Every now and then I get a little bit terrified

A lightning review of The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (New York: Viking, 1959). Ebook.

I'm not a huge reader of horror fiction (Stephen King, of whom I am a devoted fan, being an exception). Occasionally, though, I like a good thriller, and I thought I'd try out a classic ghost story.

Dr. John Montague has heard that Hill House, an isolated mansion with a history of violent deaths, is haunted. Wanting scientific proof of the supernatural, he rents the house and invites a small party of people, who have had some past paranormal experience, to live with him for a summer: Luke Sanderson, the heir to the house, Theodora, a free spirit, and Eleanor Vance, a shy recluse who has lived practially alone caring for her invalid mother. Within only a few days, they begin to experience strange events: mysterious noises, ghost sightings, and writing on the wall. Eleanor herself seems to be particularly targeted by the manifestations. The ghosts, if they exist, appear to be making a specific effort to communicate with her, and the house itself may be trying to possess her.

The Haunting of Hill House is a classic of horror fiction. It's very similar to Henry James' The Turn of the Screw, the 1898 gothic novel in which a governess becomes convinced her employer's house is haunted. You're never quite sure whether the haunting is real, psychological, or even some sort of self-inflicted psychic phenomenon. I enjoyed reading the novel well enough, but found myself dissatisfied with the suspensefulness. To be fair, the novel is 60 years old, and what was relatively fresh in 1959 can almost be considered a cliché in 2019. Nonetheless, the story is good, Shirley Jackson's prose is a pleasure to read, and the ending did catch me by surprise.

I was prompted to read this novel by the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House, which is loosely based on it. (Apparently the second season will be based on The Turn of the Screw.) So if you like that TV show and want to read the (considerably different) story that inspired it, give it a read. Best of all, if you're in Canada, it's been in the public domain for a few years, and is freely downloadable!

In other news: It appears that the local library no longer has The Storm of War in its catalogue. That's aggravating. Oh, well, on to Plato, I guess.