10/10/2019 The 10 Scariest Haunted House Books Ever Written

10 of the Scariest Haunted House Books Ever

by Jeff Somers / October 16, 2018 at 2:00 pm Share

There’s something primal about a haunted house story—stories in which a structure

that’s supposed to shelter you turns against you. It’s a trope that we keep returning
to—this week, Netflix launched a new series based on the classic Shirley Jackson
novel The Haunting of Hill House, and the results are truly terrifying (if at a bit of a
remove from the book).

Our binge-watch over, we got to thinking: what are the best, most frightening
haunted house novels ever written? Here’s our top 10.

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

Let’s start with the obvious choice. Jackson didn’t
invent the haunted house story, but she perfected it,
coupling the tropes of a home infested with a
malevolent spirit and a group of curious minds there
to investigate the supernatural with a narrator who
becomes increasingly unreliable as the horror spirals
higher. At first, Jackson uses Eleanor, our gateway
into the story, as a comforting figure—we see
ourselves in her, we relate to her trauma and her
The Haunting of Hill challenges. Once the first clues hit that Eleanor may
House be a few sandwiches short of a picnic, we move

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10/10/2019 The 10 Scariest Haunted House Books Ever Written

Paperback $13.36 | $16.00 through stages of denial, shock, and anxiety as

Jackson takes the horror from a simmer to a boil. It’s
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possibly the best haunted house story ever written,
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and as such, we encourage all the adaptations
Hollywood wants to make.

Kill Creek, by Scott Thomas

Thomas sets out a familiar premise—four prominent
horror writers are invited to spend Halloween at the
infamous Finch House, notorious for being haunted
by the memory of the terrible things that happened
within its walls. All four reluctantly agree, needing the
publicity. Their stay at the house is bad enough, but
Thomas expands the reach of the haunted house tale
when the entity that’s slumbering in the Finch House
—which was awakened by the guests—follows them
Kill Creek
after they leave, exploiting their secrets and interior
Paperback $14.82 | $15.99
scars, mental or emotional, in order to torture and
Add to Bag destroy them long after. The safety valve for haunted
house stories is the idea that the scares will cease if
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you can just manage to leave. Thomas takes away
that possibility, leaving you absolutely terrified.

The Shining, by Stephen King

Sure, it’s not a house but an entire hotel. Still, King’s
classic remains one of the scariest books to follow
the basic template of an innocent family consumed
by intelligent, possessed edifice. The Overlook Hotel
is so alive, and finds a willing recruit in alcoholic,
repressed domestic abuser John Torrance, who
becomes its sharpened blade. But it’s the isolation
the Torrance family experiences while acting as
caretakers for the hotel over the long, dark winter that
The Shining truly gives this story an air inevitable violence.
Ultimately a story about a man who loses his fight
Paperback $11.76 | $17.95
with his own demons, the core of its horror is in how
Add to Bag something familiar and reliable—like your spouse, or
See All Formats & Editions › the roof over your head—can be turn unrecognizable

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10/10/2019 The 10 Scariest Haunted House Books Ever Written

so gradually, you don’t notice until you’re being

chased by a killer wielding a roque mallet.

House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski

There is no other book like House of Leaves, full
stop. Beginning with a premise that is subtly creepy—
a chronicle of house just slightly larger on the inside
than the outside—Danielewski manages to replicate
the feeling of going insane, playing with every aspect
of the form of the novel readers have been trained to
rely on, from the narration, to the existence of original
sources in the footnotes, to the typography and page
House of Leaves layout. Taken together, these changes to the
Paperback $18.61 | $22.00 fundamental object that is the novel causes you to
doubt your own perception of the story, drawing you
Add to Bag
into the sinking sense of doom and paranoia at the
See All Formats & Editions › heart of the tale, making it your doom
and yourparanoia. As you find yourself counting
letters in a sentence or turning pages upside-down to see what might be revealed,
you might experience a moment of clarity, and realize how crazy you’d seem to an
objective observer. And then you realize the house is a book, and what are books if
not larger on the inside?

Medusa’s Web, by Tim Powers

When their aunt dies, orphans Scott and Madeline
return to Caveat, the rotting house they were raised
in. Their cousins Ariel and Claimayne still live in the
old Hollywood Hills mansion, and still guard the
family’s secret—that they are part of a network of old
Los Angeles families that use magical, rune-like
drawings known as Spiders to travel freely between
1920s Hollywood and the present day, switching
bodies with people in the earlier era. Part sci-fi, part
Medusa's Web: A the photo at the end of Kubrick’s The Shining, the
Novel story explores addiction in ways no one else has ever
Paperback $14.39 | $15.99 tried, revving up a horrifying tale of seduction as
Madeline slowly falls under the spell of Caveat and
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the strange, intense pleasures that the Spiders offer,

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10/10/2019 The 10 Scariest Haunted House Books Ever Written
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even as Scott becomes increasingly desperate to get
them away.

