The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It has been made into two feature films and a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series. The story concerns four main characters: Dr. John Montague, an investigator of the supernatural; Eleanor Vance, a shy young woman; Theodora, a bohemian artist implied to be in a relationship with a woman.
About The Haunting of Hill House in brief
The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. A finalist for the National Book Award and considered one of the best literary ghost stories published during the 20th century, it has been made into two feature films and a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series. The story concerns four main characters: Dr. John Montague, an investigator of the supernatural; Eleanor Vance, a shy young woman who resents having lived as a recluse caring for her demanding disabled mother; Theodora, a bohemian artist implied to be in a relationship with a woman; and Luke Sanderson, the young heir to Hill House. All four of the inhabitants begin to experience strange events while in the house, including unseen noises and ghosts roaming the halls at night, strange writing on the walls, and other unexplained events. The novel relies on terror rather than horror to elicit emotion in the reader, using complex relationships between the mysterious events in the House and the characters’ psyches. The author decided to write a ghost story after reading about a group of nineteenth century \”psychic researchers\” who studied a house and somberly reported their supposedly scientific findings to the Society for Psychic Research.
She later claimed to have found a picture of a California house she believed was suitably haunted-looking in a magazine. She asked her mother, who lived in California, to help find information about the dwelling. According to Jackson, her mother identified the house as one the author’s own great-great-grandfather, an architect who had designed some of San Francisco’s oldest buildings, had built. The four overnight visitors begin to form friendships as Dr. Montague explains the building’s history, which encompasses suicide and other violent deaths. Unlike the other characters, Eleanor tends to experience phenomena to which the others are oblivious. At the same time, Eleanor may be losing touch with reality, and the narrative implies that at least some of what Eleanor witnesses may be products of her imagination. In one episode, as Eleanor and Eleanor walk outside the House, they see a ghostly family picnic that seems to be taking place in daylight.
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This page is based on the article The Haunting of Hill House published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 10, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
