A mentally sensitive woman comes with three others to stay in a house with a haunted reputation. Is the woman mentally disturbed or is she psychic? Is the house haunted or is the protagonist just imagining it? Is there a fated relationship between the house and the woman? Shirley Jackson’s best novel offers many possibilities and is a genuinely frightening, disturbing read. (I taught it in English 13 when I started teaching in Grand Centre/Cold Lake, Alberta in 1972. It was on the curriculum then.) Highly recommended novel.
Director Robert Wise made an excellent close, suspenseful adaptation of the original book. It was shot in black and white cinematography and makes outstanding use of atmosphere, darkness, camera angles, and sound effects. The cast is perfect with Julie Harris as Eleanor, Claire Bloom as cynical Theo, Richard Johnson as the ‘cool’ objective scientist, and Russ Tamblyn as the skeptical young playboy. Highly recommended classic film.
We visited Jackson’s house in a university town North Bennington, Vermont in the early 1990s, where her husband taught.