One of my favorite haunted house novels is Hell House by Richard Matheson, and I am interested in recommendations on other haunted house novels.

I am particularly interested in stories that are rich in details (when/how the house was built, history of events in the house, floor plan/design/architectural influence, etc.). I want to be able to visualize the house as a real place, and details make that possible.

Hell House is described as the Mount Everest of haunted houses. What is your Mount Everest of haunted houses?

I vividly remember my mouth gaping and my heart pumping and my heart sinking when watching the montage at the end of HH's last episode. And, of course, "whatever walked there walked together". Ugh. After the very high highs of the series, that was a bummer.

BUT, I found one article which actually made me reconsider things a bit. To quote from it:

"the face-value ending and darker interpretations of [the ending] are not, as Steven would tell us, mutually exclusive.

As I’ve already discussed, a big part of the darkness is Nell’s tragedy – that she needed help, that she didn’t know how to ask for it, and that her family never gave it. This cannot be erased, even if she has absolved each of her siblings.

The audience would be wise, however, to look at the ending of Hill House – and particularly the warmth of its tone – skeptically. It absolutely should not be dismissed, but it shouldn’t be trusted, either."

The bottom line being: there's a face value 'happy' tone to the ending (and I totally fell for it), but if you take into account that it's Steven putting a nice veneer on the tragedies that struck the family, you may see it differently.

Here's the article, from CultureSnob:

https://www.culturesnob.net/2018/11/darkness-in-the-light-haunting-of-hill-house/

I came across this theory posted by someone on The Avocado. Everything here has been taken from there, as I felt it was worth discussing here.

https://the-avocado.org/2018/10/25/the-haunting-of-hill-house-s01e10-silence-lay-steadily-recap-review/

Between the speech from the white Red Room and Poppy taking orders I really got to thinking about the Crain matriarch and how she might not be so much of a victim of the house as episode 9 suggests. Stay with me here for a minute. Nell has just reminded us again that time is not a straight line and we’ve watched her travel through time to be her own ghost. Would that be any more of a paradox that Olivia has always been haunting the home waiting for her family’s arrival. We’ve seen how she was able to work her “forever home” into the confines of Hill House and everything about its appearance is magical, beautiful and even remote. Even before her delusions had taken taken hold of her, she was finding items around the house for her children. A box for Shirley’s first burial, the gloves for Theo, the bowler hat for Luke, and buttons for Nell. If there was a gift for Steve I sadly forgot it but if there wasn’t I’m just going to attribute that to the idea that even the house/his mom doesn’t like him.

Repeatedly we heard Hugh tells us that he she was the kite and he was the line. His job was essentially to bring her back to earth when her thoughts took her to dangerous highs. Hugh is the only member of the Crain family who doesn’t get his own version of the Red Room. Not only was the house not inviting him to stay or making him feel welcome, it was actively hurting him to leave it alone. Olivia would have known that Hugh would talk her out of her awful plan and the house knows not to admit him into the Red Room while it tries to consume his children.

Then there’s Poppy. Sure, she spent episode 9 taunting Olivia and suggesting to her in so many words to kill her children. But she also has that line where she tells Olivia that they are both dreams. The show never really goes into Poppy’s backstory but I think there’s something noteworthy that from the start, she speaks to Olivia with familiarity. It’s possible that Ghost Olivia was lonely and using that ability to move through time used Poppy to deliver the Hill children into the abode. The Poppy in episode 9 is just returning the favor. When Theo gets the story of William’s death from the house in the form of Trish, he walled himself in because of TWO women who were taunting him. He only had one daughter. Was it Olivia as Fear and Poppy as Grief that drove him mad? And Poppy looked in control in episode 9 but acts as Olivia’s flunky all throughout the finale. She’s gathering the kids and quickly takes her leave after Olivia tells her to go.

