"Houses... are alive. This is something we know. News from our nerve endings. If we're quiet, if we listen, we can hear houses breathe. Sometimes, in the depth of the night, you can even hear them groan. It's as if they were having bad dreams. A good house cradles and comforts; a bad one fills us with instinctive unease. Bad houses hate our warmth and our human-ness. That blind hate of our humanity is what we mean when we use the word 'haunted'."