What we’re about
For those of us who haven’t read the classics of Western (or Eastern) civilization, this is an opportunity to catch up.
Also for those of us who know who reading as an adult is very different from reading as a teen, this is an opportunity to reread and reflect.
Upcoming events (1)
See all- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley JacksonLink visible for attendees
WE START AT 9:00 PM EST SHARP, 6:00 PDT. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
The Haunting of Hill House is a 1959 gothic horror novel by American author Shirley Jackson. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and has been made into two feature films (The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise, and its remake), a play, and is the basis of a Netflix series.
The author decided to write "a ghost story" after reading about a group of nineteenth century "psychic researchers" who studied a house and somberly reported their supposedly scientific findings to the Society for Psychic Research.
What Jackson discovered in their "dry reports was not the story of a haunted house, it was the story of several earnest, I believe misguided, certainly determined people, with their differing motivations and background." Excited by the prospect of creating her own haunted house and the characters to explore it, she launched into research.
She later claimed to have found a picture in a magazine of a California house she believed was suitably haunted-looking. She asked her mother, who lived in California, to help find information about the dwelling. According to Jackson, her mother identified the architect as the author's own great-great-grandfather, who had designed some of San Francisco's oldest buildings.
Jackson also read volume upon volume of traditional ghost stories while preparing to write her own, "No one can get into a novel about a haunted house without hitting the subject of reality head-on; either I have to believe in ghosts, which I do, or I have to write another kind of novel altogether."
– Paula Gura
