Haunted Castle: Difference between revisions
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* Present in Christopher Stasheff's novel ''The Warlock's Companion''; it's the location where half the story takes place. The other half is flashbacks, including one that plays with the trope by referring to an ancestor a few centuries ago who, seeing that haunted houses were becoming all the rage, but owning only a fairly recent mansion, instructed the house butler/majordomo to go out and ''buy'' an ancestral ghost from somewhere.
* In [[James Thurber]]'s ''[[The 13 Clocks]]'', the Duke finds his castle haunted by the children he locked in the tower: that is, he hears their laughter, and children's balls come bouncing down the stairs. Cold as he is, he finds this more horrifying than the ordinary sort of ghosts.
* Harrenhal has this reputation in ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', partially because the Targaryens used dragons to roast the castle's holders alive centuries ago, and partially because most of the people who hold the castle end up experiencing misfortune ( {{spoiler|Janos Slynt got sent up to join the Night's Watch, Amory Lorch got thrown in the bear pit when the castle was taken, Vargo Hoat had his limbs chopped off and ''fed to him'' by Gregor Clegane, and so on}}). On a more mundane level it's also built on an Awesome But Impractical scale, its sheer size making it a huge money-pit and a large amount of it standing empty, either because the damage caused by the Targaryens and their dragons was never fully repaired or because the current owners have no use for the space.
* [[Harry Potter (novel)|Hogwarts Castle]] is a unique form of this trope: the castle is indeed haunted by several ghosts, but most are perfectly nice (well, except Peeves, but he's a pest rather than an actual threat), and the castle is, of course, also a [[Wizarding School|school]]. Most of the ghosts just hang around and give advice when asked, but one of them is actually teaching classes, and no-one's sure if he's even noticed he died.
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