The best gothic tales of houses

Published in 1959, this is a chilling tale of a group of strangers who take part in a psychological study into psychic phenomena by agreeing to spend the summer in Hill House, reputed to be haunted. The story’s narrator is Eleanor Vance, a shy, fragile woman damaged by 11 years of nursing her sick mother through a fatal illness. Free at last, she’s eager to embrace life, but instead finds herself prey to the dark pull of the decaying old mansion, which finally claims her in the end. 

Shirley Jackson’s last book, a novella, is considered by many to be her masterpiece. I never forgot first reading it as a young teenager, riveted by the unreliable narrator, Mary Catherine Blackwood (“Merricat”), and her practice of weaving magic spells around the house to keep the remains of her family safe from the prying eyes and hostilities of the townsfolk. A murder mystery lies at the core—half of her family were poisoned by arsenic put into the sugar bowl—and only she, her Uncle Julian, and her sister Constance survived. The tale ends with a conflagration set by Merricat, nearly burning the house to the ground.

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” famously begins du Maurier’s novel of a country estate that guards its secrets from the young, unnamed narrator who comes there as the innocent bride of mysterious Maxim de Winter. Out of her depth, she’s terrified by the imposing mansion, the specter of de Winter’s deceased first wife, and the creepy housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who urges her to commit suicide by jumping from a window. Gothic in tone, the unnamed heroine survives revelation after revelation, but the house itself—Manderley—is finally burned to the ground, leaving nothing but ruins. 

I read all of Blackwood’s novels and stories when researching my first biography, on the life of Caroline Blackwood. This is the one that stayed with me, Blackwood’s semi-autobiographical novella of Dunmartin Manor, housing three generations of Websters and Dunmartins. From the cold cruelty of the narrator’s great grandmother, to the fairy-like madness of her grandmother, and the tragedy of her fun-loving but suicidal Aunt Lavinia, all seem like extensions of the mansion—a decaying, grand old house, freezing in the winter, sweltering in the summer, and given to flooding. Like the house itself, the characters are trapped by the weight of their own Anglo-Irish, aristocratic history. No conflagration here, except for the cremation of Great Granny Webster.

Another unnamed narrator visits Roderick Usher, an old friend, in yet another decaying mansion that houses an isolated, disturbed family—Roderick and his twin sister, Madeline. They are the last of the Ushers, but she has fallen into a cataleptic state—one of Poe’s treasured themes! The manse itself is surrounded by a lake, and a crack runs the length of the house. Roderick tells his friend that the house is alive and entwined with his and Madeline’s fate. Madeline dies and is entombed in the family vault, but Roderick fears that she’s not really dead. During a cataclysmic storm, Madeline has indeed clawed her way out of her tomb and she attacks her brother. The narrator flees into the night, looking back to see the house split in two and crumble into fragments, becoming the final tomb for Roderick and his sister. Dark!