The Spirit of the House

The idea for this creature came from my father. He had experiences that he told me that contributed to this, and he always had this theory about houses where they had to have a good feel to them before he would buy them. Some would feel bad. They were dank, or felt of decay and abuse. Others were felt homey. Happy. He brought this idea to me late at night, and I then mutated and altered it to become The Spirit of the House: the cumulative emotion of all a house’s inhabitants from it’s construction to the present. Without further adieu, please enjoy.

————————————————————————————————————

Ordinary humans can use magic, but not like other magical creatures. Magical creatures can convert emotional energy into magic, but the source of the emotional energy is usually humans. Magic can be converted by other methods, but for some reason human emotion is the fastest and easiest source of magic. There is something about human emotion that is unique and strange. In fact, that emotion can sometimes convert into magic all on it's own and even form a form of sentient magic. Humans often invest a lot of emotion into their places of living, so that emotion will come together to form a spirit of sorts. This spirit is referred to as The Spirit of the House. The Spirit of the House is neither good nor bad, and one can be found in almost all places of living. They are the manifestation of all of the emotions of every human to have lived in that house. Ordinary humans who do not possess The Sight, the ability to see the supernatural, can even feel the presence of The Spirit of the House. Every house has a unique feeling to it. That feeling can sometimes be a good and happy feeling. This feeling is often referred to as homey. That feeling is The Spirit of the House. That particular spirit probably had good tenets and lots of happy families. Other houses can feel gloomy, depressing, and even scary. Those spirits most likely had many unhappy families. They may have been poor, there could have been domestic violence, or even just spouses who fell out of love with one another. One family wouldn't be enough to give the house a negative or positive feeling, but rather the collective set of residents would. Negative houses often had a long line of negative tenets.

Not only that but The Spirit of the House could even influence the way its current tenets acted. The negative ones would make future families more likely to have negative emotions, further feeding the Spirit of the House negative emotions. The opposite is also true, where a happy house would make others more likely to be happy.

A Spirit of the House who was primarily fed positive emotion often regulates itself to one section of the house that is uninhabited by its tenets. It could be an attic, basement, or simply an empty bedroom. Normal humans can usually tell which room The Spirit of the House lives in, but they don't know why they know. Children are especially sensitive. They might be afraid to go in one section of the house by themselves. They might be scared to go into the basement by themselves as an example. Adults can also sense the Spirit of the House, but that feeling doesn't usually manifest itself in the form of fear. They might lock a door behind them without even thinking about it. They might also feel like something is watching them whenever they go into the room where The Spirit of the House resides. A Spirit of the House fed by positive emotion is best sensed by those who live in the house, but can be sensed by those who don't live in the house on occasion.

A Spirit of the House fed primarily by negative emotion does have an empty room where it primarily resides just like a positive one, but those fed by negative emotion also like to stretch their legs. They can be found to wander the house. Guests coming into the house will often look over their shoulder expecting there to be somebody behind them, but there is nothing there. They can even manifest themselves to be seen by children. They will take the form of a silhouette and appear in front of a sleepy child who is in the state of mind between dreaming and wakefulness. The reason for why they do this is unknown. Maybe the Spirit of the House is hungry for more negative emotion and simply wishes to scare the child for a quick snack. Or maybe the Spirit of the House wants to be known.

Negative Spirits of the House are often addictive as well. If one grows up in a bad household, they will often not realize how bad it was until they leave. That said, they may never leave. They may think they hate themselves and want to stay where they think they are safe. The Spirit of the House will twist and deform the psyche to the point where nobody can stand to be around the house's tenets. There are ways to "reset" this type of Spirit of the House though. A witch needs to be employed to drain away the decades and sometimes even centuries of negative emotion. Once that happens, The Spirit of the House will remain, but it's power will not. It is paramount at that point to place a good and happy family in the house to feed positive energy to the spirit. That will lay the groundwork for generations of positive emotion for the spirit to come.