Shirley Jackson started writing this spooky tale years ago when he wanted to write something down about the horrors of isolation. The quiet atmosphere of an empty mansion begins the story and four people on the quest for different things enter it. Among those four people, there is one who has received the house as a gift from his ancestors.
People of the village living nearby the mansion are dead sure that the house is haunted but the new heir doesn’t want to believe anything without proper facts. Thus he has brought Dr. Montague with him who possesses a craze for haunted houses. The other two are a couple who is assisting them and are more interested in their private romance rather than the haunted situation around them.
At first, the Hill House does not show its true colors to them in the starting scenes. They try to explore more and more of its inner compartments but get nothing. Then out of nowhere the demon lying within awakes and narrator Bernadette Dunne speeds up the pace at once. One of the four members is going down in the end, but it is not clear who had the house chosen. Fans of We Have Always Lived in the Castle and The Lottery, and Other Stories would be delighted to have this story in their book collection.
It is rich in awe-inspiring scenes and it tells the true meaning of the word “haunted” to the fans. Not a lot of killing and bloodshed but the portrayal of those few blood-sucking scenarios was sufficient to scare everyone at any time of the day.
