The Haunting of Hill House: Introduction

The greatest haunted house story ever written.

Hello, readers!

Welcome to our Spooktober read, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House (1959). Today I’ll give you a short introduction to the book — without spoilers — as well as the haunted house trope within the larger horror genre.

The reading “officially” starts this week, but you can pace yourself however you’d like. My recap next Sunday morning will cover Chapters 1-3. Here’s the schedule again if you need it:

• October 13th: Introduction and Context

• October 20th: Recap/discussion for Chapters 1-3

• October 27th: Recap/discussion for Chapters 4-6

• October 31st: Recap/discussion for Chapters 7-9

• November 3rd: Group video chat

An all-time great book by an all-time great author

Shirley Jackson’s own (rough) rendering of Hill House

Renowned for being one of the finest examples of American gothic/horror literature, The Haunting of Hill House is one of the very few in the genre to have been shortlisted as a finalist for a major literary prize. The National Book Award website describes the novel like this:

The classic supernatural thriller by an author who helped define the genre. 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, his 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.

Despite its categorization, Hill House’s scares don’t fall into the realm of graphic terror, but rather into that murkier territory of spine-tingling, unsettling psychological frights. It’s the kind of story that gives you goosebumps rather than a jump scare.