The World’s Most Haunted House: The Bates Mansion

The Bates Mansion. Image: Univeral Pictures
It’s thanks to Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film Psycho that some of our most long-suffering dreams have unfolded in the claustrophobic spaces of Victorian architecture. We still slumber amid the darkened halls and corners of basement cellars, behind the glass of high-arched anthropomorphic windows, and up (or down) the vertiginous climb of wood staircases. The Bates house cemented the gray, decaying mansion–solitary, cloistered away from civilization–as the de facto stuff of nightmares. More after the break!

In his series of interviews with the eminent French filmmaker François Truffaut, Hitchcock related that the “mysterious atmosphere [of the Bates estate] is, to some extent, quite accidental,” given that the film’s locale–northern California–was, at the time, inundated with many homes exhibiting the same stylistic tendencies of “California Gothic” or neo-Victorian architecture (namely, mansardian roofs, cornice-line brackets, and porch faced with carved spindles). Yet, with his typical foggy grasping of actual events, Hitchcock concluded this train of thought by asserting that he felt, and ostensibly predetermined, that “that type of architecture would help the atmosphere of the yarn.” In this way, the Bates house is afforded a primary role within the film’s pointedly sparse cast of characters.
Hitchcock consistently frames the Bates residence from a low vantage point, so that its proportions are aggrandized to the point of appearing threatening. Later, at the end of the film, as Marion is approaching the entrance, edits of close-ups of her face and the door are interchanged in such a way that Marion’s gaze is returned by that of the Bates house. Through Norma Bates’s absence, Hitchcock uses the house as a stand-in for Norman’s mother.

The Bates Mansion, publicity shot. Image: Universal Pictures

Edward Hopper, ‘House by the Railroad’, 1925. Image: MoMA
It’s well known among film buffs that the design of the Bates mansion was derived largely from an Edward Hopper painting featuring a large, looming house of the Folk Gothic tradition. The base of Hopper’s house is eclipsed–in a way similar to Hitchcock’s framing of the Bates house–by a mound of dirt supporting a train track. The house’s perfect stillness, i.e. firmness, is irrevocably disrupted by the advent of technology, in this case, the blur of the speeding train passing by.
In Psycho, the train track has been replaced by the interstate highway, which had, in 1956, not only usurped the hegemony of the railroad as the nation’s primary means of cross-country transport, but had also replaced networks of the old, grand highways, the kinds of which that had sustained the Bates Motel.

Notwithstanding the fact that the motel preceded the construction of these new highways, the “anonymous American modernity” beget by Eisenhower’s technological innovation is, as Slavoj Zizek suggests, epitomized by the low-lying motel. With its emphasis on horizontality, its nearly flat roofs, and its material economy, the Bates motel (Norman) stands in contrast to the traditional forms that comprise the Bates mansion (mother).
Yet, when we move inside the Bates motel, Hitchcock reveals what is at the heart of this new “modernity.” Norman, after asserting his independence and masculinity through his flirting with Marion and offering to provide her with dinner, invites his guest into the parlor, his private quarters in which he conducts his amateur attempts at taxidermy. The room, as Marion sees, is low-lit but visually rich, with stuffed birds and all manner of tchotchkes placed against old-fashioned furniture and walls covered in elaborate decorations. The retreat is redolent of the interior of the main home, particularly recalling the charms of his mother’s bedroom, and as such, it is a peephole into Norman’s true self. Despite his play at independence from his mother, further evidenced by his neurotic maintenance of his property, Norman must reserve a place wherein he can be at, yet remain apart from home.


The Bates house, circa 1963, via retroweb
Hitchcock’s set, of course, proved almost as permanent as the indelible image it casts on Hollywood and audiences alike. Because it was only used for exterior shots, the house itself had only been partially built, with its three walls made from rift raft leftover from other Universal sets. The set, along with the motel, was reused for Anthony Perkin’s much-maligned sequels, as well as for numerous television specials and B-movies. The house has since undergone several modifications and was relocated multiple times, before being installed in a backlot at Universal Studios, accompanied by a replica of the motel.