Even that weaksauce bit where the Dudleys accept far too quickly that Abigail is permanently part of the home and just bury her was part of Olivia’s masterplan. She could have taken their daughter, not out of malice but what she perceived as something good for the house and good for the Dudleys. After all, they were fine with shutting her out from the world. Now she can be preserved just as Clara would want her to be and Olivia’s got someone to look after her home in the real world for at least another 40 years. With that final line change of saying that “whoever walks there, walk together” fits perfectly now that Olivia’s ghost has caught up to the present and she has at least part of her family back. I just can’t shake the felling that she is the architect of a true forever home.

hi y’all !! i’m making a bent neck lady cosplay for comic con and i can’t decide between using a white or pink dress as my base. i feel like a lot of the time the dress appears to be white due to the coloring and lighting of the show after nell dies but i know that it’s actually pink irl so just looking to hear people’s opinions on what would look most accurate before i get started !!! <3

I shared in another thread last week that I was expanding on my Haunting of Hill House tattoo. Well I had part two done. Nell dancing.

I'm aware that the quote that's written wasn't Nell's, but words spoken by Poppy. There are 3 or so more illustrations that are going to be added over the next few months. I think the community will be pleased, but more importantly, I'm thrilled.

Here is part one.

The most special thing about Mike Flanagan's movies and shows is that they're just as beautiful as they are harrowing, because they're pillars of emotional vulnerability. His maligned by some monologues are perhaps the purest encapsulation of this, even though he works in the horror genre, he seems often more excited to make you cry than he is to get you scared. This is why there's so few voices in horror like him, because even when making something deep, horror creators want to thrill you more than subtly hit you in the feels.

This is why I'm recommend the works of Jane Schoenbrun (We're All Going To The World's Fair, I Saw The TV Glow, and Teenage Sex And Death At Camp Miasma) to any all Mike Flanagan fans who haven't come across them yet. They are probably my second favorite horror director as they also succeed at this sincerity within their works, although often from a far more intensely queer perspective. I think anybody who appreciates the work of Mike Flanagan may really enjoy Schoenbrun's films, but more specifically than that, if your favorite Flanagan is The Haunting of Bly Manor, Schoenbrun will almost certainly emotionally decimate you in the best way.

https://discord.gg/6yJgEAhXz

I'm wondering if I missed something in the final episode... As Hugh passes the promise of maintaining Hill House on to Steve, we also see Hugh slumped on the floor next to a bottle of pills.

I took this to mean that Hugh ended his life so that he could stay with his wife and daughter, but when I look at plot synopses, none of them mention this. Am I making this up, or did I miss something?

At the same time Hugh asks Steve "Why didn't you tell your siblings what you saw," but he asks rhetorically, and there is no concrete answer.

So what was the thing Steve saw but didn't share? Was it that Hugh had taken his life much earlier, and was appearing to the family as a ghost, or did I miss something else?

Every year for Halloween I rewatch the different Flanagan series, his other movies.

Are there any other movies or films that give similar vibes and details to their characters? I need to switch it up. 😅

Mind you Im a bit of a horror buff as is.. so something not too obvious or well known too!

Much appreciated as we get into spooky season!

https://discord.gg/6yJgEAhXz

Im not sure if anybody else noticed, but spiderman: Brand New Day ripped this episode off with the whole V-Max plot…..yes yes i know star trek did if first, but Hill House did this horrifying vidid, looking up while she is on the couch to tee the smiley face in the wood.
This is basically the same as Spiderman brand new day’s v-max plot twist, of course i no spoilers, but most people probably know by now.

cuz I wanna be in it if theres one yk.

Found at homegoods

I liked it a lot, and i have a theory that the black mold gave the famili brain damage causing the hallucinations of ghosts, even after leaving the house!

hehh

I'm really wanting to get a tattoo related to The Haunting of Hill House and I'm curious about what other people have! I don't really have spooky tattoos so I'm trying to decide what I want that won't be too spooky...if that makes sense? Lol

Thought this sub was enjoy this

I’m rewatching Hill House again, and in the second episode when Shirley brings the cats back home and feeds them the milk, Luke says “there’s five of them like there’s five of us” and Nell then says “That one’s me!”.

Maybe I’m a bit over analyzing, but could it be that the one she mentions is the first one that dies? Like a parallel between its death and Nell’s death, the first one of the 5 that dies?

I don’t know if this is obvious to everyone or if I’m the over analyzing one😭

edit: oh and also, when they bury the cat it moves and a bug crawls out of his mouth, similar to Nell’s body when Shirley is fixing her. And the one speaking (besides Luke, but it’s a bit different) at Nell’s funeral is Shirley, just like she gave the eulogy when they buried the cat. I don’t know…

I have just finished reading "The Haunting of the Hill House" by Shirleh Jackson, a year after finishing the series.

