I wanted to read a tale about a haunted house this year for October/Halloween. As autumn started to rear its pretty head I felt a craving for descriptions of old country mansions, stocked full of creaky staircases, bumps in the night and quite possibly a home library I wouldn’t have the nerve to step into.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is the
definitive haunted house story. Sitting
high on a wooded hilltop, shadowing a nameless town, it is the ugliest, most fearful
beast in the estate of the horror house genre. It is a shame, however, that
when reading the book I felt as if the contents had been lifted and used to
decorate other second-rate productions. The worst of all is that 1999 thing
with Catherine Zeta Jones. I can only warn you like a gatekeeper who already
knows the perils that await you, never watch that abomination which
unfortunately uses that same names and premises as Shirley Jackson’s creation.
Nevertheless, nothing can spoil this classic which draws
you into its confines. The first few sentences would have the well-known and
recounted “In a Dark Dark Wood, In a Dark Dark House” scrambling its little
legs and screaming at the top of its lungs to get away. How can a selection of the
English language produce something so scary?
Hill House is “not sane” you see. Its neat, firm bricks
sit in silence and whatever walks there walks alone.
“Vile”, thinks
Eleanor, the shy and unassuming member of the party of invited guest, as she
drives up the house’s driveway, “get away from here at once”. The members of Dr
Montague’s paranormal case study enter the house with the patter of an Agatha
Christie cast and explore the labyrinth of slanted rooms. Glimpses of the
history of the house are teased out, the poltergeist never forms beyond a
giggle heard behind a closed door, the ending is so abrupt it feels unfinished and
leaves questions unanswered.
The text of this book has been analysed by so many
mediums; was there an actual haunting or was it a psychological manifestation
of a young woman slowly going mad? I would be able to provide some concrete
evidence if I was not taken over a compulsion to hide the book in my freezer every
time I delved too close to the words on the page.
I’ve personally decided that The Haunting of Hill House
is exactly that. The story is cleverly built on the past cases of other haunted
mansions; Borely Rectory, Glamis Castle and Ballechin House are mentioned by Dr
Montague on page 138, the arrival of the Dr’s wife brings the occult tool of
the planchette (a variation of the ouija
board), while the Victorian volumes the Dr reads in bed hark back to a time of
maidservants and wicked masters, that combined with the humour and twisted
vocabulary of Shirley Jackson, means this book serves up a treat for October
reading.
