The Haunting of Hill House
by Shirley Jackson
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What in the world – or out of it – is wrong with Hill House?
The Victorian-age mansion was designed by its original owner as a gift for his
wife, a place to raise their two young daughters in the bucolic New England
countryside that appears to be the setting for some of author Shirley Jackson’s
most famous stories. But the wife was killed in a horrific accident before
setting foot in the house, the daughters were subjected to bizarre attentions
from their father, and the family died out, leaving Hill House the subject of
unsavory stories.
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| image: wikimedia commons |
In Jackson’s 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House, modern-day investigator of the paranormal, Dr. John
Montague, has plans for a scrupulously scientific investigation of the house’s
strange phenomena. To that end, he rents the house for the summer from its
present owner and invites a dozen people who have experienced various forms of
psychic activity to spend the summer documenting their experiences at Hill
House.
On the face of it, who wouldn’t jump at a chance to spend a
vacation at “a comfortable country house, old, but perfectly equipped with
pumping, electricity, central heating, and clean mattresses,” Dr. Montague
reasons. (Not to mention a housekeeper who, if surly, is a talented cook.)
He receives four replies, the other eight candidates having
failed to reply, or possibly even – given the nature of psychic activities -- “never
having existed at all.” An additional two of those who reply never show up.
Hill House’s landlady persuades Montague to add her ne’er-do-well and dubiously
honest nephew to the house party, which will otherwise only consist of two
ill-assorted women: put-upon spinster Eleanor Vance and a flighty, possibly
lesbian, self-professed psychic who goes by the name of Theodora.
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| Shirley Jackson |
Theodora’s psychic credentials include a better than chance
performance of ESP in Montague’s laboratory. Eleanor Vance has been invited to
Hill House because she was the subject as a child of a poltergeist-like incident
(although Montague informs Eleanor calmly that poltergeists “are rock-bottom on
the supernatural social scale; they are destructive, but mindless and
will-less; they are merely undirected force.”) He will come to regret those words.
Eleanor had at first been overjoyed at the invitation to
Hill House. In her early thirties, she has spent most of her life caring
for her abusive invalid mother. Now her mother has died, leaving her free for the
first time.
“During the whole underside of her life, ever since her
first memory, Eleanor had been waiting for something like Hill House. Caring
for her mother, lifting a cross old lady from her chair to her bed, setting out
endless little trays of soup and oatmeal, steeling herself to the filthy
laundry, Eleanor had held fast to the belief that someday something would
happen.”
If only leaving her old life and habits could be as simple
as taking a daylong jaunt from the city to the site of Hill House. “She turned
her car onto the last stretch of straight drive leading her directly, face to
face, to Hill House. . . and sat, staring. The house was vile. She shivered and
thought, the words coming freely into her mind, Hill House is vile, it is
diseased; get away from here at once.”
But while readers are screaming, Don't go in there, she does, met by the daunting housekeeper/cook Mrs. Dudley, who insists on leaving before nightfall. There will be no one to help the visitors in the dark, she tells Eleanor.
"Eleanor almost giggled, thinking of herself calling, 'Oh, Mrs. Dudley, I need your help in the dark,' and then she shivered."
But while readers are screaming, Don't go in there, she does, met by the daunting housekeeper/cook Mrs. Dudley, who insists on leaving before nightfall. There will be no one to help the visitors in the dark, she tells Eleanor.
"Eleanor almost giggled, thinking of herself calling, 'Oh, Mrs. Dudley, I need your help in the dark,' and then she shivered."
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