Scarecases

'Last night I saw upon the stair, a little man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. Oh, how I wish he’d go away…' 

William Hughes Mearns, Antigonish

Image by Virgin Island Pictures

In addition to the tropes mentioned above, almost every great haunted house or mansion has a prominent staircase. One of my favorites is The Spiral Staircase, which I featured last year. (HERE:) Some of them, are the entrances, stone stairs leading to the front door and the entrance to the impending terror.  Most are inside, winding, spiral staircases which are both ominous and compellingly welcoming.  

Ryan

Welcoming, may be too pleasant of a word, but for some reason, whenever someone enters a haunted house, there is a powerful pull to up them, or down them.  The thing about these stairs isn't just that their prominent set pieces, and often architecturally stunning, they also hold a mystery.  Where to they lead, and what the hell is at the top, or the bottom of the stairs.

If you walk up, you usually hit bedrooms and studies.  Rooms which contain both the history and the mysteries of the house.  Walk up further, and you're in the attic, a room where nothing good ever occurred.  Far scarier than if those stairs go up, is those spiral staircases that go down.  Down to the basement and the bowels of the building.  It's those basements that hold the evidence, the bodies burned in the furnace, and buried forever behind the walls of brick. 

Image from Sergei K

Like so many kids, I used to dread going to our basement.  It wasn't such a scary place, but the wooden staircase presented challenges.  Yes, the stairs were creaky, but that wasn't the issue.  Going down wasn't so bad, but going up was a nightmare.  I don't think I ever walked up those stairs, I always ran.  No matter what time a day it was, dark or light, I was positive there was a monster chasing me.  Cue the symbolism, and guess to what I may have been running from, but regardless of what it was, I sped up those stairs like my life depended on it.

Image from Nohea Dunn

Weißblaue Wintergeschichten

Although it didn't occur in a horror film, one of my favorite staircase scenes featuring male nudity was in the German television show Weißblaue Wintergeschichten. The actor is Dirk Meier and the scene is from the 1997 episode Bruderherzen/Die Härte des Gesetzes.