a book
The Haunting of Hill House
Shirley Jackson · 2006 · 288 pages
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.
recommended by 9 people
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Carmen Maria Machado
“Forget the schlocky, sentimental ending of the Netflix series; The Haunting of Hill House is chilling, gorgeous, devastatingly real, and has an utterly fearless relationship with its genre. The perfect novel is one of the rarest beasts around, but here — sentence by sentence, brick by brick — Shirley Jackson built it. (Arguably, she did it twice — We Have Always Lived in the Castle is its own massive achievement — but Hill House is still my favorite.)”↗
Silvia Moreno Garcia
“Possibly the best haunted house novel ever written — starting with one of the best opening lines you’ll ever read. Jackson’s beautiful prose delivers a series of subtle yet chilling encounters with the supernatural. A discontented and lonely woman is invited to participate in a parapsychological experiment at a haunted mansion. Or is the haunting inside her head?”↗
Kirk Hammett
“I love it, it’s so gothic. The book, in my opinion, is much better than the movie. The movie is really really great, but the book is better.”↗
