Hill House vs Hill House
Two Varieties of Haunting
Note: spoilers for both the 1959 novel and the 2018 miniseries.
In diverging so radically from Shirley Jackson’s classic book, the recent Netflix miniseries took a big risk — not merely in plot details, but in the very mechanics of its haunting. Nevertheless, it paid off. Jackson’s novel is most notable for bringing us a new and interesting take about the mechanics of haunting, and this miniseries ultimately has an equally interesting take.
The haunting in the novel is a prototype for invisible architecture — a bridge between Dreams in the Witch House and Ghostbusters. Hill House is not haunted by spirits, or by history. Instead, by way of a pathological deviation from architectural norms, it is a kind of psychic fun-house mirror. Depending upon your interpretation of the novel, the House either reflects and amplifies existing mental illnesses (and thus further disturbs the crew of neurotic and delusion-prone misfits who are visiting), or it accumulates and reflects psi in the form of poltergeist activity, (and thus turns the internal psychodrama of the crew of neurotic low-level telepaths and telekinetics into physical mayhem). The actual history of the House plays no more of a role in the hauntings than the elements of Nell’s stream of consciousness do, and only when the visitors are aware of that history…