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I've been reading one classic book a month this year. This was my pick for September, has anyone else here read it? I've already looked at the first few pages and the first paragraph alone gave me chills.

I love the way the characters have been introduced and how it made the house itself the first before moving on to the list of people who will be its victims.

I love Eleanor already, this book is already really tense for me because I find her so relateable and while I've kept away from spoilers, I know this book wouldn't be as famously groundbreaking in the horror genre as it is if things were going to end well.


I've read House of Leaves too of course, but can anyone else recommend a good classic haunted house story? I'm really developing a liking for slow burn psychological horror.

Lol. Enjoy your reading, but this is where threads go to die.

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill is my favorite classic haunted house story :) Stephen King's The Shining might also fall into this category (haunted hotel).

Remembered that I've had Hill House downloaded on my Kindle a long time already so I've started reading it too. I generally avoid horror these days but it's been on my radar a long time, and we're close enough to October.

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

The opening paragraph is indeed somewhat famous, even Stephen King has praised it, and it's easy to see the ways it influenced The Shining. (Apparently part of the opening is directly used in the Dark Tower books as well.)

Seems like a good book though, probably will add it to my list

Did you finish it? How'd you like it?

I want to write a review so I can do something that looks like productive content here, but I need to think of how to do it without spoiling it all.

Really was one of the best books I read this year though.

I burned through it that weekend I started it actually, and I've recommended it to a couple of people since then. I'm not always a fan of horror but Shirley Jackson really knew what she was doing with this one. I thought the same thing you did, Eleanor was very likeable and the book really puts you inside her head right away, but damn it gets unnerving in there when the house really gets its hooks in her. Some excellent character writing all around though.

I may have had "journeys end in lovers meetings" popping up at random times in my head in the days afterwards. Which is a Shakespeare reference it turns out. And another quote I looked up was an old nursery rhyme.


I'm starting Crime and Punishment now, which unfortunately is not going to be a "lock in for two and a half days" kind of book.

Wildblue: lurks for ten years

Finally makes a thread

Thread: dies

:(

I've read it.

It's a really weird bit of horror, isn't it? The haunting is far from the conventional tropes and manifestations you see in media. What sticks in my mind today is the fact that though it has an unhappy history, it always seemed to me that it's the *house* which is ill, and not any ghostly residents.

Have you seen the show adaptation? It's alright, but it makes the whole thing a lot more traditional in terms of the haunting. And the last line of the show is so stupid, genuinely so unbelievably trite and contrived, it soured the whole thing for me. But never mind...

I really liked Eleanor too! She's a very strange character. It doesn't help that everyone in that book is constantly lying or making jokes, including Eleanor.

Have you finished it by now?

House of Leaves is great. I'm afraid my experience with this genre is somewhat limited, though. Annihilation is a great horror book and has some of the elements you'd be looking for, but it isn't house related at all. It's sequel, Authority, is much more slow burn and deeply strange (if a little boring at times).

Never seen the show, but the actual last line of the book I think proves what you said about there being no ghosts. Even after all the events at the house and the expectations from the ending, whatever is there still "walks alone" the same as it did in the beginning.

Good catch. Yeah, it's part of what I love so much about that book. It's so much weirder and creepier than 'just' ghosts.

SPOILERS FOR THE SHOW (If you have any interest in watching it; like I said, it's not bad just the last line really blows)

So the final note the show ends on is basically that their dead loved one (a ghost in Hill House now) is okay and fine, because time is falling all around us and its not so bad being a ghost and whatever... And the final line of the show is a repetition of the opening line of the book, But it has one word changed. It goes: "And whatever walked there, walked *together*." Terrible. Oh so terrible. Groan. Agony. The way the guy delivers it, too. The phony sentiment of it all. Ruined the whole thing.