History Main / EvilTaintedThePlace

* In the short story "A Hot Time in the Old Town" by Desmond Warzel, a racism fueled murder in a rental house somehow poisoned the place with hatred. After the house killed another black tenant, the house's owner never looked for more tenants. Instead, he spent the rest of his life watching over the house to make sure it didn't claim more victims.

[[/folder]]

* In ''WebOriginal/HumperMonkeysGhostStory,'' the barracks Monkey calls home used to be one of the places the Waffen SS trained their {{Torture Technician}}s. The place is thouroughly haunted, causing the strange deaths of about one NCO a month. It also has the requisite areas of palpable hostility, strange sounds at midnight, nightmare-inducing qualities, and electrical phenomena (to whit, phonecalls on disconnected lines consisting of panting) associated with haunted houses.

How comfortable would you be with moving into the old DarkLord's citadel? Or spending the night in [[{{Dracula}} Count Dracula]]'s vacant coffin? Maybe you would fancy a dip in the old dunking pond where the witch was finally defeated? If you feel that some unspeakable lingering evil will come to claim your soul and send you into damnation if you even think about doing these things then you have the right instincts.

* ''VideoGame/{{Terraria}}'': The Corruption, Crimson, and Hallow biomes, which infect 'pure' biomes such as the forest, desert, or jungle. The former two spawn {{Eldritch Abomination}}s, while the last biome is a CrapsaccharineWorld. Before beating the DiscOneFinalBoss and entering Hardmode, these biomes can only spread through grass and foliage, but afterwards, they spread much more aggressively; if no contingencies[[note]]such as isolation cordons and block purification[[/note]] are made by the player, they're easily able to corrupt half of the overworld before the defeat of another boss slows the spreading of these biomes. The Dryad can keep track of how much of the world has been infected by these biomes and will tell you when asked.
* ''VideoGame/{{Thaumcraft}}''. One of the core mechanics of most versions of this ''VideoGame/{{Minecraft}}'' GameMod is "Taint", which spreads through and corrupts the world. Is used differently throughout each version.
** ''Thaumcraft 2'': If an area's atmosphere becomes saturated with Taint, surface-level blocks will gradually change into Taint Blocks. In addition to making them impossible to extract usable resources from, most mobs that spawn on them will be AlwaysChaoticEvil LightningBruiser versions of themselves... and some of them will help the Taint spread.

Compare SealedEvilInACan (for when a presence is sealed within a place), LeakingCanOfEvil (for when the originator of the evil is not directly present but is still is an active part of the threat), MurderIntoMalevolence (when an act of evil taints a being instead of a place) and VillainousLegacy (for when the work of a villain lives beyond them). See also UnholyGround. See ResidualEvilEntity for when evil "taint" gets "washed away", but winds up as another creature later.

* ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'' Series provides us with the nightmarish hell hole of Shadar Logoth. The city was once a great and heroic city on the side of light but during a long war against the full onslaught of the Shadow - (Analog to the Devil), the city got a new counselor that convinced the people of the city that they had to be as dark and as hard as the Shadow to stand a chance. This attitude led quickly to the city abandoning all its allies to fend for themselves against the shadow and created an air of supreme paranoia within all its residents. The atmosphere of hatred within the city was literally so potent that it seeps into the foundations of the city. Fast Forward a thousand years or so and Shadar Logoth has become an EldritchLocation that serves as the only source of evil within the entire series on par with the Shadow.
* In ''Literature/DragonBones'' castle Hurog is stained by the evil magic that turned the place into a PoweredByAForsakenChild building. This is implied to be the reason why an unusual high number of people don't survive their childhood there, turn mad, or have other things wrong with them. Ciarra, for example, was born mute, with no physical reason to be found. [[spoiler: She gets better once the place is de-cursed and she goes to live somewhere else.]]

** Also in "Heir to the Empire" Luke visits Dagobah to see if Yoda had left any behind any writings or other materials that could help him in training Jedi. Luke finds a beckon call in the middle of the infamous dark side cave by Yoda's former home. Upon revealing it to Leia, she tells Luke that a Dark Jedi had once traveled to Dagobah and was confronted by a Jedi there who was a member of the same mysterious species that Yoda was. When the Dark Jedi was killed by the Jedi, the cave he died in was imbued with his presence. [[note]] Zhan implied that Yoda was the Jedi who confronted the Dark Jedi, but later ''Legends'' works stated it was not Yoda, but another Jedi named Minch who took down the Dark Jedi.[[/note]]

* ''VideoGame/SongOfHorror'': Locations where the [[EldritchAbomination Presence]]'s titular song has played become permanently haunted by it, and anyone in these locations is vulnerable to being siprited away by its manifestations. Most of the levels take place in locations where it has been played via the [[OminousMusicBoxTune music box]].

