"It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope."
I frequently read lists of the scariest horror novels ever written and there's a trend where The Haunting of Hill House is #1 on almost all of them, so naturally, I had to read it and see for myself if it deserves to be there. I remember reading The Lottery in a middle school English class and I never forgot it, so I was excited to read this book. I've watched the Netflix series and I liked it (one of my favorite r/nosleep writers wrote for the show), so even if I hadn't heard that the book was one of the scariest novels ever written, I would have watched the show. Spoiler alert: It differs greatly from the book.
The Haunting of Hill House is about a group of five people (and later on, seven), most of them strangers, who agree to spend their summer at Hill House, an estate plagued by sinister rumors. Dr. Montague carefully selected a small group of people to investigate the house with him. Of the dozen people he invited, only two actually arrived: Eleanor, a somewhat miserable 32 year old who, for three days when she was a child, had a "shower of stones" rain down on her house, without explanation, and Theodora, a seemingly happy-go-lucky young woman invited because of her ability to identify cards without even seeing them. In addition to the two women, a representative of the family who owned the house (Luke) would also be staying there.
Eleanor arrives at Hill House first and meets the Dudleys, the house's caretakers who explain that they don't stay there after dark. Well, that's not a good sign. Eleanor is immediately frightened of the house and only calms down once Theodora arrives. The two of them develop an instant (superficial) bond. When they meet Luke and Dr. Montague, everyone questions the doctor about why they are there, to which he hesitantly replies by asking them if they will leave if they don't like what they hear. He goes on to inform them that the last person who tried to leave Hill House at night was killed before getting out of the driveway. At least now we know why the Dudleys run out of there before the sun sets.
I'm not afraid of ghost stories, but reading this book in bed, at night, unsettled me. I'm not sure if it would have if I didn't have recurring nightmares about inexplicable, horrifying things happening in my bedroom like the room itself were possessed, but reading about the events in this house definitely got to me for a bit. Unfortunately, that all changed once Mrs. Montague and Arthur arrived. They were both so pushy and rude that I was no longer anxious while reading, I was just annoyed.The rest of the book didn't make me feel uneasy at all after that.
So the question is, does this deserve to be at the top of every scariest novels ever written list? I don't think so. There are moments where it's genuinely unsettling, but the characters sort of take you out of that. Eleanor is so incredibly irritating throughout the entire book that I just couldn't get behind her as a main character and then the other two showed up and it was all I could take. I think The Haunting of Hill House probably was really scary when it was first released, but that was way before the internet existed, so I don't really understand how it earned the top spot on so many of those lists. I think I probably would have enjoyed it more had those claims not been made. It's definitely not my favorite, but if you're looking for a novel about a sinister house, here's one for you.
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