Amityville Horror for the faint-hearted

Shirley Jackson's Haunted Hill House is a very mild horror story by nowadays standards. Of course, there are some slamming doors and now and then a 'terrifying knocking' on doors after midnight etc., but in essence, this is the extent of the spooky events. Regardless of that, the story is interesting, not so much because of the haunted house, but because it is an excellent psychological study of a lonesome young woman, who did not find her place in life.

Eleanor Vance spent her youth nursing her dying mother. She deeply regrets the emptiness and the waste of her youth. She does not have any friends, she never had a job, she does not even have her own place, but she lives at her married sister's house in the small nursery.
When Dr. Montague invites her to stay with a small group of psychic people in the Hill House to study the paranormal phenomena, she is incredible thrilled. Even the most dreadful horrors seem to be more attractive than her current life.

Hill house, as horrible and ugly as it appears to the rest of the group, exerts it magic and attraction on Eleanor. She thinks to have found the one place, where she really belongs and this starts to separate her from the others and disaster seems to be inevitable.

It is a nice little story, well written, with a little bit of patina perhaps, but still worth reading and quite entertaining.

1 Person fand das hilfreich

Mittlerweile auch auf Deutsch erhältlich...

... aber dennoch ist die englische Originalfassung eine klare Empfehlung. Vor allem die Fans des Robert Wise-Klassikers aus den 1960ern "Bis das Blut gefriert" kommen hier auf ihre Kosten. Unheimliche Atmosphäre und vor allem die inneren Monologe des Hauptcharakters lassen einem wohlige Schauer über den Rücken laufen.

Hill House, not sane...

I've always been a big fan of The Haunting of Hill House as well as it's adaptations. This reading did not disappoint and was a thrill to listen to. As for the book, it is know as the greatest haunted house story ever written for a reason. I won't go into details because I think you should hear or read it for yourself.

Don't like it

I personally sadly don't like the reader. At all. The voices sound so similar that it's hard to follow and it's all in that horrible cracked voice that's constantly raspy and scared-sounding. I hate it. Sorry. Money wasted. I'll try to finish it but I can't honestly say I'm enjoying this audiobook. I'm sure the reader is a great speaker, just not my thing. I'm sure I'd enjoy the book a plenty more of I'd just read it for myself.