"What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands are empty. "Perhaps it's upstairs then?" Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy. The story "A Haunted House" by Virginia Woolf at first appears to be simply a ghostly couple searching for their lost buried treasure. In fact their buried treasure is not an object at all but joy that the couple once shared. This couple does not know where to find their treasure but they know exactly when they have found it. This story uses symbolism, imagery, and irony throughout the story to emphasize the buried treasure, when it is lost and when it is found, and the couple's search for this treasure.
             The first irony in this story is shown in the title itself, because as you read the story you do not interpret the house as being haunted or find the story to be anything of a traditional ghost story. The story is about a couple whom are deceased and they have lost their joy in each other, and return back to the house in which they lived to find it. It is not a haunted house at all in that the people living in the house at the moment know the ghosts are there searching for their buried treasure, and yet nothing more is said about that. The fact that this couple has come back to their house and is interpreted as haunting it is more symbolism that this house is not home to them anymore because the couple has not been together.
             Woolf uses symbolism to describe the couple and the search for their treasure. "Death was the glass" is a line that symbolizes a barrier between the ghostly couple, as if something is standing in the way of them being happy in the afterlife. This barrier between their happiness is the "buried treasure" that they are searching for. Just as glass is a barrier in the story, the use of light is closeness for the couple. &quo...