In this episode, we explore two very different but intimately related visions of haunted homes: the suburban nightmare of Poltergeist, and the bizarre, labyrinthine nightmare of Thir13en Ghosts. We begin with the now-classic 1982 film Poltergeist, directed by Tobe Hooper (with heavy involvement by Steven Spielberg), where the typical American family’s home becomes the nexus of malevolent, other-worldly activity. We’ll unpack the mythic wife, mother, daughter, and the youngest child Carol Anne who is drawn into a spectral portal—and how the film taps into suburban anxieties, grief, and the invasion of domestic space.

Then we shift to the 2001 remake/modern re-imagining Thir13en Ghosts, directed by Steve Beck, where a widower and his children inherit an eccentric uncle’s mansion—only to discover it’s a glass-paneled machine, a trap filled with twelve (actually thirteen) vengeful spirits. We’ll examine how the film transforms the haunted house into a literal machine of horror, how it uses spectacle, design, and mythic structure of ghosts.