Article contributed by Rosie Smith
Slamming doors, bad dreams, cold-spots, electrics shorting, items moving on their own… Are you living in a Haunted House? From friendly spirits to malevolent poltergeists, this list will have you shaking in your boots, peering round corners, and sleeping with the light on. Are you ready to be ghost hunters? We are about to set foot in Hill House, The Overlook Hotel, and Crickley Hall and you may not come out alive!
Trigger Warning: This article includes fictional themes of rape, sexual assault, child abuse incest, drug use and murder.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Would you go for a summer holiday in a haunted house? That is exactly what Eleanor, Theodora, and Luke do following an invitation from Dr Montague who is investigating the supernatural occurrences at Hill House. The group are tasked with living in the house for the summer, noting unearthly experiences.
Although dark and foreboding with a chequered past, Hill House is uninviting but apparently not haunted. However, malevolent events begin slowly unfolding leaving us to wonder what is the work of spirits and what may be the work of the group of ragtag inhabitants. The house comes to life, ensnaring its victims, particularly drawing in fragile, vulnerable Eleanor who is infatuated with the house. Will Hill House ever let her go?
For those that have watched the hit Netflix series, you’ll find that the show takes a lot of creative licence, further developing key themes from the book to stretch over a whole series. The novel is more compact with traditional haunted house tropes but still packs a frightening punch, made even more impactful by the shock ending. Come inside Hill House if you dare…
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Waters writes a ghoulishly Gothic piece of horror fiction in The Little Stranger that transports us to the postwar England countryside and the now dilapidated Hundreds Hall. Dr Faraday, a community physician, and the books narrator, reflects on Hundreds Hall in its heyday and is shocked to find its state of disrepair when he is called out to treat an unwell maid. Following this, Faraday becomes close to the family, falling in love with Caroline, treating her brother Roderick’s war injuries and having tea with their mother, the lady of the estate. Little does Faraday know, he is in for a shocking ride full of psychosis, mysterious accidents, and suicides raising the question: is Hundreds Hall really haunted or are the events a product of grief, shell-shock and the financial pressure of living in a house that’s falling down around them?
Waters explores the ideas of class and the breakdown of class barriers after the conclusion of the World War Two, as well as the effects of post traumatic stress disorder on soldiers and pilots using traditional horror tropes as metaphor for the real life horrors of the time. A bit of a slow-burner, you’ll have to give this book a bit of a chance but once it gets going, it will suck you in and keep you questioning until the last page!
The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson
If you like real life-scares, this is the one for you. Based on the experiences of the Lutz family who moved into the Amityville place after some horrific murders took place, the book chronicles the paranormal happenings that follow. Despite multiple blessings on the house, the Lutz family claim that supernatural events continued including night-time waking, swarms of flies, nightmares, hidden rooms, cold spots, imaginary friends, damaged locks and doors, slime, demons, and ghosts. The family end up being pushed to their limit and feel that they are going mad.
The book has come under some criticism due to non-believers feeling that the Lutz family made up the events and exploited the family who previously lived in the house whom experienced the terrible murder tragedy. On the other hand, whether real or not, the book makes for a supreme scare and will leave you awake long into the night wondering… What was that sound? Did I lock the door? Was that a shadow?
The Shining by Stephen King
How could you write any horror list without including the King himself, Stephen King! Although not technically a ‘house’ the Overlook hotel is a building and it is most definitely haunted! When Jack Torrance moves his wife and young son Danny into a hotel in the mountains for the winter to work as a caretaker. Jack expected peace and quiet, family time to peruse his passion of writing… Boy was he wrong! When the hotel wakes up and tries to ensnare Jack and Danny, the psychological horror begins. With King’s usual themes of psychic abilities and supernatural occurrences, you’ll find yourself running for your lives down the corridors and through the snowy gardens with the Torrance family, promising yourself not to look back!
Exploring the dark themes of alcoholism, marriage problems, and child abuse, The Shining puts family life under the microscope when the Torrance family are completely isolated from the rest of the world. Alongside this, King begins to drip feed us elements of the paranormal and has us questioning, what’s in Danny and Jack’s heads and what is real. Read if you dare but you may never stay in another hotel again, especially not room 217.
