A house is supposed to be a place of comfort, security, and refuge—but what happens when it becomes a source of terror instead? Sick Houses is a fascinating and chilling exploration of how architecture can hold and amplify horror, transforming our safest spaces into something sinister.

From infamous real-life locations like the Amityville house and the Unabomber’s cabin to the eerie mansions of gothic fiction and haunted homes in horror films, this book delves deep into why certain spaces feel inherently unsettling. Using examples from film, television, and literature, it unpacks how physical structures shape our fears—whether through their design, their history, or the eerie feeling that something just isn’t right.

What makes Sick Houses so compelling is its blend of psychological insight, cultural analysis, and spine-tingling storytelling. It doesn’t just recount ghost stories; it examines why we are drawn to them, why the idea of a haunted house is so universal, and how real-life horrors are often more terrifying than fiction. The book also raises thought-provoking questions about memory, trauma, and the ways in which architecture can hold onto the past.

Whether you're a horror aficionado, a fan of true crime, or simply someone who has ever looked at an old house and felt a chill run down your spine, Sick Houses is a must-read. It’s an engrossing, intelligent, and eerie deep dive into the dark side of the places we call home.

95/100 or 4.75 stars

This was a fasinating read, and I am so glad I got a chance to check this out! It is right up my alley in terms of subject matter for a non-fiction book, and I has so much fun reading and learning!
It made me view a few movies differently and made me want to check out the ones that I have not seen yet.
10/10 would recommend for horror fans!

Thank you to NetGalley and Repeater Books for this ARC. All thoughts are my own.

This was an extremely interesting compilation of histories. I loved how the architectural horrors were a front for the connection between horror and the American Dream, the necessity of feminism and race and the exclusion of Black Americans from the horror genre. I came out of Sick Houses with a solid list of horror movies to watch. I love that Taylor avoided the True Crime aspect of the houses she talked about and rather connected them as reflections to real societal issues. If you usually dislike nonfiction but enjoy essays, I definitely recommend Sick Houses because the tone throughout was personal, enlightening but without a bombardment of unnecessary information

Sick Houses, an analysis of the architecture behind the haunted house, is a fantastic nonfiction read for any horror movie buff, architecture nerd, or haunted house enthusiast! Taylor's thoughtful, in-depth examination deftly walks the line between an academic thesis and a pleasure read, managing to be both scholarly and entertaining. From film to fiction, Taylor clearly knows her horror, and Sick Houses' analyses run the gamut from the classic Victorian haunted house to less stereotypical forms like modern architecture, bunkers, miniatures, and more. I'd definitely recommend this to any horror fan, or, for those who aren't horror fans, this would make a great gift for any spook-loving person in your life! Thanks to Repeater Books and NetGalley for the digital advanced review copy!

While Sick Houses was a fun premise and I'm sure people will love it I didn't. I found myself ready for it to be over before I was even half way through. I feel like this would have done better as a shorter section in a book about the history of horror and crime or something. I do think people who are into architecture and haunted or creepy houses will love this though.

Thank you to NetGalley and Repeater Books for the ARC!

This is an endlessly fascinating study of what Stephen King famously describes as 'The Bad Place'. Leila Taylor begins by taking a look at home ownership, and details the hopes and fears that accompany moving from one house or apartment to another, sometimes attempting to bury bad memories in pursuit of security and happiness. The question of when does a house become a home is fully addressed and by the time we move on to what constitutes a undesirable residence, some readers may well be nodding their head with regard to past or current location.

Real and fictional places come under the spotlight in this book: the Ed Gein house of horrors; Amityville; the Winchester home and cinematic gems such as the Bates house from Psycho, the imposing gothic mansion from The Haunting and (bonus points for this one) the bone chilling centre of Peter Sasdy's The Stone Tape.

As well as movies, Leila also includes a literary angle in her study, and her brief description of 'Piranesi' compelled me to push the book to the top of my tbr pile.

Leila Taylor's writing is crisp and intelligent and happily - at least for people like me - is not overly academic. It never confuses with complicated jargon, and is easy to follow with a sharp, keen-eyed analysis of the subject matter. My own shallow knowledge of Victorian architecture and other building designs was certainly heightened by this enjoyable look at houses with a dark history and fresh builds with a clean slate.

A genuine 5 star delight!

Published by Repeater Books

I loved this book. The subject matter was fascinating and well researched. It offered some fascinating perspectives on a topic I thought I was well versed in. I’ve recommended it to my friends with similar interests

Leila Taylor’s Sick Houses is such a fascinating deep dive into the world of haunted houses. It’s packed with insights about the cultural, historical, and psychological roots of these eerie spaces, all written in a way that’s both thought-provoking and engrossing. Taylor’s blend of sharp analysis and vivid storytelling makes it a truly captivating read, especially if haunted houses are your favorite horror subject like me!!

