“Head to your local Halloween haunted house or watch a horror movie, and you’ll probably see a creepy Victorian structure that simply exudes terror. But as art historian Sarah Burns points out, in the 1870s, Victorian houses were just … houses. ‘Half a century later, however,’ she writes, ‘that very same style had become a signifier of terror, death, and decay.’ When did we start to associate these houses with creepiness?” Erin Blakemore explains.