Hell House, by Richard Matheson

Scarier than the author’s more famous I Am Legend,
this classic novel is as potent today as when it was
published. A wealthy man is facing death, and hires a
small team to investigate whether there really is an
afterlife. They move into a notorious haunted house
in Maine—known officially as the Belasco House, but
as Hell House to the townsfolk—in order to explore
the question. The house, or the entity within, begins
to use the characters’ own weaknesses against them,
Hell House picking away at their sense of control and their grip

Paperback $16.19 | $17.99

on reality. All the while, Matheson is doing the same
to the reader—playing with our sense of what’s really
Add to Bag
happening—until, by the end, our feelings of unease
See All Formats & Editions › exploded into pure terror at the climax. It’s a visceral
exploration of the idea that we bring our demons with
us wherever we go.

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters

Set in a crumbling estate in Warwickshire after World
War II, this novel combines Gothic classic ingredients
—a once-great house gone to seed, a family in dire
straits, inexplicable illnesses, haunting spirits,
encroaching madness—into a modern, meaty,
character-driven story. A dwindling family, the Ayres,
struggles to survive in the dilapidated, crumbling
family estate known as Hundreds Hall as the world
outside, transformed by war and technology,

The Little Stranger becomes less and less familiar. Waters’ decision to
tell the story from the point of view of a brilliant doctor
Paperback $16.23 | $17.00
from humble roots, who has fond memories of
Add to Bag Hundreds Hall from his childhood, is a smart one, as
See All Formats & Editions › his determination to explain everything with science
and logic amounts to a literary version of the “this is
fine” Internet meme.

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10/10/2019 The 10 Scariest Haunted House Books Ever Written

The House Next Door, by Anne Rivers Siddons

Siddons spins a fairly classic haunted house story,
making one essential deviation: the protagonists
don’t actually live in the haunted house at all. The
Kennedys are a happy, prosperous couple who are
dismayed to discover that a new home is being built
on the lot next to theirs. The finished house turns out
to be gorgeous, the work of a genius architect, but
everyone who lives there meets a tragic end of one
kind or another—even those who merely step inside
The House Next Door suffer terribly. Siddons takes a slow-boil approach to
terror, incrementally moving her characters towards a
Paperback $16.99
devastating ending that will leave you with sweaty
Add to Bag hands and jumping at shadows.
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Slade House, by David
Mitchell
Mitchell has been
quietly building a
complex and
compelling shared
universe, tying his
novels into one
another in subtle
ways. Slade
Slade House House explicitly exists
in the same universe
Paperback $15.30 | $17.00
as The Bone Clocks, so
Add to Bag it’s helpful if you’ve
See All Formats & Editions › read that one, though
not necessary. It’s also
less complicated in structure than some of his other work, but as a result is more
viscerally scary. The titular house appears every nine years around the corner from
a pub, presenting itself to a misfit, an outcast—someone who does not fit in with the
rest of the world. The owners of the house, the Grayer Twins, welcome this person
into their home and make them quite welcome. No sooner will the chosen person
decide to leave than they’ll discover they are trapped—and that the twins have a

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10/10/2019 The 10 Scariest Haunted House Books Ever Written

nefarious purposes for luring the strangers in. It’s not technically not a ghost story,
true, but it’s still a supernaturally scary read.

The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James

James’ iconic novel still sparks conversation today—
no one is entirely certain whether this is a dark,
brooding ghost story, or a dark brooding
contemplation of insanity, or maybe a little of both.
Taken at face value, it’s the story of a young woman
who is hired to care for two young children. She
comes to care deeply for them, and is disturbed when
she begins seeing two mysterious people on the
grounds of their home, and more so after she
discovers some unsavory facts about the woman who
The Turn of the Screw
held the position before her. The sense of uncertainty
Paperback $3.00 the book inspires is purposeful, and part of the
Add to Bag dreadful fun—whether you believe it’s a ghost story
or a story about a young woman whose mental
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instability causes the death of a child, you’re still filled
with dread at every turn of the page.

What’s your favorite haunted house novel?

Tags: hell house, mark z. danielewski, netflix, richard matheson, Scarebnb, shirley jackson, the haunting of hill
house, the house of blue leaves

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