Clearly well-researched and plenty of passion in the writing, but this one just didn’t do much for me sadly.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC.

Thank you to Net Galley and Repeater Books for the copy of this title.

A quick read indeed is Sick Houses, which is more of an essay than a novel per se. I love the comparison and contrast that the author makes when she speaks about a house vs. home. Some of this is spot on. However, I don’t have an affinity for haunted houses other than in a book.

The author also keeps referring to the Amityville house (and movie) due to its significance in the haunted house genre. However, I will say that I don’t know why this kept repeating itself in different chapters, but I should note that there have been so many conflicting stories about the Lutzs that it’s hard to believe what’s true or not. It hasn't stopped me from watching (and enjoying) that movie.

The book breaks down houses into a few categories, and the Amityville house is at the forefront of the chapter on American houses. It also talks about “The Conjuring House,” the house featured in “A Haunting in Connecticut," "The House on Haunted Hill," and the house that was featured in "Rose Red."

This book also touches on the importance that we as people place on owning a home and what it means. <i>“It’s one of the biggest events that signify financial stability, personal security, and a cohesive family unit.</I> I wholeheartedly agree that people are taught early on to desire homeownership.

It’s more than a place to decorate. It’s where you experience most of your life, and it’s where memories are created (good and bad). There is also emphasis that houses hold memories, but I think it's the individual who holds the memory about the house.

What I found most interesting was the discussion about high rises in our society and what they signify. Renting was seen as a bad thing until the modern monstrosities came about in the 60s, with every amenity one would need. <i>City living at its best.</i> It’s also mentioned that materials used to build the houses would also have a role to play.

This book connects horror to some of the most infamous houses and structures around the world and hones in on our insecurities about a home and what we love and fear most, as well as how horror takes that notion and capitalizes on it. It's art imitating life.

I loved this title, and some photos accompanying the various homes are extremely interesting and eerie. - Kudos
(I would love to share this in a future podcast)

Lelia Taylor’s Sick Houses is exactly the sort of cultural criticism meets Academic work that has established Repeater Books as one of the premier left-leaning non-fiction publishers working today.

Each chapter opens with an epigraph that ranges from academic philosophy to social media asides, and herein lies what Taylor does so well. Across the bulk of this text, Taylor is inspecting homes not as abstract spaces, nor as feats of architecture alone, but as spaces of human habitation, places we live and exist, and occupy, and make our own. At no point is the human effect of these houses ignored, styles of architecture are contextualised by what we demanded from them, from what we required from our residences, and not from ideas of spatial philanthropy. Like all great cultural criticism, Sick Houses looks at how we shape our own art through our own pathology.

The range of citations, quotations, and references pull from architectural theory, interviews with film makers, serial killers, and the author’s own experiences. For someone invested in theory, there is plenty to dig further into, but for a layman it is perfectly digestible, and even enlightening. When writing a book like this, a book that focuses on a singular object, event, trend, or any singular subject, it is important to be aware of all angles of analysis, such as Taylor is, but this offers the issue of depth. To go too deep would mean to offer a standing stone of a text that is divorced from anything other than reference guides and to offer too little would mean the text feels without weight. Sick Houses finds that rare balance. It is light on detail, it does fly past certain ideas, but they are all explored with the depth needed to inform rather than overwhelm. There is the opportunity and the encouragement of further reading but Taylor finds just the right level of detail needed to inform this essay on architectural horror so that the reader is at ease, is aware of contextual arguments, even if they remain novices on the subject.

The memoir within this text, the references to Taylor’s own architectural life, offers a wonderful rebuff to the idea that theory is stuffy, that analysis of art is simply making stuff up, prying deeper than we should. Through unravelling her own relationships to the issue at hand, Taylor reminds us of how artists are people too, with emotions, and attachments, and failings, and that is this very humanity that informs our own art. Ironic for a text concerned less with people than objects.

On a more formal level, Taylor is a wonderful prose artist and manages to somehow strike a tone between conversational and theoretical, between observations and academia. The text feels light, loose, open to veering off into unusual and exciting spots at a moment’s notice, but with a through line that remains front and centre. It would be very easy to take this to mean underwhelming but Sick Houses does exactly what it sets out to do, and brilliantly.

Would make a wonderful pairing with Repeater’s Capitalism: A Horror Story by Jon Greenaway.

A fascinating, and important, text.

