The Haunting of Hill House

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.

Umm, okay, first of all The version I read was slightly different than the synopsis above, in that Theo was not the doc's assistant, but one of the slightly psychic guests. Anyhow, I doubt the versions changed too much.

Well as I mentioned, I chose to read this book because I had recently seen The Haunting (movie) on TV and saw that it was based on this book. Well the movie is my favorite haunted house movie and I thought the book would be even better because they usually are...

Not the case! I knew it was psycological terror, that's why I like it, not so much blood and gore, but the book was entirely psychological! There was maybe a bump in the night here, an unexplained cold spot there, but the book wasn't really about the house at all!

It was about Eleanor. A shut-in taking care of her mom for far too long and turned a touch crazy I think. The house took ahold of her mind until she was apart of the house itself. We follow her thoughts on the house and the others which are always bouncing between almost a worshiping love and beastly hate. Odd. Just odd.

There was a backstory behind the house, but nothing near as cool as what they depicted in the movie.

It seemed like this was more the kind of book you would read in school and discuss and no one really liked. I know it's a classic and all, just not what I expected. Read it if you want, hey even in the middle of the night! It's okay nothing scary really happens!