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'': If the statement that "the Demons have brought their own reality with them" in ''VideoGame/DoomII'''s story text is anything to go by, being tainted by evil is why none of the canon levels from the ''Doom'' series' 2D graphics era to be set in the land of the living look at all recognizably or convincingly like a real-life example of the type of location the level name suggests it is supposed to be. This trope could also be seen in the first game when going from Phobos to Deimos. The facilities on Deimos show various signs of demonic influence -- rivers of blood and magma, vines growing on the walls, a [[RedSkyTakeWarning blood-red sky]], and demonic symbols inscribed in various places. It all builds up to TheReveal that [[spoiler:Deimos has been transported to Hell]].

** The region of Etherdale has the misfortune of being located between two such spawn sites and too far out of the way for anyone to have done anything about it until recently. The result is not pretty. The vast majority of witches and magical girls who spawned in either of the two sites had nowhere to go, and ended up going insane before long, forming into groups of feral witches known as Covens. And since ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve is in effect in the afterlife, these covens started to influence the enviroment, turning it just as twisted and mad as themselves, on top of the already existing bad vibes. At this point, the entire phenomena is self-sustaining, and any girl unlucky enough to spawn in either of the local spawn sites is all but guaranteed to go mad and join a coven, voluntarily or not.

* ''TabletopGame/PrincessTheHopeful:'' Any place where an act of great evil was committed can become tainted by the Darkness, weakening those with good intentions and corrupting the souls of anyone who spends too long or experiences emotional stress within its boundaries. Fortunately, Taint ''can'' be cleansed, either by physically destroying the Tainted Place or by performing deeds of goodness and hope to oppose its corruption.

* ''VideoGame/SongOfHorror'': Locations where the [[EldritchAbomination Presence]]'s titular song has played become permanently haunted by it. Most of the levels take place in locations where it has been played via the [[OminousMusicBoxTune music box]].

* ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'': In "Where the Wild Things Are", a children's home turned college dorm (called the Lowell house) is tainted by the lingering psychic mojo of the sexually abused children that once lived there. The mojo manifests itself as a gang of poltergeists that heighten and live vicariously through various college students' steamy err... [[SureLetsGoWithThat interactions]].
* ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'': In "Civil Defense", a Cardassian computer program that the Federation accidentally triggers tries to kill every one aboard the station in increasingly severe attempts.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In "Ghost Light", the events of the episode left a psychic trace in the house strong enough to terrify the 13-year-old Ace when she broke in a hundred years later.

[[folder: WebOriginal]]

[[folder:WebVideo]]

How comfortable would you be with moving into the old DarkLord's citadel? Or spending the night in [[{{Dracula}} Count Dracula]]'s vacant coffin? Maybe you would you fancy a dip in the old dunking pond where the witch was finally defeated? If you feel that some unspeakable lingering evil will come to claim your soul and send you into damnation if you even think about doing these things then you have the right instincts.

** Also in "Heir to the Empire" Luke visits Dagobah to see if Yoda had left any behind any writings or other materials that could help him in training Jedi. Luke finds a beckon call in the middle of the infamous dark side cave by Yoda's former home. Upon revealing it to Leia, she tells Luke that a Dark Jedi had once traveled to Dagobah and was confronted by a Jedi there. When the Dark Jedi was killed by the Jedi, the cave he died in was imbued with his presence.

* ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'': If the statement that "the Demons have brought their own reality with them" in ''Doom II'''s story text is anything to go by, being tainted by evil is why none of the canon levels from the ''Doom'' series' 2D graphics era to be set in the land of the living look at all recognizably or convincingly like a real-life example of the type of location the level name suggests it is supposed to be. This trope could also be seen in the first game when going from Phobos to Deimos. The facilities on Deimos show various signs of demonic influence -- rivers of blood and magma, vines growing on the walls, a [[RedSkyTakeWarning blood-red sky]], and demonic symbols inscribed in various places. It all builds up to TheReveal that [[spoiler:Deimos has been transported to Hell]].

* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'': Pandaria is a continent wide example of this phenomenon. Although it looks charming, Pandaria is infested with the disturbingly powerful remnants of an exceedingly nasty Old One known as Y'Shaarj. Although he was defeated by the Titans long ago, Y'Shaarj cursed the land with his dying breath to be forever riddled with shadows of "his former self". The curse is thought to be behind the shadowy emotion eaters known as the Sha, as well as other mysterious phenomena that plague the island.

* A MaybeMagicMaybeMundane example is in ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'': the castle Harrenhal was built by the tyrannical king [[{{Egopolis}} Harren]], who died right there when a dragon roasted the castle, and him with it. Since then, everyone that has become master of Harrenhal and its attached fief winds up being destroyed in one way or another, and as a result Harrenhal itself is widely believed to be an unholy and cursed place.