"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met nearly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."
A short novel written by Shirley Jackson and published in 1957. It's the story of four people who go to a notorious haunted house to attempt to prove the existence of ghosts. In the process, they (in particular, the very nervous Eleanor) are preyed upon by something that wants to terrorize and destroy them. Is it a ghost? Is it the house? Or is it just Eleanor's over-active imagination? No one knows for sure...
Jackson's book succeeds because of the skillful subtlety that pervades the story. We never see any ghosts. We hear them -- or something that might be ghostly. There are never any gruesome shocks -- no grand guignol moments. Jackson's writing is beautifully economical and clever -- the opening paragraph of the novel is famous for establishing the house's rigid, concrete solidity as well as the madness and danger it hides inside those well-built walls.
The whole novel is incredibly creepy, and that eerie creepiness sticks with you for years, usually rearing its head before bedtime on cold, windy nights...
It's been made into movies twice -- once in the brilliant and understated "The Haunting" in 1963 and again in the ham-fisted and moronic "The Haunting" in 1999. It was also the loose basis for a limited TV series on Netflix created and directed by Mike Flanagan in 2018.