Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

NO SPOILER Book REVIEW

I love horror and Halloween so it is crazy that I have never read the Haunting of Hill House. This year as I was searching for a spooky book to start the season, I kept seeing this book on all the lists. After about the 100th time that I saw this book I realized that it is not in fact The Hills Have Eyes (yuck) and then I felt like an idiot for ignoring this book.

Don’t judge me! We’re all guilty of skimming!

It took my brain a few pages to get used to Shirley Jackson’s superior writing style. I had just finished a popular fiction book that was only okay, so my brain was a little lazy at first.

After that, I was completely engaged by the characters and creeped out by the sadistic house. I made the mistake of reading this right before bed several times. I had to consciously remind myself that nothing creepy has ever happened in my house so I could sleep.

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Don’t assume that because this book is 60 years old that it is a safe quaint Halloween read. Most readers will be spooked by this book, and it has moments of real violence. However, it is not gory or obscene the way that a lot of modern Horror can be. This is the perfect book for anyone looking for a haunted Halloween ghost story. 

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Goodreads Summary

​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, the 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.

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