the week. We call it that new house feeling, pretending we feel so uneasy because we aren't used to the feeling of incomprehensible eyes studying us through pale beige walls and tasteful marble inlays.
We are so much closer to death than we have ever been before.
New buildings are somehow... worse.
There's no floorboards to pry open, revealing documents that could shame your family for centuries to come. Instead there are sturdy and practical stone tiles on a concrete base above sturdy and practical metal raft foundations. No room for the dead anywhere near the floor, maybe a corpse or two tumbled into the concrete slurry deep beneath the house but not close enough to haunt it.
There's no dumbwaiters hidden behind peeling wallpaper that will lead you to a hidden part of the attic that isn't on any blueprint. There's no need for them now, not when public elevators are used and vandalised in equal measure, not to mention how attics are homes in their own right - small and cheap and a lifeline for the poorly paid masses.
There's no chimneys, no need for old fireplaces when electric ones have the same aesthetic without the risk of suffocating a bird or a pair of orphan chimney sweeps whose malnourished little bodies wouldn't be found until the old place was demolished to make way for new apartments.
For all that they lack, for all the old souls who can't find purchase in their smooth, fibre optic drenched walls or in their soulless minimalistic dining rooms, something older still finds a way to make it home. Something so utterly unhuman that lack of nature and comfort draws it through from its own dimension and into our own.
We call it a bad internet connection, cheaply made hardware that doesn't make it past the week. We call it that new house feeling, pretending we feel so uneasy because we aren't used to the feeling of incomprehensible eyes studying us through pale beige walls and tasteful marble inlays.
We are so much closer to death than we have ever been before.
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