Search results
'The Haunting of Hill House' by Shirley Jackson is a must-read horror novel about four people who decide to investigate the many reports of ghosts in Hill House. Introduction. Summary. Themes and Analysis. Characters. Review. Shirley Jackson. Article written by Emma Baldwin.
Later, as Theodora and Eleanor walk outside Hill House at night, they see a ghostly family picnic that seems to be taking place in daylight. Theodora screams in fear for Eleanor to run, warning her not to look back, though the book never explains what Theodora sees, but she babbles, laughs, and cries in fright.
- Shirley Jackson
- 246
- 1959
- 1959
The 1959 gothic horror novel “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson, is perhaps the greatest haunted-house story ever written. Stephen King, in his book Danse Macabre (1981), a non-fiction review of the horror genre, lists The Haunting of Hill House as one of the finest horror novels of the late 20th century and provides a lengthy review.
The novel is told from the perspective of its unreliable protagonist Eleanor, and it is an example of a subgenre known as the psychological ghost story. In this subgenre, events occur because of the unbalanced mental state of the main character, not because of supernatural entities.
People also ask
What is The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson about?
Is the Haunting of Hill House a ghost story?
Who are the characters in The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson?
Who wrote The Haunting of Hill House?
- The Haunting of Hill House was inspired by real-life paranormal investigators. Jackson was inspired to write the novel after reading about a group of 19th century “psychic researchers” who rented a house they believed to be haunted in order to study paranormal phenomena.
- Shirley Jackson consulted a book by a paranormal researcher. In 1958, Jackson was working on Hill House when she read a newspaper article about a Long Island family experiencing poltergeist activity, which mentioned the book Haunted People, co-written by parapsychologist Nandor Fodor.
- Jackson had a terrifying sleepwalking experience while writing The Haunting of Hill House. Early on in the writing process, Jackson awoke one morning to find something terrifying atop her writing desk: A note, with the words “DEAD DEAD” scrawled upon it, written in her own handwriting.
- Jackson made an unsettling discovery while researching haunted houses. Before she began writing The Haunting of Hill House, Jackson searched magazines and newspapers for photos of houses that seemed haunted.
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House interplays between supernatural and psychological horror where a twisted and sinister haunted house hellbent on isolation becomes a representation of a mind twisted by trauma and full of its own ghosts, and it is a truly remarkable and unsettling read.
