The Haunting of Hill House
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
(The other was Henry JamessThe Turn of the Screw.)
Its less than 200 pages, but I dont recommend it as bedtime reading.
Its hard to say exactly what makes the booksoscary, but my guess is that its the ambiguity.
Something pounds as loud as a cannonball on the bedroom doors at night and tries to open them.
Messages appear written in blood on the walls.
But as the hauntings progress, it seems increasingly possible that theso-called ghostsmight actually be Eleanors psychic projections.
The scariest place of all, the book tells us, is inside our own heads.
I suspect this is also whyHill Househas resisted adaptation.
There are plenty of Easter eggs, and Ill be only too happy to point them out.
It all starts with the house.
The color palette is also just right muted, sickly-looking reds and blues and greens.
The central mystery of the house emanates from the tower.
(We cant leave Mom!
the children scream, to which Hugh replies, Thats not Mom.)
Or someone something else?
A ghost can be a lot of things, he tells her.
A memory, a daydream, a secret.
Grief, anger, guilt.
But in my experience, most times theyre just what we want to see.
Its a theory thats very similar to Jacksons own beliefs.
Steve and Shirley both ignore her frantic phone calls; by the end of the episode, shes dead.
Does Nell commit suicide?
Or is there an evil in the house that finally gets her?
If the series follows the novels love of ambiguity, we may never find out.
Steve, I assume, is a reference to Stephen King.
Mr. Dudley, as the resident handyman, is considerably more cheerful than his predecessor.
The doorknobs in Hill House are shaped like lions heads.
In the final version of the novel, the knocker has the face of a child.
The movie came out in 1982.
Fear Factor (1:The Mummy -5:The Ring):3
