"The Haunting of Hill House" by Shirley Jackson

Have you ever felt truly at home in a place that you've never been before...?

I have never been a fan of ghost stories, so it's no surprise that I was not initially interested in reading The Haunting of Hill House. I was an easy kid to scare: thunder and lighting scared me; the concept of vampires scared the living daylights out of me until Stephenie Meyer made them sexy; I couldn't stand seeing any trailer for a spooky horror movie without my hands over my eyes and my fingers in my ears; I spent plenty of sleepless nights with the covers over my head, heart pounding, worrying that a monster was going to try and take me from my bed; I couldn't sleep for two weeks after finishing Bunnicula (a story where a vampire rabbit sucks the juice out of vegetables, one of the least-threating things that could exist in hindsight); just seeing a poster for the Jim Carrey Grinch movie when it first came out kept me up at night for years; so ghosts? No. Absolutely not. Didn't want to cross them, didn't want to accidentally summon one from reading a story about or even thinking about ghosts, didn't want to have one haunting me in the middle of the night. Nope. Out of the question.

However, it wasn't until I grew up, when I realized that monsters could be people themselves, that horror could be more than just jumpscares and screams, and when the trailer for Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House dropped and when I watched the entire series in the span of a week for the first of many times (if you haven't watched this masterpiece by now, what are you doing with your Quarantine? Go watch it right now!), that I said to myself, "okay, it's time. You need to stop being a baby and dip your toes into the spooky, ghost-infested waters of horror already.

"It's time for you to read The Haunting of Hill House."

Fortunately, I knew beforehand that I wasn't going to be disappointed when I didn't read about a literary version of Hugh, Steven, Shirley. Theo, Luke, and Nell Crain's attempts to cope with their traumatic past. I'd heard of the general gist of the story, how it focuses on four strangers in a haunted house, but I didn't really know much more beyond that. It wasn't until I read the novel that I truly comprehended the true terror and horror I was getting into…

What's the book about?

First published in 1959, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

(Summary from Goodreads)

When did I read this?

September 24 - October 6

Positives:

+ How quickly the characters meet and socialize with one another as if they've known each other for years.

+ The reader can see and feel the slow regression of Eleanor's thoughts as she stays longer and longer inside Hill House.

+ The last couple chapters in particular are bonkers.

+ Hill House isn't just a setting: it's a fleshed-out character.

+ It's hungry, it's looming, it's ominous, it's a predator hunting its prey, it's alive.

+ This book is about a haunting, but it's also a twisted love story between Eleanor and Theodora, Eleanor herself, and Hill House.

+ How you can see the pleasant visions Eleanor witnesses while also seeing the hauntings from the others' experiences and how horrifically different they are from each other.

+ The ambiguity of Eleanor and Theo's relationship with one another, what's going on in Hill House, what's real, what isn't, etc.

+ Shirley Jackson's writing style and sentence structure and everything oh my god...

+ The short but sweet moments where I picked out certain words and sentences that made it into the Netflix show. I know this has nothing to do with the actual story, but every time I found these little pieces of confetti, I felt pumped knowing where the creative team originally got it from.

Negatives:

- Mrs. Montague and Arthur Parker. Yes, I know we're supposed to hate them, but I hate them anyway. They just barge into the situation without listening to Dr. Montague or the others, going "ShUt Up I kNoW wHaT i'M tAlKiNg AbOuT" when they haven't ever stepped into a truly haunted house like Hill House before. And they never even see how bad it is in the first place! I want them to go to their own entitled, gender-constraining, mansplain-y bubble to rot. I hate them. I hate them so much.

- The casual, slightly artificial "good old chums" dialogue between Eleanor, Theodora, and Luke kind of ground the momentum of the story down to a crawl. I realize that this was probably as "of the times" dialogue for the time it was written, but it took me out of the immersion for a bit until something else happened.

Reality Check:

Dead parents, ghosts, isolation, creeping dread

Content Warning:

Suicide, blood, mentions of beatings, brief aggressive heteronormative attitudes

Is it a truly litassociative experience?

The experience I had while reading The Haunting of Hill House was something close to a possession: it was like the ghostly hands of Shirley Jackson reached out from the page, grabbed me by my shoulders, and pulled me into Eleanor's body. I saw what she saw, I felt what she felt, I thought what she thought, I wanted what she wanted, and I never really knew where Eleanor began and I ended. The atmosphere in this book wrapped itself around me like a warm and comfy blanket that will definitely smother you if you don’t watch too closely, leaving me with a sense of dread. Shirley Jackson's use of ambiguity lassoed itself around my heart and pulled me through the ghost infested creature of the monstrous house, begging me to see where the story would go next, the real world slowly disappearing only to be replaced by the limited world of Hill House.

I’m so glad that I finally picked up this story. I had a great time reading it and I loved (nearly) everything about it. The suspense was very well done and even though reading this didn't make me aggressively want to fear-vomit, it left me with a special sense of unease that I haven't felt in a long time, if I've ever felt anything quite like this before. It was strange, it was dream-like, it was subtle, it was liberating, and I suggest that you go get a copy of your own. Let yourself get swallowed whole and see if there are those who will welcome you home with cold, open arms...

The Haunting of Hill House can be found at your local library and/or your nearest bookstore.

Final rating:

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.” — Shirley Jackson