Jackson made an unsettling discovery while researching haunted houses.īefore she began writing The Haunting of Hill House, Jackson scoured magazines and newspapers for photos of houses that seemed haunted.
In “Experience and Fiction,” she wrote that she used the strange note to motivate her, explaining, “I decided that I had better write the book awake, which I got to work and did.” 3. Jackson, who loved ghost stories but did not believe in ghosts, brushed the strange discovery off as sleepwalking. Shirley Jackson had a terrifying sleepwalking experience while writing The Haunting of Hill House.Įarly on in the writing process, Jackson awoke one morning to find something terrifying atop her writing desk: A note, with the words “DEAD DEAD” scrawled upon it, written in her own handwriting. “And yet the story that kept coming through their dry reports was not at all the story of a haunted house, it was the story of several earnest, I believe misguided, certainly determined people, with their differing motivations and backgrounds.” 2. “They thought they were being terribly scientific and proving all kinds of things,” she explained. In her essay “Experience and Fiction,” Jackson explained that she was most intrigued by the way the researchers revealed their own personalities and backgrounds throughout the study. The researchers studiously recorded their experiences in the house in order to present them in the form of a treatise to the Society for Psychic Research. Jackson was inspired to write the novel after reading about a group of 19th century “psychic researchers” who rented a house they believed to be haunted in order to study paranormal phenomena. The Haunting of Hill House was inspired by real-life paranormal investigators. Here are 11 facts about The Haunting of Hill House you should know.
Since then, the novel has been made into a play, into a widely panned 1999 movie, and a Netflix series. In its review, The New York Times called the story “caviar for connoisseurs of the cryptic” and described Jackson as “the finest master currently practicing in the genre of the cryptic, haunted tale.” It also caught the attention of Hollywood, and within four years MGM released a film adaptation, directed by Robert Wise. Upon its release, the novel sold briskly, earning Jackson a National Book Award nomination and high praise from critics. Things rapidly devolve and the characters-in particular, the novel’s lonely protagonist, Eleanor-realize, too late, that they’re in over their heads.
Released in 1959, the gothic novel follows four strangers who converge on a purportedly haunted house to “scientifically” seek out evidence of the paranormal. Can a house be born bad? That’s the question Shirley Jackson asks in her classic novel, The Haunting of Hill House.
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