The Haunting of Hill House

Like most horror writers, I consider this novel the standard for tomes concerning evil spirit infestation of the quintessential dilapidated mansion.

Contrary to the harmless intentions that modern psychics claim about ghosts, the spirits in Hill House are nasty and mean to do harm to the four foolish mortals that enter this foreboding structure to seek proof of the afterlife.

This is so much more interesting to me than the typical story of inexplicable noises, mysterious shadows, and self-moving objects; a metaphysical power that I wanted to embody in my book.

It is impossible to talk about haunted house books and not mention the foremother of them all, The House of the Haunted Hill. I love everything about it from its brilliant use of setting as a character to its tone of creeping unease to the way the readers are slowly drawn into its madness.

This book is a UR-text in the genre and quite revolutionary for its time in many ways: being authored by a female writer, featuring a queer icon of Theodora, etc. But most of all, it’s just a really great read and a true classic. Granted, the… show more.

I can't believe it took me so long to read this book; it's a longtime favorite of my mom's. My daughter is an undergrad at Bennington College in Vermont, and I visited her in October 2024. I'd been to Bennington before but not the music building, Jennings Hall. When my kid casually noted "by the way, this is 'Hill House.' Shirley Jackson was living down the street when she wrote that book," I realized I needed to get the original novel off my "read this eventually" list.

Jackson's rich descriptive sensibility and the weird dread and dissociation the book evokes… show more.

I read a lot of gothic literature, and very little actually scares me. This book does. Every time I return to this book, which I do every year, always after dark, in a silent place, I get that anxious chill that makes me want to pause, pull my collar a little tighter, and look around the room, just to be sure.

Jackson’s novel also has what I think is the finest opening paragraph in any work of the literary gothic, an opener so unexpected and so poetic that I know I’m in for more than a typical haunted house story.… show more.

In this book, Shirley Jackson states that some places are evil for no reason and that some people are drawn to them and feel at home in them. Hill House is evil; it's built without straight angles, which leaves one feeling disoriented. It claims lives and urges people not to leave. 

I love how the book weaves psychological abuse into its plot and how one feels inside Hill House: disoriented, gaslit, and manipulated. The central theme of toxic relationships and co-dependency surprised me. 

I also enjoy its simple style, which is almost childlike yet so immersive that it packs a… show more.

My mother’s favorite horror story. (She called them “Ooo-yeah!” stories) It’s a ghost story where the principal characters are as haunted as the mysterious house they’re investigating. It's a terrific character study with lots of subtle hints that the ghosts are real. Or are they?

One lasting memory is the scene where Eleanor and Theodora are in bed and terrified by growing sounds that imply something other-worldly is closing in on them. One asks the other to stop squeezing her hand so tight, to which the other replies. “I’m not holding your hand.”  Yikes.

For me, this is the book that started it all. When I was 10 years old, I stole it from my Granny’s shelf, curled in her BarcaLounger, and finished in one ravenous sitting.

The world I emerged into was changed: the main character Nell’s spiraling, exuberant, increasingly unhinged interiority echoed in my mind. I remember walking afterward through the Maine woods, the green more vivid than ever before, pulsing with a new sense of menace and aliveness.

Each sentence in this masterpiece about a sentient, malevolent house is electric, and if I could only read one paragraph for the rest… show more.

The novel’s prose is breathtaking. Jackson tells us from the start that Hill House is not sane and that sets the tone for the unraveling of the other characters’ minds.

For me, one of the best things about the novel is that it gives the reader space to create their own horrors. Nothing is explicitly stated and that makes it all the more frightening. Add to that an unreliable narrator and this novel captured my mind from the moment I read it. 

Of the many ghost stories in my collection, this must be my favorite and the one I recommend most to both newcomers and veterans of Gothic literature. (With nary a ghost in sight!) Once again, none of the adaptations can fully capture the dark magic at the novel’s heart.

Building on the emotional and psychological elements first touched on in Henry James’s, The Turn of the Screw, Jackson reinvented the haunted house genre and gave us an instant classic to which all other such tales must inevitably be compared. Cherished by horror writers and readers everywhere, this book captivates… show more.

I was late in coming to this and was glad to find its popularity richly deserved.

The characters are quirky enough to be entertaining on their own, and the house is a formidable opponent. I found the climactic scene where the ghost is banging on all the doors genuinely frightening, and then the plot took a completely unexpected turn. I was the one who succumbed to the haunting in the end.