The Haunting of Hill House

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.

Jackson’s Gothic horror flows like black chiffon over a yawing window. That’s how I felt reading about Hill House. I loved the way the house sneaks up with its psychological weights swinging and jarring. Eleanor possesses a dark ambiance. She desperately needed to belong to something or someone, and I couldn’t let go of that.

Her emotions and fears were right there with me. But it was the romantic underbelly that got me: Eleanor’s romance with Hill House. The statuesque gardens, the light, and shadows, all tempted her into its sinister realm. As it tempted me. I felt deeply… 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.

Of all the genres, horror is the most difficult to write successfully because it requires technique. And I’m referring to true horror, not gore-or, as the great Stephen King writes (I can hear the boos aimed at me already).

Considered a classic by many—including Mr. King—The Haunting has one of the greatest opening paragraphs of all time, and illustrates perfectly the technique involved as Jackson describes the features and construction of the House—subtly, benignly, and then...“and whatever walked there, walked alone.” 

The story, a traditional haunted house tale, is short and filled with such unseen creepiness and can be… show more.