Hauntingly Beautiful Crazy Scary Perfect

Happy Halloween Everybody!  So far I have spent my Halloween week up to my elbows in real gore (seriously why do people feel the need to stab each other at 2am on Halloween, it's way more common then one would think) so I am a bit on the absolute incoherently exhausted side of things, but I really want to talk about this super perfect creepy scary book...which actually goes along perfectly with my state of mind right now.  I had asked for suggestions for a book that would make me sleep with my light on, I wanted a really good scare and I got a ton of recommendations for The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson and it was everything I wanted it to be and more!  I will start by attempting to summarize it, which might be a bit tough, but I will give it a go as always (SPOILERS AHEAD!)

Eleanor Vance steals her sisters car (which is technically half hers anyways) and sets out to Hill House after receiving an invitation from Dr. Montague, a specialist in the supernatural. Eleanor's sister does not want her to go, but seems more concerned over the lack of car and controlling her sister then she does anything else.  So Eleanor steals the car and heads off to Hill House this is her story.  She drives through the countryside, head full of all kinds of thoughts and stories, each inspired by a sight she sees on her drive; a pair of stone lions, a path lined with Oleanders. She arrives at Hill House and is greeted by Mr. Dudley the scary gate keeper who tries to scare her away, Eleanor knows she should be more frightened, but is determined to go to the house.  She is let in and when she finally catches site of the house, well this quote sums it up nicely " The house was vile.  She shivered and thought, the words coming freely to her mind, Hill House is vile, it is diseased; get away from here at once." The sheer force of wrongness this house exudes hits her
like a physical blow.  She is still determined to follow this adventure through and finally ends up inside the vile house where she is greeted by Mrs. Dudley the housekeeper/cook.  She is a cold creature, informing Eleanor that she leaves before dark and nobody can hear you scream.  Eleanor meets up with Theodora (no last name) a vivacious, attention seeker, Luke Sanderson the caddish soon to be heir to Hill House, and Dr. Montague who invited them all to the house to experience  the supernatural and record there experiences.  Things are wrong right off the bat, Dr. Montague informs them that all of the angles are off just a slight bit, just enough to disconcert a person.  The history of the house is told, and while not horrific, it is not a happy one.  The doors don't stay open, windows and curtains close of there own accord, there are rooms within rooms making it impossible to not get lost, all kinds of crazy stuff.  The first night they are all together the Dr. makes a point to tell them to never go anywhere alone, to always have somebody with them.  He can't tell them why it just is so.  Eventually the house starts to go crazy...or the people inside the house start, I can not do the terror justice, trust me you just have to read it to really get the effect.  This story is about Eleanor and it is inside her mind we dwell the most.  She seems to vacillate between sheer terror and an odd need to accept the insanity.  At one point the phrase "Help Eleanor Come Home" is painted in what appears to be blood at different spots in the house.  Eleanor is jokingly (kind of) accused of painting it herself to get attention, something she adamantly denies.  There seem to be big chunks of time missing, not in a confusing manner per se, more in a Eleanor is living inside her head for bits and pieces of time.  I am not doing a very good job explaining this, needless to say it is very cerebral at this point.  The big thing is that the group as a whole is experiencing certain things, while Eleanor is also experiencing something more personal.  This all culminates one night with
Eleanor (who has been acting more and more erratic) climbing up a very dangerous and rickety staircase, claiming she has surrendered to the house and is now one with it.  She is brought down safely by Luke, and the rest of the group decides that it would be best if Eleanor left and went home, forgetting Hill House and all its horrors and getting back to her own life.  Eleanor does not want to leave, she feels like she now belongs to Hill House.  The rest of her group pack her up and even bring her car around.  As she goes to leave she decides that it is not what she wants, what she wants is to stay, so she drives her car as fast as she can straight into a huge tree.  Her last thoughts as she goes hurling into the tree are finally clear and lucid "Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me?" The other three go back to there mundane lives and Hill House continues to stand empty besides the ever present Dudley's dutifully maintaining the estate, as long as they leave before dark.

I cannot even begin to do this little book justice, every word oozes with atmosphere and double meanings.  It is a perfect example of what really scares me, which is the unknown.  For me the scariest thing is the one that is nebulous and undefined.  The horror that could be anything, but is never given actual form or substance is terrifying to me because there is no rational defense against it.  I think the biggest problem supposedly scary books and movies have is that they feel the need to define the fear, which to me instantly makes it defeatable, or at least named, and a named fear is always better then an unnamed one in my book.  This book does this type of scare beautifully, it is the type of fear that you never know if it is real, or imagined or some combination.  The fact that the whole group experiences the same terrors together indicates that it might be a real evil presence, of course the fact that the next morning there is no evidence of the mayhem of the night before, and the group itself feels silly about being scared makes it possible that it may have been group hysteria (think girls scaring themselves silly at a slumber party by sheer suggestion).  There is no doubt that there is something off about the house, but whether it is a presence or that it is just
atmospheric enough to mess with peoples heads is left up to the reader.   Eleanor in particular is very affected by Hill House (which becomes a character itself very early on).  She is the one we follow, her mental state is the one we dwell in as the reader, and she is our main link to the whole madness. Her odd connection to the house partly stems from her hatred of her old life, where she felt used and unwanted.  In this place, as horrifying as it is, she feels a sense of belonging while still being terrorized.  Her little day dreams and imaginings give us a chilling insight into how her life to this point and the house and stories have affected her mental state.  There are things that may lead us to believe that there are really poor spirits in the house who just want Eleanor to stay with them, which to me is one of the best parts of the book...you are never sure.  To me Eleanor's desperate suicide at the end as an attempt to stay at Hill House, coupled with her final thoughts can be read either way, is she possessed by the spirits of the house, doing everything in there power to make her stay, or is she just caught up in the atmosphere, maybe going a little crazy?  Who knows it's chilling either way.  The sheer foreboding of Hill House and it's actual presence almost like a living being is deliciously scary playing on fears anybody who has come home to an empty house has probably felt at some point.  I think in the end the best part of this whole book is the writing, the author manages to pull of amazing feats of horror, sadness, melancholy, hysteria, desperateness, despair and terror in the most eloquent of words.  Reading through the book (which is pretty short, most people should be able to finish it in a couple sittings...if you don't get too scared) the book, like Hill House, does not seem like it should work, it is slightly off, a little not right, a wee bit disturbing and it all comes together in one of the most chilling books I have ever read. I give this book 9 out of 10 haunted houses.  Go read this right now!
A quick note to those of you who have seen the movie The Haunting the 1963 version is hella scary and sticks with the same vibe as the novel.  The 1999 version however turns it into more of a slasher type movie killing off several people and just vaguely using the novel as a reference.  Remember don't judge a book by its movie!
What is the most terrifying thing you can think of?  What is more scary, the unknown or the known fear?  Why do I like to scare myself silly when all it does is result in a lack of sleep?