OK I'll give some context here. Boo Radley is described as like a ghost as no one ever sees him and the kids have all these ideas of what he looks like or eats or does. This description of the Radley house comes at the end of Chap 12 of "To Kill a Mocking Bird". The house has been described earlier on
..."The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch and green shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of the slate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eaves of the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picket drunkenly guarded the front yard- a "swept" yard that was never swept-where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.

Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed, but Jem and I had never seen him. People said he went out at night when the moon was down, and peeped in windows. When people's azaleas froze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them. .."
Boo's action of stabbing his father in the leg with a scissors has also been described
"and the day Mr. Radley took Arthur home, people said the house died..."

Stephanie Crawford ... said his head was like a skull lookin' at her".

Jem's description of Boo: "about six-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on raw squirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands were
bloodstained- if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the blood
off. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teeth
he had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most of
the time..."

So Dill dares Jem to "just go up and touch the house."

"Jem threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slapped it with his palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foray was successful. Dill and I followed on his heels. Safely on our porch, panting and out of breath, we looked back.

The old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared down the street we thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny, almost invisible movement, and the house was still."

So really, the house is being likened to Boo, sick, creepy, malevolent, scary, a phantom etc etc


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Note added at 4 hrs (2015-02-17 23:47:58 GMT)
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And yes, the house is also run-down and shabby looking but I think the eeriness, creeepiness and frightening aspect of it as like a haunted house "Inside the house lived a malevolent phantom" needs to be kept.

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Note added at 4 hrs (2015-02-17 23:52:01 GMT)
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"the house was the same" =unchanged. Boo didn't come out. The door didn't open. So it was like it was before Jem ran up and slapped it EXCEPT for the fact the kids think they see a slight movement of the "inside shutter. Flick..."

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