Haunted Houses: A Literary Tradition

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. 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. – Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Una casa infestata

I grew up in a haunted house.

When I tell people that, they often think that I’m deluded or that I live in a Conjuring movie. The reality’s a bit more mundane, but enough weird stuff has happened in this house over the years, witnessed by enough (often sceptical) people that I can confidently say that this house is haunted. We’re talking poltergeist activity, small children seeing things (and being momentarily possessed, no joke), perfectly stable bookcases completely collapsing as a sign to pick up someone’s ashes from the funeral parlour…

And the spooky dreams and the cold spots etcetera etcetera.

Once, we even stayed in a haunted holiday home, the three of us experiencing different unnerving things until we put them all together and we found out that the cute little cottage was the site of a school once upon a time and that yes, that might be connected to the children’s laughter my father was hearing in the middle of the night.

I’ve also stayed in a haunted hotel room in Oslo. Well, infested maybe is the better word, because whatever presence was there did not feel nice. In fact, I took to napping during the day and on my final night, I drank enough Red Bull (and by the way, I hate energy drinks) to keep me going until four in the morning, when the trains to the airport restarted.

I also lived in another haunted house for a while, which was a former care home. Again, my other housemates also experienced things, but funnily enough, it’s this creepy Edwardian house that heavily inspired the Wildes’ home in Coldharbour.

After all, the house I grew up in was only built in the Seventies.

By rights, it really shouldn’t be as haunted as it is.

But why are we so fascinated by haunted houses? They crop up again and again in pop culture and I feel like it’s one of the first spooky things we discover as children. Most episodes of Scooby-Doo have some form of haunted house going on (even if the ‘ghost’ would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids).

Haunted houses in pop culture

Obviously, one of the most famous haunted houses of all time is Hill House from The Haunting of… fame, but where did it all start?

Well, I’d argue that it started less with houses and more with castles and mansions. The first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, is a good contender for this, as it also quietly introduced the symbolism we associate with haunted settings: decay and decline, along with psychological or breakdown, difficult interpersonal dynamics, and dark secrets.

The Romantics, of course, ran with this idea and various haunted places cropped up in the likes of Ann Radcliffe’s work, but there was always an element of distance, whether temporal or geographical. It was easier to explain away such fantastical occurrences if they weren’t connected to the here and now.

Even Henry James’ peerless The Turn of the Screw uses this narrative device, having the central tale recounted through a third party, but by then, we’ve had Dickens’ ghost stories (I’m thinking of A Christmas Carol and The Signal-man in particular) which clearly take place in a contemporary England.

Then we get M.R. James, whose gloomy cathedrals might be ancient, but the terror is now, so we begin to see this shift towards introducing the haunting to a recognisable setting for maximum chills. After all, it’s easy to brush off someone being terrorised by a spirit if it happened on the other side of the world or a century ago. But in an environment not that unlike your own home? Or in a hotel room just like the one you’re staying in? Or perhaps similar to the library you like to visit? Where anything could be lurking in the shadows?

But those weren’t necessarily haunted houses, which is where we come back to Shirley Jackson and Hill House. Not only is this house haunted, it’s actively malevolent. In the original work, we never really experience an actual ghost – instead, we have to witness the effect of this house on a vulnerable young woman. This is the point where everything changes: a house, which is meant to represent safety, can be incredibly dangerous.

Stephen King, who has definitely been influenced by Shirley Jackson, has explored this in the likes of The Shining in particular, in which ‘The Overlook’ preys on Jack’s inherent vulnerability as a recovering addict, turning what should’ve been a humdrum seasonal job into an utter deathtrap. We see this in haunted house films too, especially by the Eighties when we get Poltergeist and The Amityville Horror. These are not friendly ghosts. They wish us harm, intruding on the mundanity of everyday life in order to torment us.

Haunted house films have had a resurgence in the past fifteen years or so, with The Conjuring, Insidious, and Paranormal Activity standing out. I think it’s also interesting that they are, like Poltergeist back in the day, successful continuing series – in other words, there’s clearly an audience there that wants to be repeatedly terrified in similar yet different haunted scenarios (myself included). I definitely need to highlight the original Paranormal Activity as the ultimate example of ‘this is a normal couple just trying to live their lives’, especially as it possibly introduced the twist of the building not being haunted – rather, the protagonist is.

Haunted houses also live on in literature and it’d be remiss of me not to mention The Woman in Black. Published in 1983, it uses the same conceit of The Turn of the Screw but the atmosphere is all-consuming and Eel Marsh House is so isolated as to be claustrophobic. I don’t exactly have time for the film version, but the theatrical adaptation was incredible. As in, so scary, people would have to leave.

1 St Augustine’s, Coldharbour

Now, I’m not going to reveal the exact workings of the haunted house in Coldharbour (yet), so here’s just the smallest sliver of how our protagonist Alex feels about it:

It was just a house.

An old house, a house Alex hated, a house with ghosts, but as Matthew used to say, sometimes reassuringly, more often sarcastically:

You don’t have to be scared of a ghost you haven’t wronged.

Pre-order Coldharbour: A Gothic Tale of Love and Death (out 31st January 2026)