Item: The Haunting of Hill House
Rating: 3.00
Author: wyvernfriend

by Shirley Jackson

The greatest haunted house story ever written—the inspiration for the hit Netflix horror series!

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.

Now I'm curious to see the film.

I didn't find it all that terror filled or horrific, it was the story of edge of sight stuff and fairly scary but nothing exceptional for the genre. If there had been less reviewers saying things like keeping your nightlight burning if you read it in bed etc I might have enjoyed it better.

Yes the disintegration of a person because of a malicious feeling in a house, or perhaps it was that person disintegrating by their own, is pretty horrific. I'm sure the house was involved but still it's kinda questionable as to whether or not it was the only source of the disintegration.

Not really one of my favourite reads but interesting in it's own right.

The Haunting of Hill House

by Shirley Jackson

Reviewed by wyvernfriend on Nov 26, 2008

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