The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson: A Review

 "This house is full of stories we both told

These rooms the very stage where they unfold 

These walls, they whisper secrets and memories thereof 

But this door no longer leads us to that love"

Poets of the Fall ~ Skin

The author credited with the first detective story was Edgar Allan Poe and apart from the flair for the mysterious, he also was known for a short story called The Fall of the House of Usher which is clearly one of the influences of the book The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, so much so that the premise is eerily similar.

Three people get called to a mysterious house by an even more mysterious doctor who is supposedly researching paranormal phenomena that the house is known to have exhibited. The house, the eponymous Hill House, lies on the outskirts of the village of Hillsdale and  is despised by the locals and they do not talk about it. There is an air of mystery about the place and suspicions are rampant when Eleanor from the city comes to take up residence there for an experiment proposed by Dr. Montague. Bringing up the rear end of the party are Luke and Theodora. Eleanor, oftentimes referred to as Nell and Theodora, nicknamed Theo run slightly afoul of the caretaker Mrs Dudley whom I found to be most robotic in her duties. About midway through the book, Dr. Montague's wife shows up as does a man called Arthur who is a schoolmaster. Shirley Jackson uses this cast of characters to weave a psychological horror novel which is at times humorous and over the top and at times extremely creepy. Apparently the original owners of Hill House, the Crain family had a very tragic history, involving jealousy between the two sisters, a suicide and the discovery of a tome signed in the blood of the father.

As the novel progresses, the sense that the house does not want the people inhabiting it to be in it is made stronger and stronger. Little incidents happen- Theodora's clothes are ruined and someone writes Eleanor's name in chalk on one side of a wall. The whole message is "Eleanor help. Come home" or words to that effect. This creates suspense beautifully as everyone suspects Eleanor of being the one who wrote that sentence on the wall as an attention seeking gimmick.

Further, the doctor decrees that nobody is to wander around the house alone, but every time this happens something bad inevitably follows. Mrs. Montague for upon her appearance in the novel, immediately sits for planchette and declares there are spirits in the house. There is an almost delicious spookiness to the atmosphere that is created in this novel, as from the very beginning it seems as if the antagonist, the supernatural entity is basically Hill House itself.

While The Fall of the House of Usher had a legitimate ghost in it, Hill House does not...or does it? This point is left moot and up to the reader to conclude as incidents of hallucination, disembodied voices and body parts are used to up the ante and make people feel...I would not say scared, rather uneasy.

Is The Haunting of Hill House a book I enjoyed reading? Yes it is. Is it a book I would like to keep? They jury is unfortunately out on this one. I think The Haunting of Hill House does some things incredibly well but at times does not succeed in pulling it's own weight.

I give this book a 3.7/5  

Buy the book here

The Bilge Master