This is the classic haunted house theme: a small group of people wish to spend the night in a house alleged to be haunted for the purpose of paranormal investigation. Matheson did not invent this theme. It seems to have begun with Shirley Jackson's
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE
, published 12 years earlier.
One could say that Matheson's HELL HOUSE is a reinvention of Jackson's story, as if Matheson recognized the genius of the original but was frustrated that it didn't explore all its potential. HELL HOUSE, therefore, is far more graphic than Jackson's Hill House, describing intense sexual encounters with ghosts (including violent rape), possession, moving objects, mummies, defiled religious icons, trickery, strange noises, a vegetable soup of psychic phenomena, fog, bog, and all the other ghost story trappings.
What it shares with THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE is that four characters spend several nights in a very old haunted mansion to investigate it, some being psychic, while a couple of minor characters serve them by dropping off supplies but not staying around. From there, the stories go their separate ways. In keeping with Matheson's style, HELL HOUSE has one foot in a supernatural explanation and one foot in a quasi-scientific explanation for the phenomena. The narrative isn't as eloquent as Jackson's. Matheson has a strong command of language but he usually suppresses it, choosing to serve steak and potatoes instead of a gourmet casserole. But in so doing, he beats at the reader with scenes that chill, shock, disturb, and creep.
Each character enters the house with preconceptions about what to find there. The leader, Dr. Lionel Barrett, believes that the house is just a house and there are no such things as dead souls that can possess it. He believes, rather, that people emanate an electromagnetic energy of different strengths, and that this agent can "cling" to the guts of a house long after the people have left it. He has built a career studying these energies, and intends to use a machine of his invention to cleanse the so-called HELL HOUSE of this phenomena. His wife, Edith, accompanies him. She enters the house with an open mind, not believing, nor entirely disbelieving, any particular theory, but hoping to get in and get out without seeing anyone get hurt. For other investigative teams in the house had not come out unscathed. A psychic actress, Florence, joins the team to help Barrett explore the house telepathically. She is deeply Christian but also has a strong belief in ghosts and telepathy. She believes the house is haunted by Emeric Belasco, the man who built the place and who held private parties here in which the most outlandish and horrible activities took place, and she comes to believe that it is also haunted by Emeric's son Daniel, who is trapped and controlled by his father. Fischer is the fourth member of the team, said to be the most powerful medium on record, and the only person ever to have survived Hell House without ending up institutionalized. He does not know what is going on, but he looks at the house itself as pure evil, and extremely dangerous. He is back not to take revenge on the house, but to find closure, and yet fear keeps him from using his powers to help the team until it's almost too late.
One of my favorite scenes is when the ghost of Belasco shows up to greet Florence for the first time. She is not afraid of him, perfectly aware of him as he enters her room like an "invisible man." To make himself "seen" he flings the sheet off the bed so that it drapes over him tightly. Florence can then see him turn his head and seem to look at her. Very creepy. The ghost later shows up on her bed with the sheet over him so tightly that she could see his male nakedness, in order to arouse her. It gets worse from there, and her fear of him grows.
The sittings are positively eerie, especially when tentacles of plasma slowly issue from the psychic's nostrils while under a spell, and explore through the room, shaping into faces or obeying commands.
Dr. Barrett has a machine that he believes will drain the house of energies, and throughout much of the novel he is either waiting for it to arrive or getting it ready for use. My only complaint with this novel is that I found myself frustrated every time the characters returned to their rooms to rest. They seemed to rest a lot, and for no apparent reason. They would occasionally meet and grab a bite to eat, argue about what's going on, then return to their rooms to rest some more. I suppose there was nothing else to do. They were there to experience the house, after all. But it got old.
Dr. Barrett spent so much time talking about starting the machine that I couldn't understand why they were taking so long. I kept thinking, "well, fire it up already! What are you waiting for?" While they delay, the evil of the house slowly takes its toll on each of them, attempting to claim their lives.
The novel is two parts horror and one part mystery. The mystery is: what is behind the evil in this house? In the end it became a struggle for answers as much as a struggle against the hauntings. Each character develops his or her own theory about what is behind Hell House, and ultimately, each character is proven incorrect. Nobody arrives at the absolute truth until the last few pages, and that does keep the reader turning.
The novel was very weakly adapted into a 1973 movie called
THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE
, starring Pamela Franklin (Florence), Roddy McDowall (Fischer), Clive Revill (Barrett) and Gayle Hunnicutt (Ann Barrett, renamed from Edith in the novel). Matheson himself wrote the screenplay but, due to the extraordinary limitations of the rating system at the time, they couldn't explore a fraction of the violence or graphic nature of the novel.
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Reviews with images
Great haunted house story.
I really enjoyed this book, it was very detailed and fun to read. Definitely had its creepy moments.
Top reviews from other countries
Steve Yardley
Wow, not for the faint of Heart.
Reviewed in Canada on October 29, 2023
