Summer is almost over. School is starting. We know many of you want the lazy days of summer to remain with us a little longer, but we can’t wait for the upcoming spooky season. Halloween is coming, and we want all the ghosts, ghouls, and ghastly things.
With the recent passing of Toni Morrison, of course we thought of her novel Beloved, one of the best ghost stories we’ve read. The haunted home of 124 Bluestone Road made us crave even more spectral places, like Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. But Jackson and Morrison are just the beginning; we would like to invite you into a few other haunted houses built by women writers. You might see some familiar names here, but if not, you’ll definitely find some new authors to add to your autumn reading pile.
So let’s get started—don’t mind the creaky door, or the dust, or the darkness, or the screams….
The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle
Originally published as Uneasy Freehold (1941), Dorothy Macardle’s Irish haunted house tale was titled The Uninvited for its 1942 American release. When siblings Roddy and Pamela Fitzgerald stumble upon the manor house Cliff End, they are immediately besotted, but they are convinced they could never afford such a grand property. Not so. Cliff End has stood empty for years (it seems the owner just can’t keep tenants), and it’s available for a bargain price! Like all good protagonists in haunted house books, Roddy and Pamela can’t resist, but it doesn’t take long for them to realize they bought a lot more than a house with a seaside view. Macardle expertly blends psychological trauma and mystery with the supernatural in this ghostly tale. Bonus: Macardle’s novel was adapted for the screen in 1944’s The Uninvited, directed by Lewis Allen and starring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey. The film is well worth a Halloween viewing.
Buy the Book
The Univited
The Graveyard Apartment by Mariko Koike
The Japanese edition of Koike’s novel first appeared in 1988, but the first U.S. edition in English was only recently published in 2016. This creepy tale is sparse, but effective. Rather than choosing a home with a history, The Graveyard Apartment is one of the rare haunted house stories set in a modern setting—this time a new-build apartment building. The accommodations are perfect, and best of all, cheap, possibly because of the graveyard and crematorium in the backyard. The home-built-upon-graves trope is only part of the horror of Koike’s book, however. The plot also effectively weaves in the troubled past of the Kano family, who think they’ve found the perfect home. Soon, though, trouble finds Teppei, his wife Misao, and young Tamao. Fans of Japanese horror will find this one satisfying.
Buy the Book
The Graveyard Apartment
The Good House by Tananarive Due
Every haunted house has a history, and the “Good House” in Tananarive Due’s 2003 book has a long, sordid one, filled with anguish, despair, and vodou magic. The home in question has belonged to the Toussaint family for generations. The house has always been a much-beloved fixture in the town of Sacajawea, Washington, but the home tends to eat its own. Angela Toussaint, the current owner, mourns the loss of her teenage son, Corey, who discovered the dark side to his family’s ties to magic, and that’s only the beginning of the horrors the house has in store. We love this novel for its unique twist on African American voodoo traditions and the Toussaint family, who readers will root for throughout the roller-coaster plot.
Buy the Book
The Good House
White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
Oh, how we love Helen Oyeyemi, and we think White is for Witching (2009) is her best. It’s an odd novel, especially for a ghost story, because despite its haunting qualities, ghosts don’t really haunt this house. Instead, Miri, the unstable main character, who lives in a Dover house turned bed-and-breakfast with her widower father and twin brother, haunts the house. Oh, and the house itself is alive too. It even takes a turn in the narration. Oyeyemi’s Gothic tale has everything a modern Goth heart could want: twins, insanity, loneliness, and a hunger that haunts the women of one family for generations.
Buy the Book
White is for Witching
The Family Plot by Cherie Priest
The most recent one on this list, Cherie Priest’s 2016 novel is a cautionary tale for all the HGTV, home rehab addicts out there. A tale about a decaying family estate in Chattanooga, Tennessee, sold for salvage, this book has plenty of Southern Gothic spooky atmosphere. When Augusta Withrow offers to sell her estate to salvage company owner Chuck Dutton, he knows he’s facing a financial risk, but the price is too good to pass up. He knows the buildings are full of valuable antiques and materials. And Withrow makes it clear that everything is his—she wants nothing from the property and only wants to be rid of it. A word of warning for readers: The Family Plot will make you think twice before taking a nice, long bath.
