There's a glorious moment which comes about 45 pages into the most recent reprint of Richard Matheson's HELL HOUSE (Tor, original copyright 1971). One of the four investigators who've stupidly agreed to try and "clean out" the titular stately ghost-filled manor--aka "the Mount Everest of haunted houses"--picks up a neatly typed list of psychic phenomena that've been observed on-site over the years, only to find it goes a li'l something like this:


Apparitions; Apports; Asports; Automatic drawing; Automatic painting; Automatic speaking; Automatic writing; Autoscopy: Bilocation...Dream prophecies; Etcoplasm; Eidolons; Electric phenomena; Elongation; Emanations...Ghosts; Glossolalia; Hyperamnesia; Hyperesthesia; Ideomorphs; Ideoplasm; Impersonation...Obsession; Paraffin molds; Parakinesis; Paramnesia; Percussion; Phantasmata; Poltergeist phenomena; Possession...Somnambulism; Stigmata; Telekinesis; Teleplasm; Telescopic vision; Telesthesia; Transcendental music; Transfiguration; Transportation; Typtology; Voices; Water sprinkling; Xenoglossy.

Edith put the list down numbly. My God, she thought. What kind of week is it going to be?


Though received wisdom universally cites Shirley Jackson's THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (1959) as the classic template for all subsequent misguided Bad Place exploration narratives, I think an argument can be made--obviously, since I'm the one making it--for the far less-well-known HELL HOUSE having actually had a much greater impact on the evolution of that particular late 20th century horror trope...and that the main reason its sphere of influence is so much wider is because a HELL HOUSE-style story is simply easier to spin, probably because the less understated something is, the more people are guaranteed to "get it".

By the way: This isn't meant, on any level, to imply that I like HILL HOUSE better than HELL HOUSE, or vice versa. Simply that they are the two extremes, the poles whose positions dictate the entire rest of the spectrum.

In both narratives, four disparate characters enter a haunted mansion and get their collective ass whupped, but the difference between Jackson and Matheson is strangely similar to the difference between Robert Wise's screen adaptation of THE HAUNTING and Jan de Bont's--HELL HOUSE as HILL HOUSE squared. Matheson's spectral tour of duty is rude, raw, physical--if not quite the porno version (that'd be Edward Lee's FLESH GOTHIC), then definitely a revisioning done by someone who's decided from the get-go that there's absolutely no point trying to out-subtle Shirley Jackson.

The spooky stuff inside of Hill House, as the old saw goes, "walks alone"; like radiation, it may not even know you're there, though it's definitely capable of killing you (or tricking you into killing yourself). The spooky stuff inside of Hell House, by comparison, knows damn well where you are, and wants to do something about it; it'll knock you down and fuck you hard, often quite literally.

Jackson's team is made up of an enthusiastic but vaguely clueless academic, two maybe-psychics (one treats her gift as a parlor trick, while the other may simply be delusional) and Hill House's owner's ne'er-do-well nephew. But the Hell House team are professionals there to do a job, and act like it: The aforementioned Edith, for example, is assistant (and wife) to Dr Lionel Barrett, a physicist who regards Hell House as his last chance to prove that the human soul is nothing but a bunch of free-floating magnetic energy. Also along for the ride are two people with an extremely different area of expertise--medium Florence Tanner, a former actress turned devout Spiritualist, and ex-medium/misanthropic recluse Benjamin Franklin Fischer, sole survivor of the last group to take Hell House on.

Florence thinks love can cure all, just like Barrett thinks science can cure everything. Fischer knows they're both wrong, but spends most of his time trying not to care, while simultaneously protecting himself against a place he knows--from sad experience--is little more than a death-trap with nice wallpaper and a bitchin' supply of turn-of-the-century pornography. And Edith, the reader's stand-in, is caught smack in the middle when Hell House really starts to bring the creep...the creep, the grue, the sex.

Ah yes, the sex. Like its ultra-gothic back-story (skip to page 54), the action in Hell House is driven by its maker and absent yet ever-watchful host, Emeric Belasco--and what Belasco likes most (in death, as in life) is to break people down to their own basest instincts, then let them wallow around in the resultant filth 'til they just can't take it anymore. See page 242, where Florence--having tried to "save" a ghost by inviting it into her body--suffers a string of hallucinations rude enough to give any of Jackson's characters the screaming mimis:


Daniel [the ghost] was behind her. She could feel his hardened organ sliding deep into her rectum. His hands were clutched around her breasts, kneading them. Florence leaned back as Edith slipped into the bathroom, falling to her knees in front of Florence, darting her extended tongue to Florence's vagina. Florence's tongue lolled out. She bucked against Daniel eagerly. This was what she wanted, what she was.

She twitched as though electric current surged through her. Suddenly she saw herself, half-crouched before the mirror, face slack with vacuous abandonment, the fingers of her right hand thrust into her body. With a sickened noise she jerked the fingers free. A harsh laugh rasped behind her, and the whirled. The bathroom was empty. I was watching, his voice spoke in her mind...

Florence fell to the floor beside the bed and, resting both arms on the mattress edge, pressed her forehead to her tightly clasping ahnds. "Dear God, please help me...I have been possessed. Let the fire of the Holy Spirit burn this sickness from my mind and body. Let the strength of God rush through me, let his might instill me with the power to resist.

"Let his God cock sink into my mouth," she said. "Let me drink his holy, burning jism. Let me--"

A wail of torment jerked back her lips. She drove the knuckle of a fisted hand into her mouth and bit until the pain had filled her mind.



If you're looking to keep the ten-foot bug behind the door (so you can stay free to imagine it a hundred feet high, if you want to), by all means stick to Jackson; if you're up for a slightly rougher ride, on the other hand--a roller-coaster, drive-in B-movie sort of experience--then Matheson can't be beat. But a perfect horror universe should have room for both of them...and thankfully, we appear to still live in such a universe. For now, at least.

Happy haunting, everybody!

THE END