I have always found haunted houses really interesting - scary but interesting and so I found this such a interesting and though provoking read

As a fan of haunted house stories and movies, this book sounded like a lot of fun. In a way, it delivered, with chapters devoted to different “sick” houses, their architecture, history and use in various art forms. The author doesn’t just include haunted mansions, but any type of dwelling that causes unease or is unusual in any way. Mostly, the evil resides in the people and not the houses (like the Unabomber’s cabin). Sometimes there is no evil at all (the Winchester house). Often, the sickness is a reflection of a larger problem. I enjoyed revisiting some famous movies and learning their background. What wasn’t clear from the synopsis is that the volume is very personal and highly political. This is Taylor’s vision of what a sick house is, what society should be and her politics imbue the whole book. I’m aware as to how horror reflects a generation’s deepest fears, but I was interested in the entertainment angle and the political preaching got a little tiresome in the end. Knowing that might help this book find the type of reader who might be looking for that type of content. Other than that, this trip through horror houses was entertaining.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/Repeater Books.

In Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread, author Leila Taylor seeks to examine houses that are somehow believed to be "wrong" whether through traumatic events that have taken place in those houses, the wrongness of the people who have lived in them, or just a sinister reputation that has been assigned due to unpleasant quirks in architecture.

There are some very interesting sections of this book (I'm grateful to Taylor for pointing me in the direction of The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Deaths, which I had never heard of and which are creepy and delightful), and I always love to hear other horror lovers share their enthusiasm for my favorite works in the genre. But there are a couple of big issues that I had with the book that made it not entirely work for me. For one thing, for a relatively short work, the scope here is huge. Taylor discusses a little bit of everything, from historical houses like the Johnathan Corwin "Witch House" in Salem and the Winchester Mystery House, to the abodes of serial killers like the Kansas homestead of the "Bloody Benders", Ed Gein's farmhouse, the Unabomber's cabin in Montana, to houses and apartment complexes made famous in books and film. This large range of various topics that touch on architecture give the book a lack of cohesion. It's also written like a series of blog posts, so you get a lot of the author's opinion and personal politics thrown in as well, which was at odds with what is often a rather dry and scholarly approach to the material.

Ultimately, this book was like one of those tv series where people who work in the horror industry chat about their favorite horror tropes/moments/movies, etc. But a lot less fun. I would also add that spoilers to some horror books and movies abound here, so read with caution.

Thanks to Repeater Books and NetGalley for a digital advanced readers copy. <i>Sick Houses</i> will be available February 11, 2025.

Book: Sick Houses: Haunted Homes & the Architecture of Dread
Author: Leila Taylor
Publisher: Repeater
ISBN: 9781915672643
Publication Date: February 11, 2025
Capone’s Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ of 5⭐

Part analysis, part polemic, and part memoir, Sick Houses balances as a (haunted?) stool on three legs, and Leila Taylor’s work is worth your attention. Chapters are arranged topically (e.g. Brutal Houses, Witch Houses, Mad Houses, Forever Houses), and the tone is largely informal rather than academic. At a brisk 240 pages, this cultural history of hauntings, infestations, and traumas offers a brief overview of the role houses—literally in terms of their shapes, sizes, and designs; metaphorically in terms of their emotional baggage and psychic experiences—in American horror over the years.

The aforementioned informal tone works to this book’s advantage, as it kept me swimming along enjoying the tour where a more formal tone would have stopped me—a pleasure reading curioso—from carrying on. It works to the book’s advantage when Taylor connects her personal perspective to an introduction to the section on witch houses: “Perhaps my affinity for decay is due to my having grown up in Detroit in the 80s, so decrepit Victorian mansions were part of my natural landscape. Perhaps it’s also that I prefer, for the most part, to be left alone.” Relatable, right? Even more insightful are Taylor’s social observations: “If [a house were] a woman,” Taylor writes, “[...] its human proxy would be [...] a certain type of woman we have been taught to fear, pity, and avoid becoming at all cost: post-menopausal, living alone, and abandoned by society long ago; the ‘crazy cat lady’; the Miss Havishams, the Norma Desmonds, the Blanch and ‘Baby’ Jane Hudsons’.” In particular, Taylor’s analysis of witch houses and what they represent (in essence: women who don’t submit themselves to the patriarchal expectations to which our society still clings) is poignant. This work moves beyond simple analysis and identifies connections between our behaviors and those of our forebears in Salem and unmerry old England.

