Hell House by Richard Matheson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Although Hell House may take its inspiration from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, mainly in the broad premise of a group of people investigating a haunted house, it departs from the relatively mild chills of Jackson’s tale and goes straight for the throat–and every other body part. The ghosts in Hell House are nasty things that mean to injure and even kill those daring to solve the home’s decades-old mysteries.
Matheson, perhaps best-known for his contributions to the original Twilight Zone TV series (“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” among others) has written a ghost story that leaves the reader wondering who is right–Florence Tanner, a medium brought to the house with three others to help uncover and perhaps banish whatever malefic force dwells within–or Lionel Barrett, a physicist who theorizes that ghostly doings are nothing more than residual energy that can be neutralized by a “reversor,” a large contraption covered with dials, buttons, switches and filled with vacuum tubes. You know, like a typical computer from 1970 (when the story takes place).
Tanner and Barret are joined by Barrett’s wife, Edith, and another medium, Ben Fischer, who as a teenager had been part of a disastrous attempt to clean the house in 1940, an attempt that left everyone but Fischer dead.
Promised loads of money by the house’s current owner if they can wrap up their investigation of life after death in a week, the foursome quickly discovers that the house is primed for a party in which everyone is invited…to die! Exploiting personal weaknesses of the four, the house’s spirits move quickly and violently to divide and conquer.
Matheson does a terrific job balancing tensions both between the four and between the sides of spiritualism and science. Also to his credit, there are no eyeball-rolling moments where characters do stupid things in order to advance the plot. There is a battle here between the living and the not-so-living and Matheson lets it play out in as believable a manner as you are likely to get in a story about a haunted house.
For a novel published in 1971, Hell House is surprisingly timeless. Apart from the above-mentioned “reversor” it could be updated to the present day without any substantial change, a testament to Matheson’s straightforward, character-driven approach. If you want a ghost story that is more than people wandering around the dark and hearing a few odd noises (ie. every limp ghost-hunting show ever), Hell House’s bricked-over windows, profane chapel and steam(ed to death) room will serve you well.