It occurred to me that there are multiple definitions of “haunted,” as the word can be applied to a home. I point out with the story that only one of the four is desirable, in the sense that having a sorta kinda but not really haunted home might be fun. Two others are the stuff of horror fiction, and the fourth happens on this planet. The story is an attempt to provide one scenario with each definition, and the final house is the one I consider most important.

This story came out of one of those strange confluences of life experience, tangential reading, and a deadline. My dad often talked about Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume, the plot of which I came to understand vaguely from his descriptions. Then, a few months before I wrote “The Dirty American,” an article about perfume popped up online: a story about how the best perfumes have a note of foulness, and how American scent makers have historically had a really hard time wrapping their puritanical minds around this.

I knew about the Ripper, of course, but wasn’t a fanatic about it. However, in looking into the history, I became fascinated by a little-known suspect sensationally called “the Leather Apron,” a Jewish butcher who would supposedly clean his knives on the so-called apron after his kills. The story was hyped by the Daily Post of its day, the Star, creating so much fear and loathing that it lead to riots in the Jewish quarter. It was ultimately a dead end, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the idea that a victim’s family might take action against a suspect, despite lack of proof.

As a kid, I loved monster movies and playing with plastic dinosaurs, the scarier the better. I still love monster movies, of course, although I don’t play with dinosaurs as much as I used to, but back then, it all conspired to plant a seed in my mind that sprouted into wanting to tell stories with those same ingredients. In fact, for a time I wanted to grow up to direct Godzilla movies! Not any monster movie, mind you, just Godzilla movies! I was an avid reader, too, so I started writing stories at a pretty young age.

C.J. Cherryh has been a huge influence on me over the years, and William Gibson was pretty formative, too. Kiernan is as much an SFnal influence as anything else, particularly with regards to time. Time travel as a concept is much more fantastic to me than scientific, and certainly holds a great potential for horror. As a reader I never imprinted on time travel stories much (except for Morlocks—I always loved Morlocks). Movies are more responsible for making that a part of my mental landscape.

It’s not so much believing in magic as believing in hope. Give up on hope and you’re done. It was in Pandora’s box for a reason, and while it can doom us, it’s also the only thing that ever sets us free.

I think sensory details are especially useful for horror, where part of the point is to evoke a mood. Different words and their connotations, different sensory stimuli and theirs, help create a palpable sense of mood in the body—at least that’s the hope! When you read the word “itch,” you probably feel a fleeting sense of itchiness—a horror writer is just tuning in to that inclination and turning up the dial.

For years, I had a vision of a city with a center, but then that center gets popped. Having lived in a city without a center, I knew that there was plenty of potential for change, resistance, weirdness, etc. (I actually returned to Jersey City for the first time in twelve years recently, and the city planners really tried to make Grove Street a city center. I could barely find the direction of my old apartment, except that the McDonald’s by the PATH station is still there. Everything else, including the width and color of the streets, was changed.)

The anxiety of facing a monster or psychopath is of a different kind than the inability to know something for sure. For me, uncertainty possesses its own kind of unsettling. Narrative has traditionally insisted on closure, but more and more I’m suspicious of cause and effect, motivations, and neatness in stories. I encounter many readers who not only get frustrated but sometimes downright angry when things are left unhinged. I suspect those reactions are partially about readerly expectations, but also a kind of defense against not-knowing.

I can relate much more to an everyday character who has to react to a situation or situations that is/are out of their control. Whether they’re fantastical instances or extreme real life ones aren’t necessarily that important to me. It’s the people, the characters, and how they handle these “wingers” (an attacking player in soccer), as I like to call them, that makes a more gripping and relatable story in my opinion.