Hill House

This is my third countdown to Halloween post today. When I say I have a lot to blog about, I mean it. Anyway, I blogged before about The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, one of the great "modern" horror classics, now a Netflix TV series. I have been watching the series, irregularly, and I have been enjoying its sober approach to horror. But this is not what I have been wanting to blog about tonight. I wanted to quote the beginning of the novel, the way Hill House is introduced. Here it is: "No live organism can continue to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; every larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stodd 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." So there you have it. No monster, no machete wielding maniac, just a setting that oozes unease and malevolence. Read this tonigh before bed.