STYLES IN HAUNTED HOUSES, FROM VICTORIAN GLOOM TO MODERN MAYHEM

TO Gene Wolfe, a writer of horror stories, there is something inherently fearsome about houses. You can never be sure you're alone, he mused recently. The fact that you can't see the entire house at one time is unnerving. There is always the possibility of opening the closet and finding clothes swaying mysteriously, or sneaking into the kitchen for a midnight snack to encounter a monster in the mixing bowl.

In the last week of October, when the breath turns ghostly and trees are clenched in the wind's teeth, thoughts turn, not to tasteful interiors, but to the sinister aspects of houses.

The spectral house is as old as the fairy tale. Its contemporary interpretations have sprung from the mysterious castle of the 18th-century Gothic novel, and from Edgar Allan Poe's House of Usher, where ''an air of stern, deep and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.''

''The image of the haunted house has been with us since before the dawn of time,'' said the film director Roger Corman, best known for his 1960's films based on Poe's stories and starring Vincent Price. ''In the future, a structure on a distant planet will probably be haunted.''

The haunted, spectral house is big business today, stalking the world of teen-age culture and VCR's in movies like ''Poltergeist,'' ''Ghostbusters'' and the ''House'' films.

''We've progressed from the castle,'' said John Carpenter, who directed the two horrific ''Halloween'' films. ''We've modernized the idea.''

Today's scary house is not necessarily situated at the foot of a dead-end street beside a weedy vacant lot. In ''Poltergeist,'' a film produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Tobe Hooper, for example, the scene is a suburban California subdivision and a split-level house, complete with apple-cheeked children and golden retriever. Life is happy until the strange occurrences begin - the green electrically charged waifs emanating from the television set.

The haunted-house story has also graduated to include haunted cars, office buildings, 24-hour chain stores, truck stops, bars, suburbs and shopping malls.

In literature, there is a minor resurgence of haunted-house stories this Halloween. There are two new anthologies, ''The Architecture of Fear'' (edited by Kathryn Cramer and Peter D. Pautz; Arbor House) and ''House Shudders'' (edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh; Daw Books). There is also the new ''Ghostly Register'' (Arthur Myers, Contemporary Books), a guide to haunted dwellings.

In the unexplainable world of sinister houses, nothing is safe, not the lonely unkempt garden nor even the furniture, which, Ramsey Campbell wrote in ''The Nameless,'' can sprout whitish fur. (''She had never seen leather look so recognizably animal. In fact, it looked not quite dead'').

Mutable furniture is but an inkling of the hideous things that can lurk in an eerie house. A common theme is the murderous spirit hiding in the house, with the occupants, typically starry-eyed newlyweds who have been duped by their real-estate agent, as the innocent victims. Soon it becomes clear that something . . . terrible . . . happened there . . . once upon a time.

The idea of home as a safe haven provides the central theme. ''Our homes are the places where we allow ourselves the ultimate vulnerability,''

Stephen King wrote in ''Danse Macabre,'' his analysis of the horror genre.

''These stories are about the unknown invading the central area of life,'' said Dean R. Koontz, a writer of horror stories. ''Home is that sacred place where we reject the idea of death and loneliness.''

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