The Haunting of Hill House

I just finished re-reading The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Afterward, I looked up the discussion of the book by reviewers on Goodreads and noticed that there were many readers who thought the book "didn't have anything happen."

It's true that it's hard to follow all the ghostly activity in the novel, mainly because of Jackson's idiosyncratic writing style. She tends to hide information in long paragraphs with few breaks. If you're the type who skims long paragraphs looking for "the action" (guilty as charged here, sometimes), you'll miss a lot of story. Which is what happened to me the first two times I read it. The third time, I made sure to read everything closely, and I saw a totally different story. For those who are interested in keeping count, I've made a list of all the apparitions/paranormal activity that are named in Hill House. Note: Some of these list entries may not be exactly in the order they appear in the book; this has been written from memory.

Ghostly manifestations in Hill House:

1. Theo and Eleanor go for a walk on the grounds and find the small stream that runs through the estate. They see grass moving in a field across the stream as if an invisible person were walking through it. It frightens them, but they tell each other it's just a rabbit.

2. The banging on the doors at night and attempts to get into the little purple parlor where the group camps out, and later, the same thing happening to the bedroom shared by Theo and Eleanor.

3. The doors never stay open, no matter how many times the group closes them. They think it may be Mrs. Dudley who's closing them, but that doesn't explain how it happens at night, when Mrs. Dudley has left the estate.

4. The "dog" that runs through the house and draws Luke and Dr Montague outside, away from Theo and Eleanor.

5. The "cold spot" in the hall outside the nursery.

6. The writing in chalk on the hallway wall that reads HELP ELEANOR COME HOME

7. The same words are written above Theo's bed in blood and blood is smeared all over her clothes.

8. Eleanor hears whispering and frightened cries from a child at night, and holds someone's hand tightly, thinking its Theo's, but then realizes that Theo is fast asleep and is not the person squeezing her hand.

9. Theo and Eleanor are walking on the grounds at near-dark when they encounter a secret garden where a family of ghosts are having a picnic in broad daylight.

10. Mrs. Montague's "automatic writing" session reveals the ghost of a child who wants Eleanor to stay and be her mother.

11. Eleanor walks through the grounds on her way to meet Luke and Theo for a picnic and sees invisible foot prints walk across the little stream.

12. "Something" draws Eleanor almost to her death in the library tower.

13. Eleanor rams her car into the same tree that killed Hugh Crain's first wife, and kills herself, while wondering what was making her do it.

It's interesting that the manifestations number a superstitious 13, if I've captured them accurately.

So you can see, quite a lot happens; readers just have to pay attention.

Another new thing I noticed from my third reading of the book was that, upon accessing Shirley Jackson's bio at Wikipedia, I'm pretty certain that Hill House is based on The Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. I'd always assumed it was based on a house in New England, which is where Jackson spent most of her life, and where she wrote all of her works.

However, her bio notes that she lived in Burlingame, California for the first 13 years of her life; only then did her family move across the country to New England. Burlingame is only about 30 miles from the Winchester House, and I'm fairly certain that Jackson toured it at some point in her childhood -- maybe on a school field trip? It's been open for tours for decades.

Re-reading the book, I noticed descriptions that can only be of things that Jackson saw at the Winchester House: excessive doors in some rooms; rooms that can't be accessed without going through other rooms; a tall tower with a conical roof (the Winchester manse has several of these); walls and windows set at off-kilter angles. Jackson also has Dr. Montague speak of the Winchester House in one passage.

There's an IMDb entry for a new limited miniseries based on the book; I'm eager to see what the producers will do with it. I liked the 1963 classic black-and-white film that was based on the book, The Haunting, but hated the 1999 remake of the same name. Neither one really capture the essence of the novel, though, IMHO.