The Haunting of Hill House

 

What is going on with me? I say I don't like horror, and here I am reading another horror story. I say I'm never going to read another Shirley Jackson novel, and look at me, borrowing The Haunting of Hill House. I must admit I'm going through a bit of a paranormal/ghost story phase at the moment, listening to the Uncanny podcast, so let's chalk it up to that.

The Haunting of Hill House is the basis for a Netflix series, but they seem to have changed a lot of details in the story, centring it on a family with several children rather than the team of young investigators who gather in the novel. Hill House is cleverly written, leaving it ambiguous as to whether the phenomena experienced by Eleanor are objectively real (certainly several of them are shared with the other observers) or occurring inside her own mind (there are some things that only she feels).

Likewise, who knows whether the paranormal phenomena reported by ordinary punters (eg on Uncanny!) are influenced by reading books like Hill House, or whether Shirley Jackson herself experienced some ghostly happenings? Certainly there seem to be common phenomena (and apparently Jackson did a lot of research before she wrote her book). Cold spots, footsteps, mysterious thumps and voices, are all frequently reported, as is a sense of dread and senseless fear. But poor Eleanor seems particularly possessed -- by a malign spirit, or her own psychological demons? Again, the novel leaves the question delicately, creepily open.