dotinthesky | Shirley Jackson's Haunting

I was still a kid when I first read The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson. It was a version translated into Brasilian Portuguese, bought in a tiny shopping mall near the apartment I grew up in São Paulo (I asked the saleswoman for a ghost story because I wanted to give Agatha Christie a break.) I loved the novel even though I wasn't old enough to fully understand it.

A few years ago, while visiting Kevin's parents in Canada, we rented The Haunting (the 1963 version) from the nearest strip mall videostore. Kevin's mom told us later that it gave her nightmares (very understandable when you consider she lives in a remote farm). I was impressed at how faithful the film was to the novel and how it built the suspense purely on suggestion and on a few key scenes involving "the haunting". Many of the novel's themes -- unstable minds meeting an unstable house; "unnatural" sexuality in an "unnatural" house -- also survive in the film, making it a kind of perfect companion piece for Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. But, whereas Hitchcock's movie deals with dangerous human insanity in a remote location, The Haunting is about the power a place can have in destabilizing a person whose mind is weak. Hitchcock's psycho gets found out in the end while Hill House continues to stand after the characters are gone, with the implication that many more will meet a horrible fate there.

I bought the film on DVD over Christmas, when I saw it on sale, and last night we got the sour cream Pringles and chocolate biscuits ready before popping in the film. Although naive in some ways, and awkward in others (especially the interior monologues), the film still stands as one of the best ghost stories ever made. It's just so... classy. It's from a time when film-makers assumed their audience were intelligent and could come to their own conclusions, as well as tolerate plenty of dialogue between the characters. No blood and guts here.

I wish there were more ghost stories put to film, more creepy novels on the bestselling lists. Enough with all these chicklit novels and boring film franchises. Let's tell ghost stories to each other.

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My older brother lived in a dilapidated little, old two-story house with crooked angles and strange acoustics with a rock band back in the 70's. The band wrote and recorded a song by the above named title that was included in one of the local radio station's promo albums made during that era called "The KGB Homegrown Albums." Local garage bands could submit original song recordings to be included in the fund-raising albums. I think there were a total of 6 or 7 released over a period of the same number of years. Anyway, the house was furnished with all the original contents left over from the older couple who had originally lived in the house but mysteriously and suddenly disappeared without a trace. They had left behind their car, all of their clothing and belongings, never to be heard from again. The house had a reputation for stranges sounds and such, my brother of course told me it was haunted. I stayed overnight visiting my brother and his roommates one weekend while I was about 16 and two very strange and remarkable things happened that weekend that I was witness to.

First I was reading a book (I forget the title) that someone had left on the coffee table in the living room. Everyone decided to go downstairs to the band room to practice and listen so I got up to join them, leaving the book on the table where I'd found it. I was the last one out, and you had to go out the front door and down an outer set of stairs to reach the bottom floor where the band practiced. It was actually the only room on that floor and had only one entrance. Once inside, I was seated out of the way with my brother while the band jammed, and growing a little bored I began to glance around at the magazines and debris strewn about the table near where I was sitting. There amongst the debris was the book I'd been reading upstairs. Thinking it was just another copy, I picked it up and began reading where I'd left off. When my brother decided to go back upstairs I went with him, leaving the book behind. When we got back to the living room, the book was nowhere to be found. I asked him about it, eventually accusing him of trying to trick me or freak me out somehow. He thought I brought it with me and just forgot about it but I know I left it upstairs.

Later after everyone else had left to go to a party or something, my brother and I were the only ones home. It was dark and we were sitting in the living room, quite buzzed from smoking dope, and listening to albums playing loudly on the stereo. I was zoning out, lost in thought or vegging or whatever when I heard my brother say something so I looked across the room at him and said loudly over the music, "What?!" His eyes were opened very wide and he had a finger held over his lips as though to shush me, and whispered, "Listen!" I leaned in and listened to what sounded like a muffled conversation between a man and woman taking place in the dining room, which was about six feet away from us and hidden behind a tied-dyed sheet that was hanging as a divider between the two rooms. I mouthed to my brother, "Who is it?" and he replied, his eyes still very wide, "I have no idea..." With a hand still to his lips, he quietly got up from his seat and walked over to the sheet, suddenly sweeping it aside to reveal - - - an empty room.

I will readily admit I was stoned. I was young. I was susceptible to suggestions about the house being haunted. But I sat there listening to an exchange taking place in the next room between a male voice and a female voice, though I couldn't make out their words, as sure as I am sitting here now. I have never felt the way that made me feel again since. Later when I had to pee, I made my brother hold my hand around the partially closed door because I was too afraid to be alone...I couldn't wait for daylight to come and to get the heck out of there...my brother didn't live there for very much longer but I never returned for another visit as long as he did.

Do you know if that house is still around? It would be cool to find out from its current inhabitants if they have experienced anything.

Once, when I was stoned in my residence hall bedroom, hanging out with a few friends, I thought I saw someone outside my window hit someone else on the head then drag their body into the laundry room. That was some strong shit we smoked. :-P

Shirley Jackson's Haunting

"The House Upon the Hill Above Encanto"

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