Hell House by Richard Matheson
Four investigators, one haunted house, endless harrowing past events. Welcome to your nightmare! When Lionel, Edith, Florence, and Benjamin travel to the most haunted house in the world to investigate the paranormal happenings causing suicide, murder, and insanity in the previous investigators, they didn’t expect to find their own personal hells. When the house begins to target each member of the party individually based on their weaknesses, fears, and insecurities, the group become divided causing havoc and hellish mayhem.
Full of offensive themes including rape and highly sexualised, some might say perverse scenes, although written in 1971, Hell House still has the ability to repulse and frighten even today. Some have described the text as a bit of a slow burner but worth sticking with, revealing some of the most depraved and disgusting horror scenes ever written in its second half. It takes a strong stomach to read this one and even the most experienced horror connoisseurs have found Hell House too much. It really does push the boundaries on the horror genre, shocking the reader to their core.
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe
Although a short story, The Fall of House Usher will stay with you long after with its creepy imagery and trademark Edgar Allan Poe poetic writing style. When the narrator (who’s name we don’t know) is contacted by his sick friends, siblings, Roderick, and Madeline, the narrator rushes to their side to help. Once he enters the house, haunting happenings began to take place. Madeline appears to die from her illness and is put into a family tomb by Roderick and our trusty nameless narrator, but the reader is left to wonder: is she really dead when Poe describes her as ‘rosy-cheeked’? Following this, the inhabitants of the house begin to hear strange noises and glowing lights, is it Madeline’s angry spirit wreaking havoc or is she alive and enraged?
Without being explicit, Poe uses his meandering writing style to hint at a range of troubling occurrences including vampirism, incest, and opiate usage creating a Gothic foreboding and melancholy atmosphere. The twins’ undiagnosed illness, inspected under a modern filter, is often seen by readers as hypochondria and anxiety making for a psychological thriller full of twists, turns and the age old question of psychology vs paranormal. Although a very short story, Shakespeare’s famous quote feels the only adequate way to describe The Fall of House Usher. ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce.’
House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski
Originally a bundle of papers passed from person to person full of footnotes, scribbles, and appendices, House of Leaves has now been compiled into a uniquely terrifying novel. Following the story of the young family who move into a house on Ash Lane, the book speaks of their supernatural experiences through a psychedelic trip of upside down text, coloured words, font changes, backwards sentences, and unreliable narrators. Inviting the reader to become Sherlock Holmes and put together the clues to find out what really happened on Ash Lane, the house that appears bigger on the inside than the outside.
It’s not an easy read and really makes you work hard for the story and scares but almost all who have read it have stated how absolutely worth it House of Leaves is. Keeping readers up long into the night due to the horror and mystery, this once underground text has been thrust into the limelight by Danielewski’s collation into a novel. The writing will get under your skin and the story will stay with you long after the last page, not only that of the Ash Lane family but also of the range of narrators whom we get to know through the footnotes. Make sure you set aside some serious time and brain power for this one!
The Secret of Crickley Hall by James Herbert
Following a family tragedy, where one of the children is lost, the Caleighs decide to relocate from the city to a secluded house in Devon and have a fresh start. In a moment of foreshadowing, the family dog Chester appears terrified by the house, but putting it down to the stress of starting a new life, the Caleighs ignore this warning. The warnings become more stark when the children begin seeing and hearing things and the horror peaks when Eve Caleigh begins to have terrifying nightmares and hears her lost son Cameron talking to her.
Including many overdone haunted house tropes, this book is saved from being just another haunted house by Herbert’s weaving of the Caleigh family’s sorrowful back story with the horrifying backstory of Crickley Hall itself. Including tragic themes of child abuse, murder, and mutilation. At 634 pages, The Secret of Crickley Hall is a long read and can be repetitive in places, on the other hand, the length allows Herbert to fully develop the characters allowing the reader to form emotional bonds, leaving us reeling at the ended. Reading about the ghosts of mistreated children is not for everyone so be warned before you start reading.
