I collect haunted houses. Stories, movies, physical buildings. I am enamored with the idea of them. The less conventional, the better. Haunted houses as horror, yes, but also as tragedy, as romance. I don’t need vengeance. I don’t even need a ghost. I just need the haunting. The lingering. The idea of a space tainted by what isn’t there. Or what is but shouldn’t be. Part of me believes there isn’t a single house out there that isn’t haunted.

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Monster House (2006) is the best haunted house story of all time. I say this without a hint of irony or jest. The House as a living being. The House as a manifestation of love. Of grief. The monster house was built for love but it was sustained by anger, which, of course, is really still just love. It is earnest in a way many haunted house stories are afraid to be. It does not cringe at itself. It does not lampshade. It is beautiful and tragic in a way many ghost stories want to be but fall short. I find myself comparing all other ghost movies to it. It is easy to write a story in which a house is haunted. It is hard to write a haunted house story. Everything I write tries to turn into one. I cannot describe a house too thoroughly in any piece of writing or I will accidentally haunt it too.

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My parents still live in the house I grew up in. I have had many temporary living spaces but only one home. This house too, is haunted. By past versions of myself. The toddler who would nap anywhere and everywhere. Under the dining room table, on the stairs, on the bench in the kitchen. The seven year old, tiptoeing across the old, thin carpet everywhere she walked, always afraid even though she couldn’t place why. The moody, depressed thirteen year old, painting her walls black and slamming her bedroom door in an early imitation of teenage rebellion. This house is haunted by me from eight years ago, borrowed suitcases sitting by the front door, leaving for college scared out of my mind. By me from one year ago, only there to visit, sleeping in my childhood bedroom for one night, before breezing back to my real life in my new apartment. Sometimes I think the current me is haunting it too.

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Houses are not the only thing that can be haunted but they are the most intimate, I think. I have no interest in amulets or talismans. Haunted dolls bore me. Houses, where we eat, sleep, shit, pray. Where we undress with lovers. Where we undress alone. A place made for living, dedicated to living, being haunted by the dead, the missing, the long gone, the never was. It is a poem in and of itself.

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The first haunted house movie I ever watched was at my best friend’s twelfth birthday party. I didn’t want to watch it. I was a child of frequent nightmares. I didn’t like to be scared then. But it was the birthday girl’s choice. She held my hand the whole time. Whenever it got too scary, I’d cover my eyes until she said it was safe to look. My senses distilled down to only two points: her voice in my ear, and the TV light flickering through the gaps in my fingers.

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My bedroom window used to face a huge dirt lot that ran for miles until it hit the hills. In reality, it was only maybe a mile tops, but it felt endless to me then. Sometimes it was like a horror movie, looking out my window into that expanse of dark, empty space late at night. It felt like we were the only house for miles even though you could see the whole suburban street from my brother’s window across the hall. We used to explore back there, take the dog on walks and let her run wild, build treehouses. They turned the lot into a tract of houses a few summers ago. It feels surreal to look out that window now, where I once saw only darkness, heard only the howl of coyotes. I never see anyone enter or leave the new houses. I never see anyone in the windows. They must be there because at night little squares of light materialize in each house. But sometimes I still hear the coyotes, so close they must be roaming those newly paved streets.

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I don’t remember my mom being sick. Not clearly anyway. I remember snippets. Having to be quiet when we played. Fetching glasses of water and hearing retching at all hours. I remember the scarf she tied around her head before coming into my room when I had a nightmare. So she wouldn’t scare me, she said later. I have one very distinct memory of my mother lying on the couch, a glass of water sweating on the coffee table in front of her and my dad perched on the couch next to her legs. She is more tired than I’ve ever seen her. It’s an image more than a memory, I suppose.

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I like apartments because the ghosts there are not mine. The remnants of all the past lives only hidden by a few coats of landlord-white paint. I can still see the nail holes where previous tenants hung their art. There are tiny stains of hair dye on the bathroom counter. The carpet is faded in the doorways. I am happy to live with these ghosts. They make me feel less alone as I move between temporary spaces. They give me a sense of community. We all lived here. We all existed in this same space. People live and die in apartments, in all kinds of ways. When they leave, whether at the end of a six month lease, or a lifetime, they leave little pieces of themselves behind. An impression in the carpet. A dent in the wall. Their nail holes.

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My mother turned 54 last weekend. She was strong. She was lucky. She doesn’t have to haunt us. The ghost instead is that little girl, seven years old, never really grasping how bad it was. I don’t know how much came from my parents trying to shield me and how much was my own denial. The girl that haunts me is from another life, parallel to mine. She didn’t know her mother was dying. She wasn’t ready when it happened. I think about her when I fight with my mother and when I cry in her arms. That girl never recovered and her life fractures from mine in a million ways. She stands behind me in the mirror sometimes and she looks just like me except she doesn’t. And I can never figure out why.