Shirley Jackson’s THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE takes off
Shirley Jackson published her Gothic horror novel THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE in 1959. The novel was a finalist for the National Book of the Year Award that year, and has since been made into two feature films.
In October 2018, a ten-part series adaptation hit Netflix and has been called the platform’s first great horror series.
THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE has been published broadly around the world and is now available in twenty-two territories, nine of which have been sold since 2017.
On her process of writing the supernatural in this novel, Jackson commented: ‘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.’
The opening paragraph of the novel features – chillingly – towards the end of the Netflix series:
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 neatly, 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.