Dread by the Decade: La Maison ensorcelée
👻 My Kofi ❤️
English Title: The House of Ghosts
Year: 1908
Genre: Horror Comedy, Ghosts/Haunting
Rating: Unrated (Suggested: G)
Country of Origin: France
Language: Silent
Runtime: 5 minutes 58 seconds
Director: Segundo de Chomón
Writer: Segundo de Chomón
Cast: Unknown
Plot: People shelter from a storm in a haunted house.
Review: What begins as a solid vehicle for slapstick and fun special effects wears out its welcome.
Overall Rating: 2.5/5
Plot: 2/5 - Shallow. This would be less of an issue if the film had been shorter or featured greater spectacle.
Performances: 3/5 - Serviceable slapstick performances.
Effects: 4/5 - Great, whimsical use of substitution splices, double exposure, puppetry, and stop-motion animation.
Sets: 2.5/5
Costumes & Make-Up: 1.5/5 - The costume and makeup choices for this are cheap and bizarre.
Film Fact: Clips from this appear in a sequence in The Babadook.
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prompt: reader is hired as a live in house cleaner because ghost is always away and he only comes back on leave and he insists she stay in the guest room. Over time he increasingly acts like she’s his live in girlfriend or something. Very confusing for reader lmao.
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The job comes at the exact right time.
The way you stumble onto your new job is a bit dicey, if you’re being honest. You’ve been meaning to get out of the waitressing life for a while—the tips are shit and the number of times that you’ve had your backside pinched has slowly but steadily climbed into the double digits. You just haven’t had direction; somewhere to go.
Your savior comes in the form of a six foot plus soldier. Oh, he doesn’t tell you that, but his body language speaks for itself.
At first, even the sight of him makes your belly clench and palms sweat like when you watch rock climbing documentaries or parkour videos online (all moist and clammy and you have to wipe them on your jeans before shaking his hand). He’s a one-time customer at your little roadside diner that gradually becomes a repeat offender.
He comes at odd times, sometimes disappearing for a month or two before he’s back to sitting in the booth at the back of the diner with his back against the wall. You smile shakily when you pour him coffee after coffee. He never eats. Always sits in the same booth, dressed in the same black hoodie that does nothing to hide the sheer size of him and a black surgical mask that he never removes. He has a sixth sense for when you’re watching him from behind the counter, waiting for him to take a sip.
You never do catch a glimpse of his face. Not completely anyway. You know him only by the faint smell of gunpowder and metal that clings to him like a second skin, and the feeling of his calloused hand against yours.
Like ice slowly chipping off a glacier that one day cracks, a huge chunk splintering off and crashing into the sea, you know nothing about him until you’re suddenly in his house. Simon, he tells you, and the sound of his name awakens something in you. He needs a housekeeper and you need a reason to leave.
You quit the diner; barely even put in a week’s notice.
The day you drive up the long beaten road up to his property, a cabin deep in the English countryside, clear blue skies follow you. Clouds crisp, delicate even. Simon takes you through the house, showing you to the guest room where you’ll be staying while he’s away. He never directly confirms your suspicions, but the faint tightness around his eyes when he mentions his job tells you all you need to know. No wonder he needs someone to keep the house in order. Never around to do it himself.
Then he’s gone, swift as a ghost. You wake up in the guest room to a hastily scrawled note on your bedside table and a faint feeling of loss.
You scrub tiles and dust the top bit of the fan that everyone always misses; you mow the lawn, clean the gutters, and sit under the shade of a poplar tree with a glass of lemonade in the early evenings. If you look up into the tree, you’ll see spiders and squirrel nests. It’s almost therapeutic.
Weeks pass at a time. Simon reemerges like clear skies between periods of rain. Sometimes even before you wake up, you can feel the change like lighting sizzling in the air, crackling hot under your fingertips and then stumbling into the kitchen to find him leaning against the counter, coffee already brewing. You blush into an apology that he waves off.
Good soldier. Better boss.
You fall into a routine, something of a cadence that is only interrupted by Simon’s hands on your hips when he moves you out of the way to grab a mug from the top shelf. His finger brushing over the curve of your cheekbone to wipe away flour smudged on your cheek. Then he’s gone again, passing through like a ghost.
Perhaps he’s a more tactile man than you originally assumed. Something about the way he held himself in those first few weeks in the diner suggested otherwise, the way he seemed to radiate a latent hostility. Do not get close. You read this in the general slope of his eyebrows and the scars across his muscled forearms up until he reaches out to touch you, growing more and more comfortable with you around.
“You alright, love?” said into your ear on a warm night when Simon materializes onto the couch beside you, practically out of thin air. Your heart almost bursts in your chest.
When you turn, he’s as beautiful as ever, honey burnt eyes staring out from behind a balaclava this time. Still dresses in his standard issue tactical pants, the faint smear of grime and gore around the ankles. There’s a lump in your throat when you smile.
He smells richer now. Deeper, like the forest floor. Like crawling through mud and spider webs and a thick, cloying miasma of desperation.
“Sorry—I didn’t know you’d be back,” you apologize, going to rise up to your feet. It feels wrong to commandeer his house when he’s on leave, even though you live here too.
A heavy hand on your shoulder pulls you down, settling you to his side. “Off your feet now—there you go, atta girl. No sense getting up; show’s not even done.”
He angles you back to face the TV and tugs you into his lap almost effortlessly. You do not look back, even when you feel him slip the balaclava off, hot breath fanning over your neck. Not even when fingers play over the thin line of skin where your shirt rides up. You blink like your eyes are gummy and try not to shudder when his thumb dips underneath your shirt.
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