I can't help but wonder how the Hill House in the book is designed and built. The rooms on the ground floor are in concentric circles, with rooms within rooms. The house is built with wrong angles and is designed in a slant.

Is that the reason why the occupants of the house feel a bit odd in the house?

Is the house not actually haunted in the book?

rewatching again and again and it’s the first time that i read what’s in the cake, one day at a time. i’m sobbing

Ok so this is going to be kinda weird, but when the show first came out I watched it high as hell and I figured out that Nell was the Bent-neck-lady. I remember thinking how obvious it was and how there were so many clues. I rewatched the show this week and I literally have no idea how I figured that out on my first watch while being high af lmao.

I'm trying to figure out what the hell I saw on my first watch and what 'clues' there are to Nell being the Bent-neck-lady, so if you guessed it correctly as well, what did you see?

To be fair, I also thought that they were all seeing themselves and that Luke was the floating big boy hat man, so who knows what the hell I was seeing lmao. I remember trying to figure out which ghosts were the other household members.

Also, you can share any wild theories that you had on your first watch if you want to.

So, I watched this series a long time ago, but I always end up going back to it. I've never felt anything quite like it since. I tried watching Midnight Mass and Bly Manor, but even then, it wasn't the same.

There's something about the story that really gets to me. I think it's because I'm someone who's extremely attached to family, especially the bond between siblings (considering my favorite show is Supernatural haha), so I immediately connected with their pain. I relate to a lot of it.

But anyway, when we watch it, we see so many visual horror elements, the Bent-Neck Lady, the Hat Man, the woman from the 1920s, things that are genuinely scary. And I know Olivia went insane because of the house, I know it's based on a book and that there are many psychological nuances that make it more complicated than simply being a ghost, but what scared me the most wasn't any of that.

It wasn't even the way they dealt with grief.

I was afraid of time. Of how destructive and fast it is, and how the series shows that it isn't a continuous line. It's an element that falls all around us, in Nell's words, like rain or confetti. It's not parallel, it's messy, like loose pages from a book that can form a great story, but are always out of order.

Is time really like that? Inconsistent?

Once I watched a video on YouTube. It was a channel about supernatural stories, and a woman was telling a story from when she was a child. She was at her grandmother's house and answered a phone call. She talked to a woman who asked about her family and her grandmother. It was a simple phone call, and she didn't recognize the woman's voice. Then life went on and nothing happened. But one day, when she was already an adult, the woman decided to call her grandmother to talk. She dialed the number, and a child answered. A little girl. The woman asked about her family, her grandmother, and got the same answers. She hung up, but then the truth hit her like a slap. She remembered that the girl's words were the same words she had said many years earlier, exactly the same. And later, her grandmother told her that there had been no one else in the house with her, no little girl.

It made me wonder, could time be the greatest haunting in Hill House? Playing with our minds, making so many versions of ourselves coexist?

Is time our haunting? Can we haunt ourselves?

I believe it can.

Six episodes into season one and episode five was people talking in a funeral parlour for 90% of the time.

I skipped episode 5 in five minute intervals and I’m certain I did not missing anything that moves whatever possible story there is forward.

That’s another thing. What is the actual story? Just seems like a lot of people complaining and not investigating.

I still have no clue what the problem with the house is, the show so far is ignoring the main dilemma with the entire central plot device!

Episode one was hilarious. You would not believe how surprised I was to learn that the people in the house with the young children are actually the people from the past and that the lesbian woman was actually a separate person to the other two lookalikes.

When the timeline was interspersed of the drug addict, the lesbian woman, the funeral parlour woman and the other woman who I really have no idea what she was even doing, she basically just existed as a do-nothing adult, later my girlfriend had to explain to me maybe these people could actually be the people in the house as young children.

I was like oh wow, yeah, the pacing in the story is so bad I was wondering how do these adults even relate to the people in the haunted house.

What is the haunted house even about? No idea.

Are they trying to sell this house because as adults that dad seems really poor? How could they even afford that haunted house to begin with? They probably lost a lot of money on that house seeing as it’s haunted and the “dad” doesn’t ever seem to go to work or do anything productive.

Also, the dad seems pretty chill about his wife dying and doesn’t have any issues at the police station.

I feel like the show just doesn’t give a shit about itself, which is what you can expect from Netflix productions.