Buy the Book
The Family Plot
Before we let you leave, if you’re not too frightened, we have a couple short stories to suggest from the master of haunted houses, Shirley Jackson. Jackson’s “The Bus” (1965) is a tale with a dreamlike Twilight Zone feel. A woman riding a bus home gets off at the wrong stop and finds herself stranded in a house eerily reminiscent of her childhood home, complete with her favorite toys. “A Visit” (also known as “The Lovely House,” 1952) is a story of a girl’s stay at a friend’s house during the school holiday that takes some strange and dark turns. With its house of weird dimensions, shifting time, and ambiguous occurrences, it anticipates The Haunting of Hill House.
Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction, a non-fiction work from Lisa Kröger and Melanie R. Anderson, is available September 17th from Penguin Random House.
Photo: Rikki Austin on Unsplash (edited from the original)
Lisa Kröger holds a PhD in English. Her short fiction has appeared in Cemetery Dance magazine and Lost Highways: Dark Fictions from the Road (Crystal Lake Publishing, 2018). She’s an adjunct instructor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi, Gulf Coast. She cohosts The Know Fear Cast (knowfearcast.com) with Melanie R. Anderson.
Melanie R. Anderson is an assistant professor of English at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. Her book Spectrality in the Novels of Toni Morrison (University of Tennessee Press, 2013) was a winner of the 2014 South Central MLA Book Prize.
Cherie Priest also has The Agony House for younger readers.
Tanya Huff has an urban fantasy-ish haunted house in Smoke and Mirrors. Still potentially creepy but it’s still not really playing by horror genre “rules.”
Anyone remember if Sarah Monette has done a haunted house story?
There’s always the classic The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons, too. And Mira Grant has a new novella, In the Shadow of Spindrift House, that is basically Hill House meets Lovecraft with a dash of intrepid young investigators.
its that time of year, the uninvited looks great![.](//s04.flagcounter.com/mini/Jkzv/bg_FFFFFF/txt_DEDEDE/border_FFFFFF/flags_0/" width="1"/>)
The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters– eerie goings-on in a decaying aristocratic mansion in post-war Britain. Supernatural intrusions or family dysfunction? No one knows, but it’s bound to end in tragedy. Beautifully written tragedy, of course.
I’d have to strongly recommend Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black as an excellent example of Gothic horror in which the house plays a significant role. Gorgeous scenery, a dysfunctional town, unsympathetic townspeople, and a convincingly naive protagonist. On a related note, while the plot goes off the rails very early on, the movie version, which stars a post Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe, is one of the most beautifully filmed movies I’ve ever seen.
I agree with bash91 about the film version of The Woman in Black. And I loved the ending. The Haunting (1963 version, not the wretched remake) never lets up. Another wonderful film.
Catriona Ward’s Rawblood (2015), her first novel, is absolutely brilliant Gothic horror about a haunted family. She comes in the night. She looks into your eyes. One by one, she has taken us all. Enthralling, creepy, and heartbreaking.
I can’t let a mention of Shirley Jackson go by without mentioning her novel, “The Haunting of Hill House,” which was made into the 1963 movie, “The Haunting,” that @nancyholder mentioned above.
Also, This House is Haunted by John Boyne. Very Dickensian. The audio version is superb.
Don’t forget Rebecca by Daphne de Maurier. I would consider that on par with Shirley Jackson’s work as a classic.
@9 Shawn Manning – I’m guessing John Boyne isn’t written by a woman?
Don’t forget “Long Lankin” by Lindsay Barraclough – it was super creepy (a YA novel, but dang if it didn’t make the hair on the back of my neck stand up repeatedly.)
I recently reread The House Next Door. It’s even better than I remembered!