So I've got an idea for a YA ghost story. It's set on an old cotton plantation. I know a lot of older homes are filled with secret passages and such. Mostly what I'm looking for are what these were called. I'm guessing people didn't refer to them as, "that secret passage behind the fireplace," or "that hidden room behind the bookcase." I'd even be happy with slang terms for them. I once heard of a local house that had, what the owner called a "wife hole". It was apparently where a polygamist man would hide his additional wives after the practice was made illegal. I have no idea what the real name for this was or if this was its original purpose.
I'm going to guess that people didn't refer to them much at all, that's how they stayed secret. I read a book a long time ago about rum running, and the characters just called their hidey-holes, the 'basement', or 'back room,' which made sense to me because then if anyone overheard them it would sound pretty innocuous.
Um.... Well, most of them have historic aspects. Like, during prohibition, the concept of a speakeasy--which would involve a secret or camouflaged door that led into a bar. Then in England there was such a thing as a priest hole, which was a place to hide your Catholic preacher in the event anyone came looking for him. But I can't think of the names of things like that offhand.
I'd call them crawlspaces and servant corridors. There isn't anything secret about them, but they're concealed so the help doesn't mingle with the gentry. Those old mansions had an antfarm of servant housing and passages built into the woodwork.
in the uk they'd be called a priest hole , because they were used for hiding catholics from protestant persecutors, or vice versa
I once read a book called Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Part of it takes place in Wales (or a tiny island near it) there was a bar called the Priest Hole because that's what it used to be back in the day.
I saw it in theaters. I liked it the first time. Doubt I'd like it a second time. They took several liberties from the books, including making the younger characters older and the older characters younger, swapping Emma's and Olive's powers, and turning it into a standalone (which I can understand, of course.) Tim Burton, though, was a perfect choice for director. That was the obvious choice the moment the book was released. Imagine if the film had been more true to the source material. I mean, the book's big thing is the old photos that are woven into the plot as characters, locations, and relics, and the film didn't even use them! Sure, they still had photos, but they were different ones taken specifically for the film and didn't have as much of a bearing on the plot. I think it would have worked better as a Netflix series a la A Series of Unfortunate Events.
