The house squats under a perpetual shroud of fog, its warped timbers groaning like fractured bones, splintered eaves dripping viscous black ichor that sizzles on the mud. Windows gape as empty sockets, reflecting distorted faces that vanish when approached, while the door hangs ajar, exhaling a fetid breath laced with whispers of the damned. Inside, floors buckle into jagged pits, walls pulse with veined shadows that slither toward unseen prey, and the air thickens with the metallic tang of fresh slaughter.
Houses of horror are living houses, often angry or bitter due to the circumstances of their awakening. They were once mundane buildings or dwellings where powerful magics of life and death took place and infused the stones and timber.
Houses of horror jealously covet the true life that its former inhabitants enjoyed, or they carry echoes of the suffering that bodies and souls experienced within them. The houses vent this fury on any who enter, tormenting and terrifying trespassers. The souls of those who die inside are trapped, waiting to be unleashed upon future victims.
While not haunted houses in the traditional sense, houses of horror can have their consciousness quelled by the same exorcism or purification rituals that put unquiet spirits to rest or drive out possessing spirits