Haunted House vs. Abandoned

Dear Husband and I took a trip up to his hometown last week, and while we were there, he took me to several places I haven't seen in all the years we've been married and visited there. We also walked "out and about" around the neighborhood, and as in most neighborhoods these days, there was a house that was empty. I stopped and took a picture for my "haunted house" files. We're back home this week, and while we were driving to the gym to exercise, we passed the same old empty house we pass every time we go that direction, one that never struck me as haunted. The property has several buildings that are falling down and in severely bad shape. It's more an eyesore than anything else. 

That got me to thinking. What's the difference between an abandoned house and a haunted house? Are there criteria?

One of the reasons this struck me this time, I think, is that the house where DH's grandparents lived was in sad shape for a long time, and while it wasn't abandoned, it housed some shady people for a while. There are "those" types of houses that don't strike you as haunted, just ill-used. Let me just say that the current residents in his grandparents' house bought it as a fixer-upper and have fixed it up. It's beautiful now, restored to some of its old glory (although they closed off the old coal chute and ice chute).

Back to the "haunted house." Even in our neighborhood, we had a house that sat empty for a long time - abandoned. Haunted? No. Ill-used. With that being said, the neighbor who lived next door pointed out the difference one day, telling us how "vampires" lived in the house on the other side of them. A creepy vibe, as opposed to the abandoned vibe the empty one gave off. 

There's a certain aura around a "haunted" house, to my way of thinking. Character. The most recent example on our walk had a clearly abandoned feel to it, not the least of which was a satellite dish still on the roof and a boarded-up front door. But there was something more. Maybe because it was an older neighborhood, an older home. Maybe it was the balcony over the front porch, where I envisioned a ghost keeping watch. A big, welcoming front porch. The sense it had been recently occupied. Whatever it was that perked up my imagination, I stopped to take the picture as inspiration for "what comes next."

When I was growing up, we had a big old Victorian up the street that we always designated as the haunted house. It had been subdivided into apartments, and while we were playing in the yard next door one day, one of the tenants came out on the balcony and did an "Igor" impression to scare all of us. We all screamed with delight, but it also took away some of the haunted feel after that.

Do you have a "haunted house" in your neighborhood?