This reader loves stories from Cold War America, so the bit about bomb shelters in the “Forever Houses” chapter was fascinating. Taylor observes: “Just as homeownership was marketed toward a specific American family portrait, so were bomb shelters. The Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization explicitly targeted suburban, white, middle-class families with a working father, a mother at home, and a few kinds. If America was going to survive through a nuclear holocaust, they wanted to make sure the ones who made it out alive were the right sort of people.” True horror, indeed, is best found in real life. No supernatural forces needed. Tying this kind of house to the Twilight Zone episode “The Shelter” (1961) was apropos, and Taylor didn’t miss the opportunity to discuss one of my favorite episodes of television.

The book’s strengths also contribute to its few shortcomings—that the book didn’t seem to know which it wanted to be: an analysis, a polemic, or a memoir. That lack of focus had an impact, as in we get little more than name dropping, as in the case of “The Shelter”—without a deep dive. But it’s hard to hold that fact too much against Leila Taylor’s Sick Houses, as the speed of the narrative is what allows the author to cover so much ground in so little space, and this book isn’t a stand-in for a graduate course on the subject. Taylor does provide food for thought and a list of books and movies for my TBR/TBW list, and I’m glad for the short time I spent with the author and their subject.

This book was a fascinating dive into the architecture of some iconic haunted houses from movies and books. The pictures added a great visual element, and the quotes from news publications were a nice extra touch.

What I really appreciated was the way it incorporated true crime elements without leaning into all the gore. Instead, it focused on intriguing facts about real-life homes that inspired horror classics, like the Benders' house and Ed Gein’s infamous property. It’s a fun and engaging read for anyone curious about the spooky stories behind some of horror’s most famous settings. 👻📚

Leila Taylor's "Sick Houses: Haunted Homes and the Architecture of Dread" is an excellent overview of the different aspects of homes through a horror lens, what makes them that way, and what that means for the people inhabiting them. By providing examples of both fictional and non-fictional houses, Taylor turned her literary criticism into a cabinet of curiosities. Each chapter leads us to a new sub-section of the topic, pulling examples from pop culture, history, and true crime; Taylor's strength as a descriptive author made it unnecessary to Google every house she mentions and continue to read on (though the added photographs of certain houses were tasteful and well placed). The tone is conversational yet professional, with her insights and wrap-up adding strength to her analysis.

As a slight critique, a heads-up for spoilers about some movies and books would have been nice. I quickly caught on that any time Taylor mentioned a film or book, the entire plot would be revealed, but I imagine it would be offputting to some readers. Additionally, There was no way she could feasibly address every example for each chapter, either; but I believe she could have gone more in-depth at some points or made the connections between her examples stronger.

The final chapter of "Sick Houses," "My House," feels like an extended metaphor for this text. She brings us a pile of information, debris of terrifying instances both real and fictional, and wants us to make something of it. She never draws our conclusions but makes her thesis for each chapter clear. If the reader is here for the actual gritty details of architecture itself, they may be disappointed, but "Sick Houses" is perfect for anyone interested in the subject of pop culture horror and how it intersects with our lives.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced reader's copy.

Taylor does an amazing overview and interrogation of haunted houses across American and British popular culture, and even digs up a few movies that I thought would never be interrogated in this kind of context (Dogtooth!!). Great read, great analysis, pick it up when it comes out this Feb.

Even though she defines “house” vs “home” in chapter 1 and opines that a home can’t be haunted, Taylor keeps coming back to talk about the concept of home which, for me, takes away from the interesting history and descriptions of the sick “houses”. Overall, as a fan of haunted and “sick” houses, it was an enjoyable reminder of the houses I’ve read about and seen in film and was fun to learn a little more about those and others I wasn’t aware of. It’s also an interesting combination of having all the appearances of an academic text but punctuated with strong, occasionally expletive-filled opinions about the houses or their inhabitants, especially the non-fictional ones.
While I appreciated the opportunity to read the ebook, I look forward to seeing the physical book as there were many photos of the houses she mentions that were not done justice in ebook form.

"The pall of terror or despair from a violent or unexpected demise lingers so heavily over a house that it permanently stains the very structure of the building."

Leila Taylor's book is a deep dive into the architecture of haunted houses, uncanny domestic spaces, and how the horror genre subverts and corrupts the sanctity of home. It explores how the horror genre in film, television, and literature uses architecture and the ideology of the home against us.

This has been my first non-fiction read in absolute ages. The idea of the lasting impact haunted spaces have and the way in which they have been perceived was interesting to me.

I like the way in which this felt like a well researched piece. It does not feel heavy to read. There are so many references I was quite familiar with. This new insight gave me another avenue with which to think about the affect these spaces have had over the decades.

If anything this has made me want to revisit the many horror films mentioned along with looking further into several locations.