5 haunted house books to keep you up at night

Are you hearing that knocking on the wall too?

Welcome to Night Hag! Your guide to the Gothic during spooky season. Or the witch who sits on your chest and gives you nightmares. Or both!

This newsletter is an experiment: I’ll be publishing explainers every Tuesday (e.g. are Gothic and horror the same thing?) and recommendations every Friday for the next several weeks, ending just before Halloween. This week: haunted houses! [Note: since Halloween 2023, I’ve changed the format to once- or twice-a-month recommendation posts.]

If you’re into secret passageways, evil trees, doppelgangers, crumbling manors, blood sucking, women in white, women in black, murderous husbands, and/or thick fog, Night Hag is for you. If not, send it to a friend who likes reading books by candlelight in drafty old houses.  

So…what is the Gothic?

We’ll get into specifics in the Tuesday explainers, but for now think of Gothic as a mood: dark, scary, eerie, and strange. Gothic novels may or may not have supernatural elements (more on that next week), but they always generate a feeling of unease and uncertainty. In the Gothic, one of the most disturbing questions is, “what if I can’t trust my own mind?” Each of this week’s recommendations plays with that idea, using the haunted house as a space where characters become disoriented and the rules of the outside world no longer apply.

If you want to know more about the Gothic, check out my article “What is the Gothic and why is it also a style of architecture?”. According to Medium, it’s a brisk, 5-minute read 🙂

Recommendations

Okay, let’s get to it!

The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson 

Not the first haunted house story, but a classic and, in my opinion, the best. When the New York Times asked authors to recommend the scariest book they’ve ever read, several of them chose Hill House. Jackson’s unlikeable narrator, Eleanor, is part of what makes this story so great. We’re uneasy from the beginning because Eleanor’s mind is not a comfortable place to be, a discomfort that is only amplified by Eleanor’s arrival at Hill House. Note: for viewers of the Netflix series, the book is very different. (People on Reddit get really angry about this. So consider yourself warned!) The Netflix version is outright horror, while Jackson is less explicit. You won’t find any jump scares in the book, but the way that Jackson straddles the natural and supernatural, never quite committing to either side, is equally unsettling. 

The Death of Jane Lawrence (2021) by Caitlin Starling

Looking for something written more recently? Maybe something a little scarier than Hill House? The Death of Jane Lawrence fits the bill. Spinster Jane needs a husband, and Augustine Lawrence is willing to marry her, on one condition: she must never spend the night at his house. As you might imagine, that arrangement doesn’t last long. Similar to the characters in Hill House, Jane finds herself in a confusing and terrifying situation, witnessing things at Lindridge Hall that defy logic. One thing I love about this book is that the twist is genuinely surprising – not an easy thing to accomplish with the familiar trope of the haunted house. Read if you want a book full of Gothic atmosphere that will make you want to sleep with the light on. I couldn’t put it down. 

Benighted (1927) by J. B. Priestley

Benighted is a bit more lighthearted (and shorter!) than the previous two. It has a delightful mix of social comedy and Gothic menace, as three friends find themselves stranded in the Welsh countryside with nowhere to go but the unwelcoming Femm family mansion. It’s clear right away that something is wrong with the house, or the family, or both, but that doesn’t prevent the other characters from being preoccupied with their petty, everyday concerns. Read if you want your haunted houses to be a little funny or if you’re looking for the obscure choice. Kind of like the beginning of Rocky Horror in book form?

In the Dream House (2020) by Carmen Maria Machado

A memoir of Machado’s abusive relationship, this is not a standard haunted house book. But it plays with Gothic conventions in interesting ways: by representing the house where she lived with her partner as a haunted space, Machado makes clear that Gothic horror is not merely the stuff of fiction. Written in the second person and invoking many genres, including the Gothic, In the Dream House manages to be experimental, brilliant, and highly readable all at once. Trust me when I tell you it’s a page turner (although as an account of abuse, it may not be the right choice for all readers). One of the best books I’ve read in the last few years. 

The Little Stranger (2009) by Sarah Waters

Set in the English countryside in the 1940s, The Little Stranger is very much a traditional haunted house book — and an especially good one. Like Hill House, Waters keeps you guessing as to whether the supernatural events are actually happening, but even so this book is creeeeeeeeeepy. Somehow so scary. I truly could not sleep some nights while I was reading it. (That said, I have a relatively low threshold for being scared so…take what I say with a grain of salt.) Also, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but there’s some upsetting shit in this book. While Little Stranger and Jane Lawrence are both clearly indebted to Hill House, Little Stranger is easily the most disturbing of the three.

That’s all for this week! See you Tuesday with an explainer on the Gothic’s relationship to horror and the role of the supernatural. If you have thoughts on these recommendations or favorite haunted house stories of your own, I’d love to hear them in the comments 👻

Imagine the characters from Benighted doing the Time Warp.

Haunted house image by Freepik