I love haunted houses. I love their mystery, their poetry, the way they stand in for how we’re haunted ourselves. One of my favorite moments is when we “meet” the haunted house. Go on, give me mile-long, absurdly detailed descriptions. Use adverbs. Use “too many” adjectives. Tell me exactly what those gutters look like and how the windows (which are inevitably the house’s eyes) land in the narrator’s heart.
With my first book, I started paying more attention to how other authors did stuff. How did they create an atmosphere? How did they give a haunted house a personality?
Considering these examples, looking hard at how different authors’ styles and voices came through, helped me grow in my own writing. And if nothing else, it’s just plain fun to read the first lines that usher a haunted house into the world.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The novel’s opening, for me, is one of the best introductions to a haunted house ever written: “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.”
Less often shared, though, is Eleanor’s first impression on arriving at Hill House, right at the top of Chapter 2.
“No human eye can isolate the unhappy coincidence of line and place which suggests evil in the face of a house, and yet somehow a maniac juxtaposition, a badly turned angle, some chance meeting of roof and sky, turned Hill House into a place of despair, more frightening because the face of Hill House seemed awake, with a watchfulness from the blank windows and a touch of glee in the eyebrow of a cornice. [. . .] This house, which seemed somehow to have formed itself, flying together into its own powerful pattern under the hands of its builders, fitting itself into its own construction of lines and angles, reared its great head back against the sky without concession to humanity. It was a house without kindness, never meant to be lived in, not a fit place for people or for love or for hope. Exorcism cannot alter the countenance of a house; Hill House would stay as it was until it was destroyed.”
Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey
In Gailey’s book, Vera returns to her childhood home to assist her dying mother despite their long estrangement. Vera’s father, a known serial killer, is now dead. But Vera has never made her peace with her mother or with the fact that, despite what he was, she adored her father. The house is a manifestation of this dark emotional puzzle.
“The Crowder House clung to the soil the way damp air clings to hot skin. [. . .]
Vera stood with one foot on the lawn and one foot on the driveway, sweating, straining as if she might be able to make out the sound of Daphne [her mother] dying inside. But the house was built to keep the wind out and the sound in. It stood there, patiently waiting for Vera to come inside, and it did not reveal a single one of its secrets no matter how long and hard Vera stared at it.”
Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
In Mexican Gothic, the house, known as “High Place,” represents so much of the worst of the past. Despite its effort to communicate power and grandeur, to Noemi, the structure is strange and out of place, faded and hollow.
“Then, all of a sudden, they were there, emerging into a clearing, and the house seemed to leap out of the mist to greet them with eager arms. It was so odd! It looked absolutely Victorian in construction, with its broken shingles, elaborate ornamentation, and dirty bay windows. [. . .]
The house loomed over them like a great, quiet gargoyle. It might have been foreboding, evoking images of ghosts and haunted places, if it had not seemed so tired, slats missing from a couple of shutters, the ebony porch groaning as they made their way up the steps to the door, which came complete with a silver knocker shaped like a fist dangling from a circle.
It’s the abandoned shell of a snail, she told herself [. . .].”
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
Harrow’s Starling House is a trap. Each detail drives that home: windows as eyes, nests devoid of eggs, its questionable stability, the vines on the verge of coming to life. It’s a starved and sickly place, but plenty of clues suggest it might still have the energy to snap up another victim.
“In my dreams the drive is dark and twisting, but in reality I turn a single curve and there it is.
Starling House.
The windows are filmy eyes above rotten sills. Empty nests sag from the eaves. The foundation is cracked and slanted, as if the entire thing is sliding into the open mouth of the earth. The stone walls are covered with the bare, twisting tendons of some creeping vine—honeysuckle, I figure, which is only ever a show tune away from gaining sentience and demanding to be fed. The only sign that anyone lives inside is the slow bleed of woodsmoke from a leaning chimney. [. . .]
The front steps are slick with matted black leaves. The door is an imperious arch that might once have been red or brown but is now the nothing-color of afternoon rain. The surface is scarred and stained; it’s only up close that I see there are tiny shapes carved roughly into the wood. Hundreds of them—horseshoes and crooked crosses and open eyes, spirals and circles and malformed hands that run in long rows like hieroglyphs, or lines of code. [. . .] There’s a derangement to them, a desperation that tells me I should leave before I wind up ritually beheaded or sacrificed on a stone altar in the basement.
I step closer instead.”
The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring
Mavi’s first impression of the isolated, cliff-top finishing school in Argentina—the school that’s meant to be her sanctuary—isn’t favorable. Although she cheers in the moment, the description echoes that of High Place in Mexican Gothic.
“[. . .] a mottled cloth flag ruffles out of the haze, its pole affixed to the most imposing stone structure I’ve ever seen. The building is a swollen version of the cottages, its facade crusty and burned. Diseased, leaking pus-like grout at the window seams. Malformed gargoyles hang off ledges irregularly shaped to resemble clouds, intricate swirling carvings adorning their edges. It’s grand, wholly European in style, and a touch dilapidated—visibly rich in a history that those who live inside likely want to forget. Bloodred baroque curtains block the second-floor windowpanes, and the unmoving, thickening mist obscures those closer to the sky.
The flag alone ripples with life: On it shimmers a fierce, sword-wielding woman dressed in a yolk-yellow cloak, emerging from a cloud.”
The September House by Carissa Orlando
In a brilliant twist on the haunted house genre, Orlando writes a woman in love with her haunted house. I can’t say too much here for risk of spoilers, but I love this introduction as an example of making adverbs and intentional repetition work for you.
“It was our dream house.
I knew it from the moment I stepped onto the property for the real estate tour. I knew it from the moment I saw the listing in the newspaper, if I’m being honest. The tour was a formality. I would have bought the place sight unseen.
The house, however, was truly something to see. It was a Victorian, with cobalt paint and neat white trim and an envy-inspiring porch that wrapped around the whole house. The driveway was long and the yard was sprawling and the place was blissfully isolated, hidden by trees on all sides. And there was a turret—an actual turret—that made the house look just a step behind in time, but purposefully so. My feet had barely even touched a pebble in the driveway before I knew that this place was my—our—home.”
The Spite House by Johnny Compton
I’m not quite halfway in this book, but it feels special. The author seems super in control of this slow burn. The drip feeding of details is immaculate: What exactly is this family running from? What exactly happened to the last people who stayed in this house? There’s already plenty of ghosts ready to bust loose. And although our first image of the house technically comes via photograph, that description comes out swinging.
“The Masson House of Degener, Texas, was like the corpse of an old monster, too strange and feared for most to approach it, much less attempt to bury it. After all, it might be feigning death or dormant.
In the primary photograph of the full-page ad, the house’s rectangular windows reflected the sun. Behind the house, the treetops looked close enough to brush the walls of the second floor when the wind blew. It was gaunt and gray, old and sickly. Four stories tall and narrow enough to be mistaken for an optical illusion, like the photographer was one step to the left or right away from revealing the other half or two-thirds of the house they had skillfully hidden.”
Do you have a favorite haunted house book? Any great haunted house stories, poetry, or art?
The theme for The Author-Oddity Newsletter this month is HOUSES, so I’d love to hear about it!
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