Just Finished Reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The Haunting of Hill House is a gothic horror novel by American writer Shirley Jackson (1916-65) from 1959, the first of her novels I've read although I went through a collection of short stories by her a few years ago...her most famous one is probably The Lottery.  As you might suspect from the book's title, it is about an alleged haunted house, this one off in the woods at an undisclosed location, as a paranormal investigator recruits another man and two women to reside a few days there with him and experience and note the house themselves.  Along with Dr. Montague is Luke, who stands to eventually inherit the property, Theodora, a more or less free-spirited artist, and Eleanor, an introverted woman easily intimidated by others.  The story is generally presented from Eleanor's viewpoint, although it's made clear from the beginning that Montague has selected his fellow guests partially because of paranormal phenomena they experienced earlier in their lives...Eleanor seemed to have encountered a poltergeist event back in her childhood.  Now as a reader, the good doctor's intentions immediately seemed suspect to me: if he were investigating something basic to the nature of the house itself, wouldn't he instead want entirely rational people wedded to scientific reality to team up with instead of people who would be looking for anything to call "haunted"?  My reservations seemed to be affirmed as the story progressed, for things...even pretty frightful...do happen at this forsaken place but it's not clear as to what or who is causing them, the house or the people visiting there.  But that's Shirley Jackson for you...from where does evil arise, outside sources or within people's own hearts?  And that's the disturbing question that will plague the reader after finishing this most disturbing story...

Although I personally wasn't too thrilled with the book, Stephen King considers The Haunting of Hill House as a great inspiration to his own writing career, and there is a spinoff television series going on...although after reading the written novel I wonder how much it would have to diverge from Jackson's original narrative.  In spite of the story's doom and gloom, there is actually room for humor here...especially with regard to the cantankerous, stubborn old couple taking care of the property and Montague's hilarious, contrarian spiritualist wife, who enters the story later on.  I guess a one-line reaction I could make from this reading experience is "while looking for the darkness without, one finds the darkness within"...