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fear by siette (cc by-nc-nd)

In Ask Metafilter, Jane the Brown has a great answer to ficbot's question, Is there really a monster underneath the bed??

That Ohio protest photo that looked like a zombie movie, by Joshua A. Bickel, via The Washington Post -- and darkstar

Mefites have their own ideas about what sorts of horror films would fit the current zeitgeist, from the Second Monster, to bacon-enraged intestine-slurping aliens to posh Freddy Krueger (requires billionairity), to how difficult it is to clean a bathroom when evil forces keep messing things up again, plus stories! ... And opinions! Many Opinions!

Haunted House by Sean MacEntee (cc by)

In short, it describes the interwar period as formative for creating the idea of the Gilded Age mansion as a place of mongrel (sic) agglutination in architecture and interior design, thus impure, and a sign of the excesses of the time, anti-industrial and anti-progress. In addition, there remains the idea of the grand old family and the secrets, hidden unhappiness, and isolation which may have remained in the childhood memories of artists creating in a post-WWI era - which has its own Zeitgeist, a combination of glitter and ennui/angst, both meanings of decadence. So by the 1930s the decrepit mansion 1. was actually decrepit when seen and 2. was not appropriate in several ways by economic/socio/cultural standards.

Citations and conjecture about why the Victorian house is always where the monsters live.