#BlockbusterStory The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is a gothic horror novel first published in 1959. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award with Stephen King listing The Haunting of Hill House as one of the finest horror novels of the late 20th century. Jackson was inspired to write a ghost story after reading about a group of nineteenth century psychic researchers who had studied a house for the Society of Psychic Research.

Official Synopsis:
Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House has been hailed as a perfect work of unnerving terror. It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a “haunting”; Theodora, his lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House.

At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

The story has been adapted to film in 1963 and then again in 1999, on October 12, 2018, Netflix adapted the book as a reimagining and follows siblings who, as children, grew up in what would go on to become the most famous haunted house in the country. The cast includes Timothy Hutton, Carla Gugino and Henry Thomas. The series was created by Mike Flanagan.

Official Author Biography:
Shirley Jackson was born in San Francisco in 1916. She first received wide critical acclaim for her short story “The Lottery,” which was published in 1948. Her novels–which include The Sundial, The Bird’s Nest, Hangsaman, The Road through the Wall, We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Haunting of Hill House–are characterized by her use of realistic settings for tales that often involve elements of horror and the occult. Raising Demons and Life Among the Savages are her two works of nonfiction.

Come Along With Me is a collection of stories, lectures, and part of the novel she was working on when she died in 1965. All are currently in print (Penguin). Two posthumous volumes of her short fiction are Just An Ordinary Day (Bantam) and Let Me Tell You (Random House). A graphic novel adaptation of “The Lottery” by Miles Hyman, her grandson, was published in 2016 (Farrar-Straus-Giroux). Also in 2016: Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson (Penguin Classics) and an authorized biography by Ruth Franklin: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life (Norton).